Backer Friday

     So, I’m not thinking about Black Friday today. I am thinking about Backer Friday. When you give yourself a deadline, you surprisingly get a lot of stuff done. For years I’ve been writing. I can’t get rid of my old computer because it contains thousands of pages of my writing. “Someday” I will publish it. Well, “someday” finally came.


     I started a project with Kickstarter.com, which is a fundraising website for artistic causes. You get a certain number of days (I chose 30) to get people to pledge money for your project. You also have to set a goal for how much money you need to raise. If your goal is reached by the deadline, you get the money. If you don’t reach the goal, any backers who pledged don’t get charged. And as a backer, you are entitled to rewards depending on how much you pledge. For example, if you pledge a dollar for my project, I will send a thank you tweet. Pledge $15 and you get an autographed copy of the book. Check it out here and see the special reward you get for a $36 pledge!

     I would like to thank Roseann McPhaul for being my largest backer to date (she’s also my mom). She pledged $300. For that amount, she gets a thank you tweet, a copy of the book, and I will include her artwork in one of the short stories. I’m not sure she paid much attention to the rewards when she chose an amount to pledge because I’ve never known her to be much of an artist. But she draws good sheep, so I guess I will just have to write a story about sheep so that her artwork doesn’t seem out of place.

     Today, think about pledging a dollar (or more) to an artistic cause. If reading my book isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other interesting projects on Kickstarter. Without your help, these creative people may not ever get a chance to share their art.

A New Project

     If someone has a blog, its probably obvious that they enjoy writing. So it should come as no surprise that I am publishing a book. What is a surprise is that I am going to follow through with this.

     I recently came to the realization that if you want to do something in life, you have to do it. Seems logical, right? Well, the only thing that keeps me from being embarrassed about not knowing this is that I strongly suspect that I'm not the only one who didn't know. A relatively small number of people in this country have clued in to it. Take your local nail salon for instance. I think that I could run a good nail salon (I wouldn't be doing the work, of course, I would just run things.) I would hire certain people, and decorate a certain way, and treat my customers a certain way. I would be successful. But guess what. I do not own a successful nail salon because I did not purchase a nail salon to run. The people who run them are the ones that did the work. They had the desire, they raised the money, they bought the equipment, they rented the space, and they assumed the risk. And a lot of nail salon owners did all that with a very weak command of the English language. What do they have that I don't? They got off their butts and did it, that's what.

     So, I am officially off my butt. Over the years I have written thousands of pages material, from short stories, to diary entries, to scathing letters to the editor. Because I'm going to be a writer some day. Well its been years and I am not famous yet because all those pages are locked away on my flash drive, and nobody except me has ever read them. So now I am in the process of picking some material from my archives and writing some new stuff. I am going to publish a collection of short stories in paperback form; meant to be kept in your purse or back pocket to pass the time while waiting for something. I am not thinking about doing this. I am doing it. I am compiling the material. I am raising funds. I am researching publishing companies and the legal aspects of everything. I anticipate a finished product by February. It will be done.

     All those people who succeed don't do it all by themselves though. Everyone needs a helping hand. Please visit my project page at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beefykeen/mediocrity to see how you can help. Every little bit is appreciated. I will not fail you. Look for my book in February (I really have to do it now or it will be really embarrassing to explain that all the hype was a well intentioned lie.)