The Complete Creative

One of the questions most often asked by customers is “what are you trying to say in your work?” and one of the most oft laid criticisms at the feet of artists is “it’s pretty, but it doesn’t have a point.” Both of these criticisms come back to a critical aspect in any art career, your point of view.

Point of view is more important than talent. I’ve seen the most technically proficient artwork in the world do nothing for audiences while a simple mixed media piece has brought them to tears due to its point of view.

Point of view is why you can tell Frank Miller’s work from Skottie Young’s, and Mike Mignola’s from Rob Liefeld’s. You might not like all of those artists, but you can tell their work apart from the pack the moment they put pen to paper. More importantly, their fans flock to their work because it speaks clearly to them.

In order to make great content, you need a strong point of view. You need a slant on the world. You need something that separates you from the rest of the creatives on the planet.  

Let’s do a thought experiment. Think about Tim Burton for a moment. Now think of the kinds of projects that would be perfect for Tim Burton’s view of the world. Can you imagine a couple?

Of course you can. His distinct style has been developed in the public zeitgeist for decades. 

That clarity of vision makes a good point of view. Tim Burton won’t be a good fit for 99.9% of movies, but point of view is not about that. Your goal is not to be on everybody’s list of candidates, it’s to be the number one candidate for the right person. Those projects you thought of, could you imagine anybody else directing them except for Tim Burton and doing as good a job? Probably not.

That is the power of a strong point of view. With a solid point of view, you don’t have to pitch yourself. Your ideal audience comes to you.

Point of view is the hardest part to nail down in a creative life because it takes life experience and practice to figure out. It’s why you need to make a lot of different things and finish them.

Once you’ve done a body of work, you can look back, think about your point of view, and figure out what it is you are trying to say. You can connect the dots much easier after completing several projects than you could before you began your work. Then, when you go to make a career, you can tell people exactly what you stand for and they can make a decision whether they want to stand with you or with somebody else.

If you don’t have a point of view, it’s a bit like making plain white socks. Nobody hates plain white socks and we all buy them, but we don’t care about what brand we buy. Most of us buy whatever’s cheapest. Every time we buy, we buy a different brand because we just don’t care about plain white socks. You don’t want to be plain white socks. 

On the other hand, a point of view is like having the brightest, pinkest, dragoniest socks on the planet. They won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but those who love bright pink dragon socks will flip their lid and buy ten pairs. They’ll look through the designer’s collection and buy up all of their stuff. They’ll sign up to receive updates for when the new dragon socks come out. Nobody has ever signed up to find out when the next pair of plain white socks launches.  That’s the power of a point of view.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a point of view yet. That’s normal when you first start out. The more you create the more connective thread you will find between your work, and the stronger your point of view will become.  One of the reasons artists become more successful later in their career is because they’ve developed a strong point of view.

If you already have created a decent body of work, it’s time to look back on it and ask yourself, what am I trying to say here?

This week on the show we have Sheri Fink. She’s an inspirational speaker and writer I met at Los Angeles Comic Con, and a fantastic interview.

If you like this show, please rate, review and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Don’t take my word for it though. Here is her massive bio straight from www.sherifink.com. 

Sheri Fink is an inspirational speaker, a #1 best-selling, award-winning author, and the creator of “The Whimsical World of Sheri Fink” inspirational brand.

She creates books, products, and experiences that inspire and delight kids of all ages while planting seeds of self-esteem. All 5 of her children’s books were #1 best-sellers, including The Little Rose which was a #1 Amazon Best-seller for over 60 weeks, became the #1 Top-Rated Children’s eBook on Amazon, and was adapted into a stage play.

Sheri has expanded her brand with books, live experiences, beauty items, and music all designed to create magical experiences for her Fans. Sheri became a #1 best-selling recording artist on Amazon with the 2014 release of her first inspirational album, Love Notes.

Frequently asked about the secret to her success, Sheri released her daily practices that enable her to achieve her dreams in My Bliss Book, a daily journal designed to help you create more magic, passion, and aliveness in your life while achieving your dreams.

In 2013, CBS Los Angeles selected her as one of the top 3 authors in her local area, a distinction she shares with Dean Koontz. Sheri’s books have been honored with several awards including 3 gold medals in the Readers Favorite International Book Awards, and is a recipient of the prestigious Gold Mom’s Choice Award honoring the best in family friendly entertainment.

Sheri was honored with the 2013 Extraordinary Inspiration Award for her long-lasting commitment to spreading inspirational messages of hope and self-esteem through her books, her moving life story, and her brand.

In the words of Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul and New York Times Best-selling author of The Success Principles, “The Whimsical World of Sheri Fink children’s brand is an excellent resource for award-winning and quality children’s books that encourage actions of tolerance, acceptance, and, perhaps the hardest lesson to be learned of all, staying true to the core of one’s self.”

Sheri is an empowering speaker who shares her strategies on overcoming adversity and living life with passion and aliveness as well as her inspirational journey. Her talks focus on authenticity, confidence, and personal empowerment. In addition, Sheri speaks to elementary school students about the importance of kindness, what it takes to be a successful author, and the behind-the-scenes of transforming an idea into a book.

Sheri has spoken to and inspired thousands of people throughout North America including events for PBS, Barnes and Noble at The Grove, USC, and UCLA, corporations including Macy’s and California Pizza Kitchen, and has keynoted for the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Southern California Writers Conference, the American Association of University Women, and the South Bay Women’s Conference. View testimonials of Sheri’s motivational speaking.

Sheri and her books have been featured in hundreds of articles, programs, websites, and shows, including on NBC’s The 10! Show, CBS Los Angeles, The Huffington Post, Life After 50 Magazine, The Good Life with VeegMama, and Publishers Weekly. Sheri has appeared on the cover of several magazines along with feature articles that inspire readers to believe in themselves and take inspired action to transform their lives.

Sheri has been honored to participate in pop culture events including Comic-Con, the MTV Movie Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, Book Expo America, and the People’s Choice Awards.

Sheri is proud to serve as a spokesperson for Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), a non-profit organization that provides free books to underprivileged elementary school students, and to volunteer in the Pediatric ICU at Children’s Hospital.

In addition, she is a founding member of the Evolutionary Business Council, an international, invitation-only council of speakers and influencers dedicated to teaching the principles of success in order to make the world a better place, and a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).

Sheri’s newest adventure is a contemporary romance. She was inspired to write Cake in Bed, her debut novel, to empower women to be their authentic selves and to not settle for less than they deserve in life or in love, because everyone deserves to have their cake and eat it too … preferably in bed!

I didn’t know what to think of Sheri when I met her at Los Angeles Comic-con, clad in a Harley Quinn outfit, but she immediately impressed me. The fact that she friended me on Facebook before I could add her was even a better indication of her legitimacy, but then I saw her website and it blew me away.

I loved talked to Sheri because she perfectly balanced the whimsy and inspiration that pumps you up with the tactical and practical information that can help get you to the next level. The thing that really resonated with me from our conversation was the idea of becoming a magnet for the right people.

Right now Wannabe Press and this show are working very hard to push our message to as many people as possible, but her message was to create a brand where the right people find you. It’s not easy to do, but I’ve been working very hard over the past year to magnetize ourselves to the right people, so Sheri’s message really hit home. Make sure to check her out on Instagram or twitter @Sheri_Fink.

I hope you enjoy this one with Sheri Fink. If you do, please rate, review and subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Whenever somebody creates, there will always be critics. Most of those critics will be people you don’t know, and that will be hard enough. However, some of those critics may be your family or even your friends. It’s incredibly hard to continue going in the face of intense criticism, especially from people you love.

Even to this day, I take criticism 100 times harder than I do praise. Nice things roll off my back, but no matter how many people praise my work, if even one person criticizes it my entire day is ruined.

And that’s massive improvement!

It used to be that my entire month was ruined. Then I cut it down to my entire week and I eventually got that down to a single day.

I’ve gotten exceedingly good at dealing with criticism, but it took a lot of work. There are several tricks that I learned in my career that allow me to keep going even in the face of extreme criticism and negativity.

Surround yourself with positivity. The first step in being able to survive criticism is to surround yourself with other people who are as crazy as you, who believe in you, and are working toward the same goal as you. For work to be good it can’t be for everybody. Work without a point of view doesn’t resonate, and if you have a point of view some people won’t agree with it. That’s natural, but it’s incredibly important to have some people who believe in your point of view if you want the energy to keep going.

Cut out negative people. There are certain people in your life you can’t cut out, such as family members. However, we can mostly silence them by unfollowing their profiles on social media and being around them as little as possible. This doesn’t mean cut out people because they raise valid and helpful criticisms. These are spiteful and negative people we are talking about here. There is a big difference from somebody giving constructive criticism of your work and somebody that is just negative to be hurtful.

Don’t rely on others for validation. Part of why we create is so other people can experience what we do, and on some level love it. However, there is a difference between wanting other people to experience your work and needing them to like it in order to validate your creation. Relying on other people for validation means that if they don’t like it, you won’t do it. That is a very negative viewpoint and it has stopped thousands of talented artists. If you can validate yourself, then criticism with sting and rejection will hurt, but you will still be able to move on from it.

Understand that showing your work brings more positive than negative. Most artists hole up in their studios unable to show their work for fear of criticism. However, the positives of showing work far outweigh the negatives. Even if your work gets a universally bad reaction, if you ask the right questions then you can understand why it was reviled and improve for next time. That’s never the case, though. You will be able to find some people that like your work, and if you can find those people it will give you the strength to carry on. Each time you release a piece more and more of those quality people will find your work, and you will be able to build a following. The more positive reinforcement you receive, the more likely you are to continue.

Know that because one person didn’t like your work doesn’t mean everybody won’t like it. One person is only one person in a world of 7 billion people. For every person that dislikes your work, there is probably one that loves it. If you focus your efforts on finding those people that love it and away from people that don’t, you will be better able to survive criticism.

It’s usually not personal. Just because people don’t like your work, doesn’t mean they don’t like you. I have plenty of friends who don’t get my work, don’t buy my work, and don’t care about my work. That’s okay. Those people can still love me without financially supporting me, just like I love them without supporting their work as an accountant or lawyer or whatever they do. Sometimes it is personal, and those people need to be taken out of your life, but usually criticism or lack of interest has nothing to do with you as a person.

It is always hard to deal with criticism no matter your age or success level. These tricks have worked for me only because I was willing to get out into the world and try things.

That’s the most important part of dealing with criticism, you need to get out into the world and show your work to people because it’s in the showing that you build a thick skin and develop the resilience to carry on.

This is the second live episode I recorded straight from the How to Build an Audience even if you don’t have a product…yet panel I moderated at Los Angeles Comic Con.

For this panel, we had Bryant Dillon (www.fanbasepress.com; @comicbookslayer on Twitter, Joie Foster (www.heyjoiecomics; @joieart on twitter, Mom (www.momcomics.org; @momcomics on twitter), Lynly Forrest (www.hexcomix.com; @hexcomix on twitter) and Neo Edmund (www.neoedmund.com; @neoedmund1 on twitter).

Each and every member of this panel have launched products successfully in different ways, and it was a treat to hear them all talk about their experiences. Bryant through founding a press website. Mom through founding a community. Neo through networking and social media. Lynly through shows. Joie through connections.

I loved hearing each of their experiences and how unique they were. However, it ended up at the same place as before. Don’t be a dick and make sure your networking game is strong.

I hope you enjoy this one live from Los Angeles Comic Con. If you do, please rate, review, and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

And if you are trying to build your own audience, join our mailing list and you’ll get a free ebook on How to Build Your Audience from Scratch. Click here and sign up today.

You won’t get your big break before your time. This is an unfortunate truth of being a creative. It doesn’t matter who you know until you are good enough to create mind-blowing content nobody is going to hire you.

So many creatives believe that meeting Stan Lee or Steven Spielberg will change their lives. The thing is that it just might. It might change your life, but not until you are ready for it. If you meet Steven Spielberg and hand him your piece of garbage short film, he’s not going to care.

If you meet Steven Spielberg with your earth-shattering movie, he might take notice. He might not, but he might if you catch him on just the right day. But that chance meeting is luck. You have no control over luck. What you have control over is your preparation.

If you prepare properly, opportunities will present themselves. If you put yourself in the right situations opportunities will happen. If you are prepared, then you will be able to make the most of those opportunities. The right opportunities can take years to cultivate, like pulling on a rubber band. As you pull back the tension grows and grows. The harder you pull on the band, the more force it has when you finally release it. 

The trick is to find these opportunities before you are ready and cultivate them until the tension is so tight that releasing it will send your career to the stratosphere. This is possible even if you are at the beginning of your career and haven’t created anything of import yet.

So how do we do that?  

There’s an old saying among creatives: good, nice and on time. You have to be two in order to succeed. If you are nice and on time, you don’t have to be that good. If you are good and nice, you don’t have to be on time. If you are good and on time, you don’t have to be that nice.

So it follows that if you want to find opportunities, you have to master two of those qualities.

At the beginning of your career, you aren’t very good; at least not comparatively to where you will be in the future. The only two things you have control over are being nice and on time. If you can master those two, opportunities will present themselves if you put yourself in the right situations.

The nicer you are and the more on-time, the more people will want to work with you. Then, your good will grows among those who matter to your career. In time, you will learn to be good, even great, at creating things. Then, you will have all three and be unstoppable.

I call this the holy trinity of success. If you can start out just being on time and nice, people will want to help you. If you keep working at your craft, you will eventually get good. If you can be good, nice, and on time, there will be no stopping you.

It’s important to note that when you get your opportunities by being nice and on time, these will be lower end opportunities. They won’t be hiring you into your dream career. They will be using you for grunt work.

If you can just do that work with a smile, you will build up so much trust with people they will assuredly want to help you at the opportune moment. You don’t want to ask for that help until you are ready. However, when you can create great content it will be a no-brainer for them to work with you because they know you are already a pleasure.

Last weekend I put together two panels for Los Angeles Comic Con. The first one I’ll post next week, but the last panel I put together was a rematch of the epic Self-Funding vs. Kickstarter panel Mike Wellman (co-creator of Guns A’ Blazin’; @macafro on twitter) and I had at Long Beach Comic Con. Usually, I don’t rehash old panels without getting new guests, but since this had a boxing feel, it only made sense to do a rematch.

While this was a very similar feel to our first panel, which you can listen to by clicking here, there was a lot of new information that we gave this time that we didn’t dive into last time. The questions that DJ Kirkbride (co-creator of the Biggest Bang and Amelia Cole; Eisner award winner for Popgun; @djkirkbride on twitter) asked were much different than the ones that Mary Bellamy asked in our first encounter.

We aren’t going to do this panel a third time, at least not for a while, but the combination of these two panels should give you all the information you need in order to figure out whether crowdfunding is right for you. What's great is we rambled about completely different stuff than we did last time, so between the two panels you get a really complete and robust picture of the indie creator landscape. 

I really appreciate how thorough Mike is in his points and how DJ kept us on track. Both of them truly cared about the topic and I appreciate that. 

If you want to get more information on crowdfunding, I’ve made a resource that contains everything I’ve ever written on the subject from podcast episodes to blog posts and I’ve even linked every Kickstarter campaign I’ve ever run. You can find my Kickstarter Toolkit by clicking here.

If you like this show, please rate, review, and subscribe on iTunes by clicking here, or by finding us on Stitcher or anywhere you get your podcasts.

There is a burning desire inside all of us to create amazing, earth shattering projects. Almost everybody has their ideal project, something they’ve been burning to do since they were children; something that will set the world on fire. Whenever I meet somebody like that, and they are at the beginning of their career, I tell them the same thing; wait.

Don’t do that dream project first. Wait until you are ready. Fail on smaller projects you don’t care about. Fail where it doesn’t matter. Fail where you don’t have a massive emotional stake in what you are making. Don’t fail on the project that sets your soul on fire.

Why?

Well, there are a couple reasons.

1. You aren’t skilled enough to make the project you want to make yet. You have a long way to go before you can make something amazing, and until you can make something amazing it’s useless to try to make your dream project. Making smaller projects will help you hone your craft until you are ready for your massive epic.

2. You can’t mount a massive project because you don’t have the cash. Because you are at the beginning of your career, you don’t have the ability to find the kind of money necessary to make your dream project with your dream team. Instead, you should be making small projects you can fund, and over time you will be able to fund bigger and bigger projects. Eventually, you will be able to mount that dream project.

3. You don’t have the clout to make your dream project happen. Usually dream projects involve massive scale and scope, something that requires people to buy into your dream. Because you don’t have a track record, you can’t convince anybody of import to do anything with you. Instead, focus on building up your career so that people will want to work with you. You build your career through smaller projects and finishing things.

A great example of this is my friend David Lawson Jr. Dave and I met years ago when I was the director of photography on a short film he was producing called Silent Lucidity. This wasn’t a big project. It was all set in one room and dealt with a guy slowly going insane as he tried to break the world record for sleep deprivation.

It was a small project. I think we shot it over one weekend. But he finished it.

Then we lost touch for a few years. When we finally reconnected in LA, he made a name for himself making incrementally bigger and bigger projects until he was able to fund the kinds of projects he wanted to make. But he didn’t make that dream project first. He made a solid project he could fund and then kept getting bigger opportunities as he proved himself.

This is the ideal way to build a career, through incrementally bigger projects. More often than not, though, creatives end up abandoning careers because they can’t get their dream project created right out of the gate. They push and push and push to get that dream project done, and at the end of the day it just doesn’t happen. They spend so much time, energy, and effort on creating one project, that they burn out.

Meanwhile, other people are creating, failing, iterating, and improving, while the person that tries to create their dream project first stays still. Remember, we improve from the finishing of things.

This is not me saying don’t ever work on your dream project. It’s saying that you should build up to it. Just like buying a starter home is not the end goal of home ownership, your first project isn’t the end goal of a creative career. You need to build up cash deposits and momentum to buy that dream home. If you buy it too early, then it turns from a dream into a nightmare.

The same way with your dream project.

This week on the show we have Gina Gagliano from First Second books, a fine purveyor of graphic novels for every reader.

If you like this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review it on your favorite podcast app, whether it’s iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or others. It matters more than you will ever know.

First Second has one of the best FAQs out there as far as engaging with their audience and building a unique brand identity. I recommend you check it out, but here is a sampling of what they are about from http://www.firstsecondbooks.com:

What does :01 mean?

Is it first? Or second?

 First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh.

 Pressing the reset button. A clean slate. A fresh start.

 Everything begins with the First Second. . .

FOR THE SCIENCE MINDED:

the first second

Imagine shrinking a proton down to a billionth of its normal size… Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Bang. You are ready to start a universe.

And so from nothing, our universe begins.

In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception. In the first lively second (a second that many cosmologists will devote careers to shaving into ever-finer wafers) is produced gravity and the other forces that govern physics…

A fraction of a moment after the dawn of creation, the universe underwent a sudden dramatic expansion. It inflated — in effect ran away with itself, doubling in size every 10(-34) seconds. The whole episode may have lasted no more than 10 (-30) seconds — that’s one million million million million millionths of a second — but it changed the universe from something you could hold in your hand to something at least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger. Inflation theory explains the ripples and eddies that make our universe possible. Without it, there would be no clumps of matter and thus no stars, just drifting gas and everlasting darkness.

— From Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything

I think that’s a brilliant way to build empathy with the right readers. It shows the kind of personality behind the books, and more importantly the personality behind the people behind the books.

We talked about that a little bit with Gina, but more importantly we talked about things that we’ve never talked about before. Most of our guests are indie, and First Second is certainly not that. They are owned by Macmillan, a giant in the publishing space. Even though they are small, they have the support of a massive brand behind them.

That’s what made my conversation with Gina so interesting. She was able to talk from a much wider and more longitudinal view of many, many projects. She talked about the three-year time horizon from signing an author to having a book come out. For most people in the indie world, that is an insane length of time.

First second does that several dozen times a year. So they have to think in the short and long term. First Second also has one of the most extensive networks of bookstore and library distribution, if not the biggest, of any guest we’ve had so far, so it was nice to talk about how to plan for that kind of growth. Gina talked about the shows she attends and the strategy she used to make each of them a success.

But we talked about so much more than just shows. Gina laid out a sample plan for how she brings a book to market. I think only Colleen Dunn Bates was so thorough in her episode. Listening to both in tandem would be a great idea. You can find Colleen’s episode here.

Gina went step by step through her entire marketing plan, and how to dissect the best methods for your book launch even if you don’t have a publisher. It was fascinating to listen to her break that down, and also break down the different target markets for books.

This is something I struggled with all year, but haven’t articulated on the podcast, so I’m glad she did. The world is not just split up into adult, YA, and kids. There are many gradations that must be met when you are planning your marketing. Nearly every age gets split into its own category, and the marketing changes depending on the target market.

That’s one of the main reasons why Wannabe Press abandoned the children’s market. It was just too much work to segment our small market in so small a way. It didn’t work for us. This is one of the most important concepts you need to understand before developing a marketing plan. Where is your market?

I really enjoyed this episode with Gina and she dropped knowledge bombs galore. If you want to learn more about First Second, check them out online at www.firstsecondbooks.com or on twitter @01firstsecond.

If you liked this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review it on your favorite podcast app, whether it’s iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or others. It matters more than you will ever know.

Ira Glass has one of my favorite quotes of all time. I thought about butchering it through paraphrase, but instead I will provide it here in its entirety, even though it’s long. It’s just that awesome.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

This is a very Ira Glass way of saying you suck when you start out, but you shouldn’t let it stop you. The sucking is what stops lots of talented artists from continuing on to greatness. Most people will try something for a while, get bummed out that their work is crappy, and just give up. What they put on the page just isn’t what they see in their mind’s eye.

I have a secret for you.

I’m an excellent writer and I know tons of amazing creatives, yet none of us can get on the page what we see in our mind’s eye either. All we can do is get as close as possible.

The flat out honest truth is that you aren’t very good when you begin and that’s okay. Nobody is very good when they start out. Stephen King, Picasso, and Beethoven sucked when they first sat down to fulfill their greatness. Some people advance quicker than others, but we all start out sucking. It’s only through practice and determination that we become great.

It’s important not to compare yourself to other artists who are further ahead on their journey than you. You don’t see the thousands of hours it took them to master their craft. All you see is the end result.

If you want to feel better about your own art, go and google your favorite artist and check out some of their first work. I’m not talking about first published work. I’m talking about the first work they ever posted online. Most of them forget about the first art they posted and never take it down. There are also whole threads on Twitter and Reddit where artists show their first works and how they’ve improved.

It’s startling how crappy your favorite artist was even a few years before they broke into the mainstream.

They sucked too, just like everybody does at first, but that didn’t stop them. They kept going. They completed projects. They finished things. They learned. They improved. And then they broke through. In that order.

Welcome back Wannabe and Creators. Today on the show we have SteveStormeon, creator of the Pros and co-founder of Giles Corey Press.

I hope you enjoy this one with Steve. If you do, please head on over to iTunes,Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, rate, and review us today. It takes just a couple seconds and helps more than you will ever know.

Here’s his bio straight from his website at www.stevestormoen.com.

It might sound ridiculous in a world holding seven billion humans on it, but I do still believe that we all change the world. We can’t help but change the world; we change it just by showing up.

The trick, I think, is to make sure your change is something you can be proud of. I’m trying.

And here is the bio for his publishing company, Giles Corey Press, straight fromwww.moreweight.net.

Giles Corey Press is a purveyor of fine fiction for the anarchist community. We create, print, and distribute works that in the mode of the best storytellers pass on history, feed our imagination, and create new myths while deconstructing the old. Our theory of change is that fiction is a collective practice — an exchange of stories, visions, and dreams — that builds community through conversation and empathy.

We are three friends hailing from a small town surrounded by a military base on three sides and a prison on the fourth, with a Walmart in the middle. We are each pursuing our Thing while trying to make it straddle the precarity of late capitalism and our spiritual belief in anarchism.

If you can’t guess, Steve is a political activist who has worked with non-profits most of his adult life. Even though we tried to avoid it, our political proclivities came out a couple of times. With the election so close and Steve being the kind of person that he is, we just couldn’t help ourselves, but we always tried to keep it short.

Otherwise, Steve talked a lot about creating SMART goals, how passion influences everything he does, the importance of having a plan, and knowing what you want to say before you create something. I love that Steve creates work with a purpose because that’s what we try to do at Wannabe Press. One of our important tenets is “entertainment with a point”, and that’s also something that Steve takes to heart.

Additionally, I love that he called his book a “ball of weird”, which is something that I’m going to use from now on.

I hope you enjoy this one with Steve. If you do, please head on over to iTunes,Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, rate, and review us today. It takes just a couple seconds and helps more than you will ever know.

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