“What do we do now?”

October 11, 2011 at 9:15 pm (Personal, Writing)
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In the 1972 movie The Candidate, an idealistic lawyer played by Robert Redford is persuaded to run for the Senate against a popular incumbent. He’s given free rein to run his campaign as he sees fit, until he starts to become a viable candidate. At the end of the movie, after winning the election he sits glumly in his hotel room rather than confident and proud. He speaks to his campaign manager who is surrounded by a throng of people and asks “What do we do now?”

Well, I’m feeling that same way. I’ve realized the needs and requirements of being a writer in this contemporary digital age and have followed through accordingly. I have dipped my toes in the waters of Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and Kindle. I have set up my own website and added links to, well, me out in the world of cyberspace.

What do I do now?

The interesting thing is that I know what to do and it involves regular management, as though I were diabetic and needed to test my blood sugar. There is no longer the casual get-together with writers in coffee shops smoking clove cigarettes and contemplating the modern version of ancient Roman classics. (Yes, I did all that.)

There is a new world of tweets and posts and entries and connections and networking. I KNOW what to do. It’s time to get around to doing it.

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My Digital Progress — A Follow-Up

October 5, 2011 at 7:56 pm (Personal, self-publishing, Writing)
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Per Dictionary.com, the definition of PLATFORM (item #7) was

a body of principles on which a person or group takes a stand in appealing to the public

So, we as writers and artists are intent upon building our platform for the sole purpose of appealing to the public, identifying ourselves, our character and personality as well as our work. We hope you will purchase said work because, if we weren’t interested in selling it, we wouldn’t be building our platform.

I’ve been doing this blog for four years, have been on Facebook, have signed up for LinkedIn and Twitter, hand out business cards, talk as much to non-writers (you know, The Public) as much as I discuss writing with those that suffer the same affliction as myself. I’ve uploaded works for sale in both printed and electronic formats on Lulu, Amazon’s Kindle Page, Smashwords, and others. Until now, the only thing I lacked was a website.

Until now.

I am pleased to announce the unveiling of hbberlow.com and hope that there will be visitors as well as purchases of books.

I am indebted to my brother-in-law Greg for getting the thing started. We’ve both been talking for years about each of us needing our own websites for different reasons. Every time I would agree and it would just stop there. Until he just went out and secured my name as a domain (thank goodness) and set up the initial skeleton and instructed me as to how to build up the rest of the body.

Thanks should also go to Gordon Kessler, the founder and current president of the Kansas Writers Association who, for this past year has been strongly advocating the membership to embrace the Digital world and heavily research and explore e-publishing.

Special mention should be made to Samantha Lafantasie, a woman who balances being a wife and mother and writer and adds a great passion to the KWA meetings. She has established a critique group and she is passionate about the craft. It is people like her (who are so utterly different from me) that motivate me in stepping into these new fields.

After all, I’m just an old analog dude living in a digital world.

Please visit my website and come along for the ride.

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