Are you Pursuing the Different or the Same?

January is a wonderful time of the year. We've turned the page on a new year and we can take a fresh start at our writing and work in publishing. Repeatedly I have read the definition of insanity—doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Yes, that is insanity. 

What is your specific goal or dream for the days ahead? Is it to build your platform or connection to the audience? Maybe you want to have an opportunity to write for different magazines or book publishers? Possibly you want to increase your writing income or your impact on the world.

The pursuit of a different path begins with formulating a new plan and target for your writing. Recently, I was watching Sunday Morning on CBS and heard the unlikely story behind “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” 





There are several lessons for writers from this short video:

1. Jeff Kinney wanted to be a cartoonist and pursued his dream for years. While he was pursuing his dream, he worked in a related field (animation for games). In the evenings, he worked on his adult book about the Wimpy Kid Diary--which grew to 1300 pages. Also notice his persistence to work on this adult book for eight years.

2. He was actively looking for a publisher and took a sample of his writing to a Comic Book Convention and had the courage to speak to an editor at Abrams.

3. Kinney listened when the editor took a look at his sample and said he had a great book for kids (a different target audience). Abrams ended up publishing the first Diary of A Wimpy Kid book for early readers. Now Kinney has over 150 million copies of those books in print.

Are you continuing with the same actions and expecting different results (insanity) or are you trying different types of writing and actions to achieve something different? If you want to sell more of your writing this year, then I encourage you to try something different. If you want to sell more books, then you need to touch your audience more frequently. We buy from people we know, like and trust. What steps are you taking to build that exposure in the marketplace?

Be encouraged to take action--yet different action from what you did without results.