I’m a thoughtful writer.

At my best, my heart and soul hit the page in waves; honesty and emotion roll from paragraph to paragraph. Yet a thoughtful writer needs time to think, and for this past year I’ve been flying so fast the scenery’s been a blur.

That’s about to change.

2011 is the year we’ve all been waiting for: My family, my team, and anyone who has believed in me enough to tether their hopes to mine.

Last year’s velocity was necessary. I was working with new people in new environments, doing many things I’d never done. I didn’t have the luxury of leisure.

But amid my flurry, I continued to gather ideas and doodles, setting them aside for later.

I’ve never known quite what to do with Writer Dad; it’s been a constant battle since my first month online. I’ve always known the site was special and I shouldn’t tamper with it too much, even though I’ve occasionally been guilty of dragging it all over creation with my shifting whims.

I’ve always loved the thought of having a place where I could check in daily. For its first year, Writer Dad served that purpose. Yet, I got busy trying to keep my head above water and the site became another obligation that fed my mind and heart, but kept my bank account dry and my family in danger.

If I couldn’t do it well, I reasoned, I wouldn’t do it at all. Yet every time I’d poke my head from nowhere and publish something to Writer Dad, the emails would flood:

You made me cry…
You made me smile…
You made me remember…

Positive feedback of that sort and volume doesn’t happen anywhere else I write. Since a writer without ego is like a chef without appetite, that’s attention I could never ignore.

But it must also fit into an increasingly busy routine.

I will still publish the occasional, traditionally written post. But in addition, I will be conducting an experiment.

I’m testing a new model for a site structure. IF it works, it will play a significant role in the majority of what I do in the next year or two. Because Writer Dad has authority in the eyes of Google, a healthy heap of incoming links, and no definitive plan moving forward, it is the ideal venue for my mad scientists’ lab.

This new model has many moving parts. For the part I’ll be testing here, I’ll need to publish a few times a day. The posts will be short, each with a few sentences of commentary from me and a link to the original source.

All posts will cover what it takes to be a father in a digital age.

This fits well into the flow of other things I’m doing, and will allow me to keep Writer Dad a part of my daily life without the hour or two required to articulate larger thoughts.

I spent 2010 in constant pursuit; sprinting toward more knowledge, more practice, and more application. But I was scattered as snowfall. I’ve spent the last couple of months organizing my mind and my schedule, so I’m ready to make 2011 the year we’ve been waiting for.

A dream is just a dream until it gets up, throws on a pair of jeans, and gets to work.

See you tomorrow.

Life’s been tap dancing on my toes for a while now. But each day this year has been better than the one before, and it’s possible that right now at this moment, I’ve never been happier.

I’m not exactly sorry I’ve been away, as I’ve been tending opportunity, and that is after all why I started a life online. But I did miss you and do thank you for the emails. It’s always nice to know when you’re being thought of.

Last week at dinner my mom said, “You know your last post is the video wishing Cindy a happy birthday, right?”

And though the month had felt like a week, the sun’s rotation rarely lies. It was odd to realize I’d unplugged from something I’d connected with daily for nearly two years. Yet even the most passionate lovers can sometimes drift apart.

I plan on posting as consistently as possible, though I’m not quite sure what that means just yet. Minutes are Evian in the Mojave right now, but I’ll do more to plan my sips a bit better.

So anyway, we’ve moved. Loaded the last of the boxes today. It is an immeasurable relief to have shed the dead skin of a previous life.

We bought the house five years back after falling for it so hard we would’ve gladly added it to our marriage certificate. This was right after I talked Cindy into leaving her job as a fourth grade teacher.

“Forget about your benefits, baby,” I gave her that grin that makes it hard for her to argue. “I’ll leave the flower shop, too. We can open a preschool together and stay with the children until they’re both in school.”

We were stretched near see-through at the time. Mia was three and Max the size of an oversized honeydew. Time was racing and slapping us on the back of the head as it whizzed on by. We both knew the first five years of our children’s life would vanish and leave us wondering where they went.

And they have.

We weren’t willing to let time win without a fight. So we bought the house, opened the preschool and stayed with Max and Mia each and every day.

We planned to expand our school, but soon found that a lack of parking meant the city would never allow us to expand our enrollment. The preschool was designed to provide us time with our children, but only delivered enough income to keep our heads above water.

It was clear we would need to move on.

Around this time I was discovering the writer inside me. That, sparked with my native entrepreneurial spirit, had us quickly closing a business with narrow walls and a ceiling low enough to crush the curls in our hair, in an eager exchange for the limitless potential of an online living.

The 18 months that followed were in many ways amazing. But they were also hard. Very hard. We jumped without a net, and though we landed a lot softer than we had any reasonable right to expect, it was still more like being thrown through glass than either of us anticipated.

We bought the house at the height of the market, the neighborhood transitional, but promising. Our realtor and close trusted friend urged us not to buy, suggesting we take our money and move to one of the city’s better neighborhoods. But a symphony of hammers and saws were singing in the air and you couldn’t walk a block without kicking a nail from all the new construction.

Rosy optimists that we are, we sold the pair of condos we owned outright, trading them for a downpayment on our new ghetto mansion.

It was an old Victorian, carriage house included. We lived on the top floor and ran the preschool from the bottom. A year into our new business, the housing market tanked and the neighborhood decided to race it to the bottom. Two and a half years later, at the soggy floor of the economy, Cindy believed in me enough to sever our only source of steady income.

I said I would Sink or Swim and meant it. Doggy paddling was more exhausting that I imagined, but then again so is most every other thing in this world that I’m truly proud of.

We lost the house.

Losing the house was hard, but it is also the best thing that could have possibly happened. It would have been a fool’s decision to continue paying for that house, we were so upside down, parts of our head were peeking up from somewhere in Peking.

And though I believed in the neighborhood, I was wrong. In the last month there were two murders within three blocks, both in broad daylight and on the street. The corner liquor store where we buy our emergency milk had a shootout just last weekend.

Losing the house was painful, but mostly because of ego. I’m glad it happened before the stubborn mule inside me stuck it out simply because I could afford to. We held on about six months longer than we should have as it was, mortgages hitting credit cards; six, seven, eight months in a row until finally I stared into the steely eyes of truth and knew it was better to swallow my pride than choke on it, and throwing good money after bad was about the most dangerous thing I could do to the people depending on me most.

The same trusted friend who told us not to buy, also happens to manage a place just steps from the sand, so we knew where we would be moving before the house was vacant.

We now live on a narrow peninsula; a thin strip of cottages with Alamitos Bay on one side and the scent of the Pacific on the other. The neighborhood is wonderfully quiet and every night seems to mute itself in anticipation of the rolling waves.

My family is safe and we are happy.

Making a living online is scary, but I’m really glad I took the plunge and lived the adventure. I’m fortunate to have a wife with unwavering faith in me, who teaches my children to have the same.

The worst is over and an amazing ride is just beginning. Dreams are expensive, and this last one we bought on credit. I’ve never been one to abandon obligation, and will pay every penny borrowed to make our dreams come true.

We lost the house, but gained a limitless future and the knowledge that we can do anything we set our minds to.

Though I don’t ever plan to directly monetize this site, it still has a job to do. If you like what you’ve read, please pass it forward through Facebook, Twitter, or maybe even email to a friend. Thanks!

Yippe Skippee – There’s a shiny new Writer Dad!

I spent December scribbling ideas, tossing them away, then scribbling some more; desperately seeking a means to pull the awesome from Writer Dad I knew was waiting inside. I ought to be able to publish nearly every day without being boring, but it was a feat I had not managed in a while.

The answer was obvious: I needed to light my own fire. If I wasn’t passionate about what I was publishing, how could I expect an audience to be fully engaged?

Deciding on the precise content and future direction for this site was critical. I’ve learned a significant amount about developing content over the last year and felt that applying that knowledge to my first online home was long overdue. This development process is something Dave and I have gone through for every site in our syndicate as we prepared to head into the new year. Yet comparatively, those other sites were cake. I understand their needs on a fundamental level. Those domains exist for a purpose, created to carry me and my partners down a very particular path.

Writer Dad was born because I had nothing else.

I should understand it the most. But honestly, there are times I understand it the least.

I’ve dragged this domain all over the map. Veered direction, run against the wind and attempted to take it places it never should have gone, even occasionally sparring with its most natural direction. Thank you so much for being this patient with me. It is difficult sometimes. With only one to two percent of the audience providing feedback at any given time, it can be hard to know what will satisfy both the audience and myself in reasonably equal measure.

The primary difficulty I’ve had with Writer Dad is that I’ve never wanted to fit into (or write toward) a niche. Yet I have always wanted to see this site grow. By trying to serve two masters, most times I’ve pleased neither.

To correct this, I’m introducing features. I’ll start with just four, but more will be added throughout the year. Think of Writer Dad as the channel and features as the shows. You can tune in to your favorites, and hopefully share them with your friends.

If you turn your attention to the beautiful new sidebar on the right, you can see the features section and the four we are starting with: UPDATE: Sidebar not finished yet (oops!)

• Syllable Soup
• DAD!
• Life’s Better With the Right Words
• Children Write the Future

I’ll be giving each feature a short introduction throughout the next couple of weeks, with an entry to follow the next day. I am in love with this direction, and though it has taken an eon and a half to get here, I’m glad we are on this road and am eager to get going.

I’d like to thank David Wright for the awesome facelift. In the last month he has refreshed five of our sites and built two from scratch, in addition to all the client work he’s managed. The dude is a juggernaut of effort. Without him, many of my budding dreams would merely be idle domains.

Thank you, David.

Don’t be shy! I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

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“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.”
~Benjamin Franklin

Happy New Year!

I hope your holidays were awesome. Our winter break was wonderful, with Christmas endearing and New Year’s exciting.

Santa delivered on his promises to both Mia and Max. And even though we spent days hopping house to house, we also managed to spend some much needed time relaxing with Cindy’s brother, who flew in from Houston and kept us company for two weeks.

New Year’s was wonderful. A dozen years back, Cindy and I started the ritual of ringing in New Years alone, making our resolutions over a pair of champagne flutes while dreaming out loud about the 12 months to come. This time we broke an old tradition in favor of a new one. The four of us spent the final day of last year and the first of this one with our good friends, the Martins.

With our children asleep at the back of the house, the four of us grownups watched the ball drop together, dreaming out loud about what promises to be the best year of our lives thus far.

I could feel the shift in my shoulders like cool air on my face.

I know a new date is arbitrary, but I’ve been waiting for the page to flip on this particular calendar for a while. Sure, December falling into January shouldn’t be different from any other month getting swallowed by the next. But it is, at least for me.

My brain seems wired to catalogue things year by year and I see a new one as an opportunity to put one album on the shelf and unwrap a new one, packed with pure white pages.

I will remember 2009 as difficult, brimmed with excitement, transition, and the endless but necessary building of infrastructure. Yet I see 2010 as budded with promise and potential just waiting to bloom. I’ve never looked forward to a new year more and am thrilled it’s finally here.

We returned home Friday afternoon, then spent the final Saturday and Sunday of the winter break doing little but lingering in the few final hours of rest before we’d be called to shake the Etch-a-Sketch and start all over again.

It feels tremendous to be back. I did miss you, but was gone for good reason.

Not only did I wish to publish the Four Seasons manuscript in full for anyone interested in reading it, I also wanted something running smoothly on autopilot while I worked behind the scenes to bring you the best Writer Dad yet.

Mission accomplished.

2009 was practice for many things in my life, Writer Dad included. I’ve never learned more in a single year than I have in this last, and I’m proud to deliver the strongest stream of content this site has so far seen.

Tomorrow I’ll spill the beans on our exciting new direction. Today I just wanted to say hi, let you know I missed you, and wish you a happy New Year before barging into the room and flapping my gums – something I’m constantly trying to teach Mia not to do.

I’ve never been more eager for a new year, and am thrilled to share this coming one with you.

See you tomorrow!

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Istarted Writer Dad last summer with a five day a week commitment and didn’t drop the ball once for the first six months. Since then I’ve been trying to hit a bulls-eye with a shotgun.

By the end of last year I’d written myself in a corner. I had succeeded in nurturing a wide, warm and loving audience, but had zip, zilch, nada to boost my online income.

Not cool. By trying to pour myself a business and pleasure on the rocks, I was only adding acid to each. I was making Writer Dad less interesting while also severing any opportunity to generate money from the site.

My solution, I thought, was simple: plant a few seeds in fresh dirt and see what I could grow. Yet with only so much fertilizer and water each day, I quickly realized I would need to take a giant step back from Writer Dad. I made the move to once or twice a week. I reasoned that less content would keep each piece focused. Rather than throwing a net over every subject that crossed my mind, I would keep the site focused on fatherhood, family, and those themes I thought my readers would enjoy most.

In other words, I would take the existing recipe then add a dash of vanilla and a heaping sprinkle of monotony.

Obviously I left a few typos in the strategy. I never asked the audience what it wanted and now I believe my instincts were wrong. I think I removed what the audience loved most: the consistency of checking in five days a week, even if nothing more than to say hello.

Truth is, I miss it to.

I miss the immediacy of a daily post. The great gift of being a writer is getting the chance to know yourself a little more each day, and publishing those thoughts is like pouring cement in your personal history. I also miss the explosive growth of this site. I am a creature of ego, no different than anyone else. Compliments and links, for me, are fuel and a heavy foot on the pedal.

I am a writer and a writer writes. There is no reason I can’t come up with enough content to keep this site running five days a week. It’s what I do. I make time for all kinds of writing, I need to make more time for the place that started it all. The solution is simple. I don’t even need to write more any more than I already am, I just need to share more of what I do.

In the last year that I’ve been writing, I’ve stockpiled quite a bit of this and that – much of it now ready to hang on the wall. Starting Monday, Writer Dad is back to five days a week.

Please allow me to ask for something in return.

I don’t get paid for writing around these parts and the extra minutes of my day are few and far between. This is not a money generating site, but I would still like to make money from it indirectly, at the very least as a vehicle to spread my voice as much as possible.

That’s where I need your help.

I make my living from the words I write.
The better they do, the better I do.
The better I do, the more I can follow my muse.
The more I can follow my muse, the happier I will be.
The happier I am, the better writer I will become.
The better writer I am, the more precisely I can tune my thought.

It is the right words that can help to change the world.

I will do all I can to deliver my best 5 days a week. Any time you like what you read, please share it in whatever way works best for you: link it or Tweet it, bookmark it or email it to a friend, but please do share.

It’s better than recycling!

Writer Dad

Content creation is fun. I love writing sure, but creating content using many different elements is remarkably rewarding. The Collective Inkwell just created out first commercial for Potty Training Power, our system for potty training help.

David Wright did all the drawings, a buddy did the music, and I wrote the jingle then put it all together. Enjoy!

Happy birthday Writer Dad! Today you’re one year old.

365 days ago Cindy and I made a decision that has since twisted the wind of our lives. I stepped online a tentative writer, but thanks in large part to a bustling comment section I was able to find my voice rather early. Those first few weeks were awkward for sure; I a Freshman trying to find the right table to sit at. I was fortunate enough to make a few friends early – one who has become a permanent fixture of my everyday life.

As filled with reward as this last year has been, it has also been the hardest of my life.

My son was born five years ago. He was then just as he is now; bright, beautiful and beguiling, though he did not yet possess the vocabulary to confirm our suspicions. Despite his amiable nature, he fought for his place with every fiber, handing us a year fraught with complications.

That year lingered, occupied by endless nights of crying as we nursed newborn to boy by forever attending to his bottomless need. Those early months were crowded with just enough struggle to point us toward a path that headed for a different horizon.

And here we are.

This last year lingered, occupied by endless days of writing as we we nursed newborn to name brand by forever attending to its bottomless need. Those early months were crowded with just enough reward to promise we were pointed toward the proper path and our horizon was sure.

In many ways the first year with our son prepared us for this last year of growth. We look at our boy now, a half decade taller, certain every drop of sweat was well spent. Infancy is difficult; attending to the endless needs of someone too little to say “I love you.” The beginnings of Writer Dad have been every bit as hard. I have poured 100% of myself into this site and every satellite project we hold in the hope that I will soon justify my family’s unfailing belief in me.

To celebrate Writer Dad’s first birthday, I would like to share a few of those things currently filling my dreams with the most helium. Please pick one you are not yet familiar with and enjoy. If you already have a favorite, please pass it forward to someone who might enjoy it just as much.

These are our balloons.

Collective Inkwell. The Inkwell is the online space shared between myself and David Wright (Blogger Dad), my online partner and constant collaborator. It is where we each share our ideas on writing and creativity as well as offer our services for copy, web design and branding. We have extraordinary plans for the Inkwell spread across the next several months and I cannot wait to see them to fruition. I am lucky to have a partner as talented, funny and creative as David. If we do even half the things we’ve discussed, it will be difficult to ever stop smiling.

Children Write the Future. In September, this site will soar. Right now the majority of words are passed behind the curtain. There is a thriving community within the email newsletter (monthly tips and writing prompts for children). Cindy and I have read some of the most wonderful pieces of writing from some truly individual voices. As the Inkwell is an online studio for Dave and myself, so is Children Write the Future for me and Cindy. For the teachers inside us, there is nothing on our plate near as rewarding.

Four Seasons. Four Seasons is a collection of twelves short stories, each taking place in a different month.  Each tale’s events are unique to their time, and should each one assemble toward something special. They are written minus an outline and I never know where the tale is going to turn from one month to the next. At the end of December, the twelve tales will be rewritten and joined together into a single book. As of last month, Dave has joined the project because, quite frankly, he makes my writing better.

Cindy Platt dotcom. This one isn’t really mine, but it fills my world with helium anyway. CindyPlatt.com is at a slow burn while my fair lady does the endless duty of taking care of our children seven days a week so I can stay upstairs like Dr. Frankenstein waiting to scream, “It’s ALIVE!” Come September, both our children will be at the same school for five days a week for the first time – all her brainstorms will shower.

Potty Training Power. The potty training system and attached blog are a branding product of the Inkwell. The blog offers tips, tricks and plenty of sound advice for potty training your child. The product is all kinds of awesome that includes a potty training ebook, potty training charts, a potty training quick tips companion ebook, an illustrated picture ebook called Number One and Two it! (written by me, drawn by Dave, and totally adorable) along with a companion video. All in addition to a couple of bonuses and full email support from Cindy and myself so we can help hold your hand through the potty training process. We’ve spent the last month polishing it to a shine, today is its official relaunch.

Available Darkness. I don’t have words for how cool this project is turning out. This debuted over at the Inkwell. Available Darkness is genre bending serialized fiction co-written by Dave and I with a new chapter unveiled each Friday. Behind the curtain, the story is nearing completion. We have big plans for the franchise, including ink later this year.

Ghostwriter Dad. My little spot on the web where I trade words for dollars with a smile on my face. I don’t get the byline, but I do get to play with language. Some of my business is SEO copy, but I also write love letters, wedding vows, fiction, speeches, and have even written a few (surprisingly satisfying) letters of complaint. Sometimes it is a joy to simply fade behind the copy. The homepage offers my services, but I write once or twice a week on the blog about the experience of being a ghostwriter. You can subscribe to the feed here.

One year back my best friend and I bolted our eyes and dared to dream. We no longer wished to live a life spent running around the track, craving a future of limitless sky instead of low ceiling. We have our sky and we have our helium. These are our balloons.

Writer Dad