Howard Stern, Self-Publishing, and me

More on who I admire


Anyway, I admire people who stand up for what they believe in even in the face of naysayer of those who don’t agree with them. I admire Howard Stern. He feels that the freedom to express yourself using foul language or discussing farts and sex should be done so without censoring. He even believes that those with beliefs like the KKK have a write to speak. He believes in not hiding ourselves in the sand and ignoring that hate and bigotry exist. He believes in the true and ultimate freedom to speak whatever you want and he even believes in the freedom to do whatever you want so long as it is not violent to others. If you want to hurt yourself fine but do not hurt other people then you should be punished then it is wrong.

I may not agree with Howard Stern all the time, but I admire his ability to let it out, let his beliefs out even when the world as a whole may say no that’s wrong. Why is it wrong to say what you think? Why can’t we just listen without censoring? What are we so afraid of?

I find those people who speak their minds courageous amazing admirable and those people fill me with inspiration to walk my walk and do my thing even when many people around me tell me my thing is wrong.


Back to Self-Publishing

What’s my thing? My thing is to write and publish without waiting for the mainstream world of publishing to accept me. My not waiting is not about me thinking I am better than or too good for or even good enough for. Nope. I do not share my writing in the hopes of fame, money, or power. I do not share and publish with the motivation to impress or perform. I write and publish on my blog and I write and publish using POD technology for only one single reason. I need to express myself to other human beings so I can feel connected to this species of living creatures.

The self-published thing see here it is it is like this. I am grateful that I did not run away from the criticism that sometimes trails me. Like when I went on the a particular writer's organization email list and sent out an innocent question about getting reviewed. I already know, DUH, that getting reviewed as a POD author is hard but I have found ways around it, as have many other POD authors. SO I really bristled when a mainstream author sent a scathing message back to me about how I should “stop self publishing” and “instead, do everything you can think of to improve your craft. Join a critique group, take classes, go to conferences -- both local and national -- and sign up for editorial
critiques there. Many, many writers have traveled this path before
you. Take advantage of their knowledge and advice. It may take a long time, but if you are serious and you want it enough to work hard at it, you can become a published writer for real.”

Then she added: “[the particular organization] is available to help.” And all I thought was uh nope not at all they are not here to help me as a POD author. No way. Actually, it has helped me as a business person and understanding this industry. But it has not assisted me in my POD books in terms of marketing. In fact, they recently added to their newsletter that unless POD and self-published authors first sell a certain number of books, they cannot be included in the people section of the newsletter where publishing news is posted. To me that is so unsupportive because the only way to sell the book is to let people know it is out there….it makes no sense.

But see I like the fact that she (the mainstream author who gave me unsolicited advice) and I have the freedoms afforded to us that living in this GREAT country of ours gives us. We can disagree and really piss each other off but still belong to the same organization. See the thing I have come to understand is that this species of human beings we are really not black and white at all. Literally and figuratively the truth is EVERYthing is gray. Nothing is ever truly all one way. Like this organization can have members of all types all kinds all different ways of being published. We have the right to say what we feel.

Gee, I hope we do. We’ll see about that.

Well, no one reads my blog anyway.