Someone recently asked me to write about my reason for wanting to learn the tricks of the Internet Marketing trade: "What is your why?", they asked. My answer was as follows:

Ten years ago I wrote a book about my “why”. I was forty then. It's entitled "Worlds Without End". It's the story of my life thus far, framed as a work of fiction about the journeys of two women: one the physical process of getting from birth to 40, and the other a spiritual odyssey through advent towards Christmas, with a mystical reward for each day and a very special prize at the climax of the journey. I pushed myself really hard to get it finished by my 40th birthday, and sure enough I wrote the last words with only a couple of days to spare. What a sense of achievement that gave me!! I had not only produced a finished novel to my own schedule, but also given myself the perfect tool to exorcise the ghosts of a sometimes very shady and always difficult past. I thought that if I could write out the pain I would magically be free of it because I wouldn’t have to carry it around with me in my memory. I value symbolism, had you noticed that yet?

Exactly ten years later to the very day I published that book myself on Lulu.com at no cost other than that of one proof copy.

You may ask why I didn’t publish it sooner, or why I slogged my guts out to finish it by my self-imposed deadline if I was just going to let it sit on a shelf for the next ten years? But these questions become irrelevant when held in the balance of fear. You see, a lot of the material in the book was very hard for me to even think about when writing it, let alone having it publicised for all to see, even though it’s framed in a fictional format with no real names or recognisable places. So why now? Well, I’m at least 30 years away from the most painful of the events, any of the places or people are now no longer recognisable by any stretch of the imagination, and one of the reasons I wrote it in the first place was as a testimony to life’s ironies and tragedies and the fact that these are only stepping stones to each place that life takes us, and if I can survive them then so can anyone. When you put it like that don’t I have a duty to let the material get into the hands of the souls who need to read it?

Of course the “why” doesn’t stop there. Everything is in continual motion, our whys must also move with that continually spinning thread of life, and I now have other messages, other novels, other stories that need to be told. The difference is that I now also see the need for finding the means of reaching the audiences awaiting them. The future of publishing is changing daily; not for much longer are the stuffy publishing houses going to hold sway over writers who now have no need to accept the heavy and often rigid editorial treatment traditionally meted out to them by such; now there are publishers like Lulu.com who let the editorial process remain lucid and flowing in the hands of the authors themselves. That’s a whole different ball game and requires its own treatment in another blog post!

So now all I have to do is figure out how to navigate the vagaries of Internet Marketing in order to take my vision to those who await its arrival, and then keep them fed on the diet they require. So, now begins the really hard work, then!

Brightest Blessings to all who are reading this,
Tally

(September 2010, Cambridge, UK)