I always swore that one day I would write a book called Dim Mak Death Touch in Ten Easy Steps, and I would totally cash in on all the misconceptions people have about the martial arts.
Sadly, I have personal standards for my behavior, and though I keep them quite low, they aren’t quite low enough for me to undertake such a project without experiencing drastic pangs of conscience. Instead, what I ended up doing was dispelling misconceptions about the martial arts, which, while personally satisfying, was far less lucrative.
In much the same way I have often thought about writing a book on getting rich without actually working for it, and on losing weight, ditto, because you know I’d be able to buy a castle in Switzerland at the end of it.
But that would be wrong, and try as I might, I can’t do it. So as much as I would like to tell you that you can be an amazing bestselling writer without doing any actual work, I can’t. Do you hear that? It’s my bank account sobbing.
Here’s what I will tell you: that success and ability are only distantly related, that success has a lot more to do with luck than any of us would truly like to believe, and even if you were successful, your life would still stuck in all the ways it already does.
That’s why I want to focus on mastery, because you can control the process. The process is about focus, feedback, and improvement, not luck, so it is largely up to you.
While there aren’t that many actual steps, none of them are easy, and it takes a long time, and hey, why are you leaving the room?
I knew I should have come here with a better pitch.
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Dojo Wisdom for Writers, second edition, now available on Amazon in print and ebook! (Nook and other ebook versions here)
Catch a Falling Star (by Jessica Starre) and The Matchmaker Meets Her Match (by Jenny Jacobs), two of my favorite novels.
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