With spring in the air here in San Diego and a new book due out in August, I’m thinking about growth: What do we do when our attempts to grow don’t work? How important is growth, anyway? What if we have to pivot back to something we hoped to leave behind? How can we nurture each other and grow together?
Here I am holding Jennifer Crusie’s, book Lavender’s Blue. She wrote it with Bob Mayer. The first in a rollicking trilogy. Highly recommend!
My Writer Goals
My goals, writing-wise, have been modest up until now.
#1 I wanted to have a book traditionally published by a small press.
#2 I wanted to attract and nurture 1000 Loyal Readers. You!
#3 Finally, I wanted to streamline the way I connect with you, my dear Loyal Readers, and give you some insider peeks into my writing endeavors and my more philosophical ideas about life, creativity, success, and clarity of purpose. And I wanted to inspire you to pursue your own dreams along the way. If I can do it, so can you!
How have I done so far? Well, it’s been mixed this year, to be honest.
I accomplished goal #1. Hooray!
I’m still working on reaching that number of Loyal Readers in goal #2, but the ones who have stuck by me deserve my profound and deep gratitude. I love you for your belief in me and my stories!
And that pesky #3. Wow, has that been a challenge in these times.
I was moving right along with my newsletter, but then the pricing changed on my platform. It wasn’t going to affect me at that moment, but I could see issues down the road. So I tried a couple of alternatives. One allowed me to use this blog as a newsletter, and it seemed to work . . . until it crashed my whole website. Yikes!
I went back to my mailing platform and then, again, a big change forced me to halt. See, I use a free gmail address, and suddenly two of the biggest email providers said, “Um, no. We will let you HAVE a free email, but we will no longer recognize said email when you send out a newsletter. We will no longer deliver your messages sent to our users’ inboxes.”
Ironic, no? But it’s just because of bad actors.
I get it. Spam abounds. I’m all for cleaning up the junk sent to our inboxes. However, this meant I would have to pay for a monthly subscription for an “official” email associated with my domain. I balked. Couldn’t there be another way? Would people read my blog if I revamped it and directed them here? Could I rely on social media to do this?
Answer: No.
Author Newsletter Necessary Again
Starting over. Because I’ve run out of alternative ideas at this point, and because I miss connecting with my readers somewhere other than social media, I will be getting the domain email and starting up the Remarkable! News again. I hope you’ll welcome the emails from me in your inbox. I promise I’ll make them as fun, entertaining, informative . . . and short . . . as possible.
(I know. I do tend to run on.)
We sprinkle love and peace and kindness and understanding and support to those growing around us. Our roots communicate, like the tendrils of trees beneath the soil. Together we create a fabulous, resilient, fertile ecosystem for our creative endeavors.
Shelley Burbank, BY THE PEN blog
My sincerest thanks for putting up with the ups & downs, the ins & outs, the changes & changes & changes. It’s part of growth. It’s part of learning. I’ll keep writing here and sharing on socials and the newsletter–hopefully this week I’ll be up and running again.
Meanwhile, I’d love to hear about YOUR goals and growth and meaningful experiences along the way toward the success you’ve been dreaming of. What does success look like to you? Where do you find inspiration? What would you tell others who need to be encouraged?
These are some of the questions I ask myself and you, my friends. I’m intensely interested in and committed to encouraging my sister (and fellow) travelers as we build meaningful and creative lives. We can do it! I believe it, deep down in the depth of my soul, in every cell. We build and feed the soil that will nurture our growth. We sprinkle love and peace and kindness and understanding and support to those growing around us. Our roots communicate, like the tendrils of trees beneath the soil. Together we create a fabulous, resilient, fertile ecosystem for our creative endeavors.
Cheers to all of you!