I’ll take care of that later…

So in deciding to launch a writing career, I’ve been focusing on the writing: I have to have something worthy to pitch. I need to have submissions out. I should concentrate on ‘the book.’ Promotion, Blogs, Social Media–I’ll take care of that later. You know, the ‘career’ part of the writing career. Writing comes first.

Was I wrong? Was I right? I’m unsure. But having decided to finally visit LTUE this year, I realized: I need business cards. And if I have business cards, I need contact information, and a website address to put down. And something posted on that website. The ‘career’ part just rose up and hit me in the face.

(Note: LTUE is a writing convention held yearly in Utah.)

Two weeks and counting down…

LTUE begins in two weeks. How fast can I get my website ready? Very fast, it seems. I spent into the wee hours researching blogs and business cards and then the next morning looking at my best choices. The afternoon was for getting the blog started, with a couple hours off for errands and clicking on blog controls that didn’t do what I expected. I mean, really, how hard can it be to link a webpage to a menu item?

I haven’t worked this hard on writing since I was in school and had deadlines for submission. There’s something to be said for adrenaline and lack of sleep…

And the most surprising thing is…

The most surprising part of this process is: I’m having fun! I expected to hate the blog and the self-promotion. “Hi, guys, I’m Linda Newville, you should, uh, read my stuff!” But I like pretending to be confident and self-possessed. I like pretending I’m not scared-to-death that internet readers are violent predators who will steal my identity while simultaneously trolling me on Facebook. Yeah. I’m-not-worried-at-all.

So let’s pretend…

I’ll make a deal with you: I’ll pretend that I’m not secretly terrified of you <really nice> readers. You pretend that I know what I’m doing, that I’ve been writing this Blog forever not just last minute. And if we meet at LTUE, come shake my hand and I’ll give you a business card. If you can find me. If I’m not hiding over there in the corner.