If content marketing doesn’t bore you, then you’ll think this is awesome.

I’ll keep it short either way.

Though I have a lot going on, I try to keep business off the site as much as possible. Occasionally I’ll mention something either because I think it’s of genuine interest, or (rarely) because I’m trying trying to set some SEO in place, But for the most part what you get here is my version of fatherly art, four days a week.

However, I can see by the emails that there is curiosity.

I started a series on Ghostwriter Dad a few weeks ago. I’m not ready to blog about being a ghostwriter and I want to be genuine in anything I write. But the site needs content and I can’t afford to stop publishing over there. The SEO on the site is strong, enough so that it’s currently on page 1 for the general term “ghostwriter.”

I thought of the perfect solution. I’m now using the strong SEO on the site to benefit both myself and any reader who wants to learn about content marketing.

Simply put, content marketing is the means of growing a site through the creation of quality content which fuels word of mouth. It’s what David and I do for every site in the Collective Inkwell family. Each week we’re putting out a ton of great content. Why not use Ghostwriter Dad as a place to pull it all together?

So each Monday I’ve been doing a roundup that explains everything we did the previous week, along with the why. If something was a success, I write about it. If it was a failure, I write about that too. If it didn’t go one way or the other, I write about it anyway just to mop up the Google Juice.

If you’re in any way interested in getting a behind the scenes look at content marketing as it happens, or if you’ve ever wanted to see the buisness side of Writer Dad, come on over and check it out.

Click on the link for this week’s content marketing carnival. Or sign up for free updates delivered once a week.

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Yes, we have another site in our syndicate.

But if you have kids, you’re going to LOVE it.

Have you ever been in line at the grocery store and had your son or daughter say something that made you want to melt into a puddle and then get mopped into a bucket?

Or has your child said something so funny or touching, you wished you could cast it in silver and hang it on the wall?

Good or bad, one thing seems to hold true. When our children have a memorable verbal experience, we are usually eager to share it.

Now we have a way for you to share with style!

Blogger Dad has designed what I think is our most adorable site yet.

The premise is simple. The site is called “Things My Child Says.” You can submit a quote from your child, niece, baby brother, you when you were small, the kid down the street who wears a purple shirt and runs real fast, it doesn’t matter, send it in. We’ll post it with a smile to match your own.

Along with the quote, you can send a brief introduction to give the story context, then David will post it on the site for others to see and comment on. You can send a photo to go along with the quote if you’d like, but it’s not necessary.

You can click on the submissions page for more details, but make sure to visit ThingsMyChildSays. You’ll love it. If you want free updates delivered to your inbox, click here.

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Of course I do not want a bath, even though I have a funk

That reeks so bad, my mom is sad. She just called me a skunk

I want to play with Bobby, but he bounced away from me

I tried to play with Trina, but she scrambled up a tree

I thought that maybe Joseph, wouldn’t notice I smelled bad

Because he inherited halitosis from his hairy dad

But when I went to talk to him, he up and ran away

So I guess I’ll need to take a bath if I really want to play

Wonderful stuff, 4 days a week. Sign up for free updates. Click here.

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NOTE: This is a guest post from Lori Hoeck from ThinkLikeABlackbelt.

In the white-water rapids of parenting – when work, visiting relatives, or perhaps that needed car repair threaten to swamp your raft – it’s hard to rearrange competing priorities.

Sometimes it’s all you can do to lift your paddle, or drag your fingers over the side.

But sometimes, there’s a tug at your attention.

“Move this one up in the queue,” it says.

• Perhaps it’s a new way of eating after a friend’s child is diagnosed with diabetes.
• Perhaps it’s a CPR class when your mom moves in with the family.
• Perhaps it’s insistence that you will all take a vacation as soon as a good deal pops up.

Today, Betsy Wuebker and I would like you to add one more thing, an understanding that will help you and your children dodge heartache, betrayal, and stress. It’s something you may have never heard of, or maybe rarely think about outside of abstract terms.

Until it’s standing dead in front of you like a wall of concrete and you find yourself going far too fast to stop.

What are we talking about?

Recognizing a narcissist.

Most times, the word “narcissist” is applied to simple ego-maniacs or attention-seekers.

But narcissists are more, much more than that.

They can make you feel guilt and demand you take the blame for all their ills. They will use every trick in the book to keep you squirming under their thumb. They finesse and skillfully manipulate situations as easily as you sip at a cup of coffee. They build themselves up at the expense of others. Their machinations can lead to feelings of dread, depression and other disorders in those with whom they’re involved.

Their need to do this, like any addictive behavior, will escalate after they’ve used up their existing narcissistic supply.  Even more frightening – the idea that one could be zeroing in on your child.

Think Venus Fly trap.
Think sweet poison.
Think primrose path.
Think predator.

As parents, we spend an inordinate amount of time concerning ourselves with boosting our child’s self-esteem. Yet few of us consider, much less know, the essential strategies we need to protect against a narcissist. And if we don’t know or consider how to protect ourselves from being victimized, how ever are we going to equip our children with the skills to do the same?

Betsy and I have written a guide that addresses just that.

In The Narcissist: A User’s Guide, we pull the rug from under a toxic dynamic that serves the narcissist while sucking the life from his prey. We help you turn the tables. Instead of being used, you can use our tips and scripts to stand your ground. And, you can teach your child to be positively assertive in the face of a probe by a narcissist, causing the predator to slink away in search of easier prey.

If you have formerly been involved with a narcissist, you already know how difficult it can be to leave the relationship. If you’re currently in a relationship with a narcissist, you may have been concerned about modeling an inappropriate perception of life in front of your child.

There’s no way to completely heal if there’s even a remote chance you might find yourself in a repeat situation.

Our guide can help.

We teach you how to spot narcissistic behavior and cover why the narcissistic response is dangerous. We include stories and anecdotes submitted by a variety of individuals who have been involved with narcissists. You may see some parallels to puzzling or frustrating behaviors within relationships you’ve experienced. Plus, we show you what to do once you’ve assessed the situation to change your responses and ultimately neutralize additional harm.

You’ll want to read The Narcissist: A User’s Guide. You may want to pass it along to someone you know. When you read it, you may recognize individuals in your own life who have displayed characteristics or have played a role in a narcissistic relationship. You’ll begin to think about arming your child with age-appropriate defenses, including additional awareness on your part, to avoid the downward spiral participating in a toxic dynamic can trigger.

Our job as parents is to acquaint our children with the good and teach them to treat it with preference.

We want to encourage our children to embrace life in an open and giving way, but we must protect their sweet natures if we wish for them grow into healthy individuals with loving relationships that thrive on reciprocity of spirit.

A narcissist has no place in all that. Let’s make sure they get out and stay out.

Download the e-book here.

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Caca, poo-poo, pee-pee, dookie…

Ah, that felt good.

Longtime readers probably know where I’m going with this.

Thanks for being patient. :)

About a year back, Cindy, Dave and I decided to create our first info product.

And um… yeah, it was about poop.

It was called Potty Training Power and was designed to help parents make potty training an enriching, positive experience, rather than the purgatory of conflict it often is.

This was after we closed our preschool, but before all our students had left. We still had one in diapers, but had just finished training a dozen in a row. We were transitioning from running the preschool to facing a zero income scenario.

So we wrote the book, designed the site, and started to run it quietly in the background of our many other projects.

Sales were modest, but reasonably steady. Yet far more than the generated income, the site has afforded our company with a constant learning experience for learning how to build, market and continuously improve an online information product.

Early last summer we decided to overhaul Potty Training Power, relaunching it on Writer Dad’s first birthday. We transformed the product from a simple e-book into a full potty training system with several separate components, each designed to help parents potty train their children with minimal strife.

Publishing weekly content on potty training, in addition to helping a steady procession of parents get through the process, ballooned our knowledge base and further equipped us to solve customer concerns. Because each system came with full e-mail support, every family who bought the product helped us to make it better.

We continued to incorporate our customer’s experience, spending another six months refining the product.

Last week we launched Potty Training Power’s third version, which now includes phone support.

This project has been interesting for our business in many ways.

At first, Potty Training Power was designed to be a set-it-and forget-it enterprise. We wanted to write an e-book, build a site to host the sales, then move on. Yet Potty Training Power is slowly growing into what I believe will be a sustainable business over time, where we can continue to help families turn their potty training into a positive experience, while also delivering a product that is unique to the market place.

This is infinitely more rewarding.

Earlier this week there was a post on Copyblogger on a similar topic. Johnny Truant wrote about how he spent his first year trying to make money building niche sites targeting dollars from AdSense before finally realizing it was best to make money the old-fashioned way – by connecting to people and offering them something of value.

I’m done with set-it-and-forget-it.

Creating something of value, that I can continue to improve over time, is far more in alignment with my natural instincts and intrinsic values.

If you have a parenting blog where a mention of Potty Training Power might be a natural fit, I’d really appreciate a shout out.

If you’re a regular Writer Dad reader who happens to be potty training, drop a comment (before the end of this week) and we’ll set you up with a complimentary download.

Even if you’re not potty training, Dave’s awesome design deserves a look. The site is squeaky clean and easy to navigate.

I’ll leave you with this cute little commercial we made last summer.

As we say on the site…

Potty training power… AWAY!

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I’m fat.

Not like Elvis Presley on the year I was born, with lardy ridges rolling off of my body, fat. But I’ve got work to do.

Last year was rough. Though I’ve been known to fart sunshine, I’m as human as anyone. And when my going gets low, by going likes to get eating.

Something about sitting in front of the screen, leaning back in my chair as I’m listening to the loud silence that screams my to-do’s, makes me want to shove peanut M&M’s into my mouth a handful at a time. I know they’re only low grade nuts surrounded by cheap milk chocolate, and not some magic elixir that will make everything alright or extinguish my sadness.

But just try to convince me while I’m chewing.

It also doesn’t help that I love pasta with an unhealthy appetite, and that Cindy cooks it just about better than anyone I’ve ever known.

I know I’m not alone in what I am about to say.

Somewhere around October I just gave up.

Halloween, after all, was right around the corner, and there would be plenty of candy within easy reach, with Turkey Day really just a beat behind. Then Christmas, which we all know lasts a full three weeks, would be followed by New Years.

I could always eat better in the new year!

Of course, I would’ve started the New Year with a clean slate, but my daughter’s birthday is only two weeks into January and my own is just one week after that.

Why bother trying to stay clean when there are so many obstacles clearly in my way?

Sad thing is, this is the same game I play with myself every year.

Today is February 1st.

Just like last February 1st, and all the I’m not sure how many before, I will be getting lean and eliminating sugar from my diet.

I’ve always loved the 28 Days of  February, a chance to trim up and feel my best. Four weeks of discipline, capped at the end by a lean frame and renewed vigor. Sure, I like to punch myself in the stomach without feeling a wobbly vibration, but it’s more than that.

I believe I owe it to my body to give it the best. Though I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to go all cyborg sometime before I die, I probably shouldn’t bank on it.

Yet at the end of each year, I lead myself into the same trap. Last year more so than most.

Though I’m sure next next year I’ll still be celebrating these four weeks without sugar in my diet, this will be the last 28 Days I spend undoing the mistakes I made the previous three months.

By saying this out loud, here to you, I am hopefully flipping a switch inside me.

One that will keep me doing what I’m supposed to do, even when it’s most difficult.

If you’d like to join me, I’d love the company. Hit me downstairs in the comments and I’ll tell you what Cindy and I have on the menu for the next month.

Good stuff, all you can eat. Just no sugar.

The first few days are rough, but soon you start to coast. After a few weeks, food tastes better and, sometimes, the sky even looks a little bluer.

Happy February.

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Dear Sean,

You know how I love “stuff”, and there is nothing better than sharing my “stuff” with those I love. It’s great to find these treasures but even more fun when I see the excitement in my grandchildren’s eyes when “grammy brings them a treat.”

This probably goes back to when I was a little girl and my “nina” used to spoil me rotten. My aunt and uncle had no car but they would take me all over the place on the greyhound bus and the “red car” streetcars. My family had very humble beginnings, but there was never a shortage of treats, even if it was a box of cracker-jacks with the much coveted prize at the bottom.

My dad was the king of chotchkis, as you well know.

Before I was born he had been in the shoe business and the “sample size” back then was a size 4, which coincidentally was my mom’s size. She had shoes to rival Imelda Marcos!  Dad always had a new pair of shoes, a handbag or a piece of costume jewelry for her and it didn’t matter how cheesy some of the trinkets were, her eyes would light up as though he had presented her with a box from Tiffany’s. They were in their late eighties and he was still giving her goodies!

When you and Megan were growing up I always picked up goodies for you whenever I went somewhere that I felt warranted a souvenir because you were not there with me. (even if it was a nintendo-saurus shirt I chose to make for you at the arts and crafts trade show, much to your chagrin). So please understand that I have had a lifetime of this gift giving habit, either on the giving or receiving end. Old habits die very hard!

The Dora the Explorer house was a real feather in my cap! I think you are wildly exaggerating about its condition. It was in great shape and had most of the accessory pieces to go with it, and as I recall, the kids were very excited and played with it all night.  The glamour might have worn off sooner than I thought, but for the instant gratification, it was great!

When I saw it sitting on the curb I could not believe that someone would be so wasteful as to throw it out for the trashmen. They could have donated it to a women and children’s shelter or a church nursery. I guess everyone does not have the same preservation/recycling ethic that I do.  How many children have no toys or very few toys because their families can barely get by with the necessities?  I had to rescue it!

I knew the kids would have a good time.  I will never be deterred from salvaging other people’s perfectly good things that are put out  to further engorge our landfills so that the kids can have the newer model of whatever it was. In the future, however, I will donate these things to charity.

Now, the donkey…..ah yes, the donkey…..I WAS ELATED  when I saw him sitting at the Goodwill, just waiting to be adopted.  I wondered how in the world I could get him to fit into my little Honda Element. I just KNEW  WITHOUT A CRUMBLE OF DOUBT  that the kids would go berserk when I walked through the door with him…..and they did!  I did not notice that the tail was missing until I got to your house. Apparently, the tail had dropped off in the parking lot.

I thought that it was hilarious that two weeks later when I walked into the store they remembered I had bought him and saved the tail for me.  Sorry I keep forgetting it…It’s probably cleaner than the donkey at this point and won’t match.

Ok, so no more presents for my grandkids….nah, no can do!!  BUT….. I promise to keep them at a very minimum and make them either edible, wearable, miniscule in size, or disposable with a short shelf life, such as stickers, paperback coloring books or crafts we can do together.

I propose explaining the problem to the children and giving them the option of one new goodie in, one old goodie out.  They could even make a “treasure chest” of things they are willing to donate forward with the prospect of receiving a new treat.  We can designate one “grammy nite” a month as “treat night” if you wish.

Is this a good compromise?

I understand your quest for minimalization, but please do not deny me my grammy spoiling rights altogether. that’s what grammies are supposed to do! Within a few years they will be too old to be dazzled by fun little trinkets.

Like Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, Grammies were destined to bring stuff!

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Dear Mom,

You know I love you right? I enjoy your weekly Grammy night, along with the mirth and merriment you bring to the dinner table, even though you’re almost always late.

But please, please, PLEASE! stop bringing stuff over every time you visit.

I know you think it’s sweet, and part of a grammy’s job, but your just one little thing here and there have accumulated over the last half decade. Grains of sand scattered over the last five years have turned into a beach.

You’ve been coming over for dinner once per week for five years now. For each of those years I’ve consistently asked begged you to please stop bringing stuff over.

Let’s do some simple math!

52 weeks in a year times five years is 260 weeks. Times two children, that’s 520 tchotchkes. And sure, there have been a few random weeks when we either didn’t have Grammy Night or you showed up empty handed, but you and I both know you love to make up for these occasional deficits with a tsunami of surplus the following week. And always with certain glee gleaming in your eyes.

PLEASE STOP!

Your grandchildren do not need any more things. If you choose to spoil them, great, please do it with the gift of your time. Show up when you say you’re going to and spend time playing with them, preferably on their level and speaking their language. It is difficult for me to see you constantly grooming them to expect some sort of prize every time you knock on the door.

I’ll never forget the shocked, and rather hurt, expression on your face the first time you showed up empty handed and Mia said, “Grammy, what do you have for me today?”

You told her that was spoiled. You were right. But gee, Ma, whad’ya expect? Pavlov’s dog got slobber on the rug after the ding of a bell for a reason. It is precisely what I was cautioning since she was still bald.

I do not want our children to equate your visits with gifts.

Though I’d rather not bore anyone with a long list of the many things that make my eyes bleed every time I pass them, I do believe an example might be in order, as I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m an ungrateful son who doesn’t appreciate the kindly gifts his generous mother brings each week.

I’d like to highlight two examples of “other people’s garbage” which are now part of my decor.

The Dora the Explorer Play Set

You were 45 minutes late the day you knocked on the door with this one! Most of your wonderful gifts come directly from the thrift store, but this one actually came from the side of the road! What’s that?!? you thought, flying by at 40 miles an hour. After making a U-turn to investigate the plastic play set that had been surrendered to the following day’s garbage pickup, you loaded the play set (roughly the size of Rhode Island) into your car and brought it to our house.

This thing is a big behemoth of molded loathing, played with until the edges were sharp and then abandoned. Mia and Max played with it for maybe twenty minutes on two different days. Yet it is a Grammy present which I am therefore not permitted to throw away.

Multiply this times 520.

The Donkey

I would rather have 42,741 Dora the Explorer Play Sets than this one donkey. And though I rarely use the word hate, I HATE this thing with a volcanic intensity.

I almost had a heart attack the day you brought this over. Grinning like a Cheshire, immeasurably pleased with yourself, this heinous Tijuana roadside eyesore has been the daily evil eclipsing my eyesight. It has migrated from room to room, carrying it’s diabolical filthiness everywhere it goes. Though you have been promising to bring the tail over for three years now, I do not want it…

Oh, I didn’t mention that? Yeah, in addition to the matted fur, and undisclosed history, this life-sized donkey (YES – LIFE SIZED!) has a gaping rusty hole where it’s tail should be.

I couldn’t make that up.

We are doing our best to teach our children that less is more, trying to teach them that time is more important than material goods.

Yet every visit undermines our teaching.

I do understand that you’re just trying to be “Grammy.” I get and accept that, but by making every visit special in this way, none of them truly are.

I know it feels good for you to buy things. Finding something at a thrift store and adding it to your endless inventory of priceless finds feeds something inside you. But it makes something inside me hungry.

Perhaps if I piled all the bunkum together in a single mountain you might listen, but I decided to write this letter instead. Hopefully, reading it at your favorite site will help to make my dream come true!

Thanks, Ma. I love ya!

P.S. Of course I would never publish this without showing it to my mom first. Not only has she read it, I’ll be posting her reply tomorrow.

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I’m a writer. I spent over three decades unaware of this essential truth, but I’m ready to atone for my ignorance.

For some reason, it never mattered that I’d been reading at least a book a week since my eyes could string the syllables together.

I could never be a writer.

Writing, I believed, was a spectator sport. At least for me. I imagined the process as long, tedious, and certainly not something I was capable of. I pictured the lone man, tugging on his beard and banging on his typewriter; a single swallow left in a tumbler on the table, waiting as reward once the long thread of inspiration had been finally and fully pulled from his mind.

That’s not me. I’m not creative.

This was the constant whisper of a lifetime. Omnipresent and no more irrefutable than, “I cannot fly.”

I wish I knew the moment this changed, but becoming a writer has been less like the bloom of childbirth, than the process of pregnancy.

The first draft of the first novel I ever tried to write was a spewing of words, spilled in a four month stretch of unbroken afternoons. My wife told me with a wink that I should perhaps move to one of the quiet rooms in the house and try my hand at writing. These quiet rooms, of course, were only quiet because I was not in them. Really, it was her nice way of saying, “You have far too much to say, dear, why don’t you try saying it to yourself for a change?”

And so I did.

My wife is often right and her timing was good. Though she had been saying the same thing on and off for ten straight years, this final time I also happened to be harboring a deep, sudden ache that I didn’t quite know how to soothe.

For the three years prior, I’d spent every day with both my children. Quite suddenly and as if from nowhere, September came to steal August, and smuggled my daughter along with it. In a blink, my oldest child had left for Kindergarten and my son wasn’t far behind. Because I was not yet a writer, I did not yet know the intimate relationship which can exist between ink and tears.

My daughter went off to school and I went to my den (a lawn chair in the attic) and closed the door behind me. With no one but the walls to hear my rambles, the room remained still. There was silence for a while. Perhaps some birds outside, singing beside the bougainvillea covered window; every so often a siren in the distance, and around lunch time the call of the door-to-door tamale lady who has been a fixture of my neighborhood since long before I moved in. Then, finally, the tapping of keys.

Once I started I didn’t stop. Well, that’s not exactly true. I still ate and drank and played with my children; went for walks and, if I remember correctly, was a little extra friendly with my wife. But I was a writer, just like that. I had started a story with a single sentence, then returned each day to see how far I could stretch it.

I started in mid-September and promised myself I wouldn’t stop before I had finished the manuscript. Every day, I gave the story more of my voice. Then, one week before the end of the year, I stood at the printer with shaking knees as 600 pages fell into a neat pile at the bottom of the tray. The pages were still warm as I ran my fingers across the top.

Please don’t read this with the mistaken impression that this first manuscript was by any means good. It wasn’t. But, as Dr. Suess said, “Everything stinks until it’s finished.”

The first person I shared the draft with, besides my wife, affectionately referred to the book as a narrative disaster. Fortunately, she also told me there were passages which displayed a surprising amount of promise, and that writing was definitely something I should pursue. You can’t stretch your tee-shirt a week after you start lifting weights, and I was far from turning into Shakespeare overnight. I knew I needed practice, yet that compliment, given to me by a veteran English Professor, was all I needed.

Of course she also told me there was plenty of hard work ahead , that writing wasn’t easy, and that the waiting road was long and bumpy, but none of that mattered. I had discovered I was a writer and that meant everything. I didn’t care that my novel needed tons of work, or that it might be entirely unusable. I could write another. I’d finished one manuscript and knew I could do it again.

This confidence came from nowhere and maybe added an inch to my height. That is one of the most extraordinary things about being a writer – the constant sense of self discovery. Going to the desk each day is a delight, a new opportunity to get another glimpse inside yourself. Dig deep enough and you will inevitably draw closer to the core of who you are.

You create people, then fill them with personalities. You put words in their mouths and then make them deliver their lines exactly as you say. It is your job as author to make the characters of your creation react to situations that are horrible or magical, or normal every day, which can themselves be a bit horrible or magical, or perhaps a bit of both.

This discovery is true for all types of writers, so long as they’re willing to push their thoughts past the surface. A copywriter, for example, must understand human psychology if they are to do their best work. Understanding others sometimes may start or end with a clearer understanding of yourself, but the epiphany’s always there if you’re paying attention.

It was in the first few months of my own reflection, when I stumbled on something that I believe to be an essential truth about writers in general.

Writers are not special, at least not any more so than any other group of people. This doesn’t mean that all writers are created equal, or that anyone who decides to sit down and record their brain brew can become a Hemingway or King, but it does mean that if a person can capture their most natural voice, then work to continually refine it until they are eventually able to manipulate the written word as fluidly as they could in a verbal exchange, then they can consider themselves a writer.

Good for us. The gifts of a writer have never held more power. These days, being a wordsmith means you have the tools to unlock a higher percentage of the world’s potential.

You don’t have to be a brilliant writer, nor do you need the skills to pen page turning fiction. A good writer sees open doors down every hallway and clearly understands how to deliver ideas in text. I’m not a writer because I went to college (I didn’t, not for more than an hour or ten anyway) or because I’ve been anointed by the huddled overlords of the plume. I am a writer because I have a beating heart, an active mind, and the curiosity to see where they might conspire to take me.

I have language, so I can speak. I can speak, so I can tell a story. I can tell a story, so I can write.

It truly is that simple.

People have longed for stories since they were painting them inside their caves. It is this desire that has stoked The Illiad and The Odyssey for so long. And it isn’t just belief in God that has kept the bible breathing.

It’s the stories.

After I finished my first story, I wrote my next million or so words in a blur. Within a year, I had traded in my old life for a new one as a full time writer. I launched a blog, then a business, and then my first book.

It’s not the life I expected, but it is what I was born to do.

Before I started writing, I always believed that I wasn’t especially creative, or that at least what creativity I did have, didn’t run too deep. But I’m alive, and that means I know a good story when I hear one. A writer need not worry that their ideas will thin. Our minds only empty at the end of our final breath.

Writing well is a lot of work, and you’ll spend a lot of time in the edit if you truly want your words to sing, but the only way to be a writer is to sit down and start moving your pen across the paper (or your fingers across the keys), fueled by the knowledge that you have everything it takes.

You are alive, so yes, you are a writer.

Note: Fragments of this piece were gathered from an original post I wrote on Copyblogger last year.

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Exercise: What are your preconceptions of being a writer? Do you have a pre-defined image of what being a writer means? Has that image been holding you back? Take 15 minutes and write down your thoughts about what it means to be a writer, then follow it with another 15 minutes seeing where your original thoughts take you.

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Have I ever told you I love to write?

I mean I really, really LOVE it.

Then why don’t you marry it?

Well, I sort of did.

Over the last year, I’ve written more than a million words. As soon as the paid work is sent off, my muse gets quite a bit of my fawning attention. Fortunately, Cindy’s okay with me falling in love over and over, so long as it’s never with the siren song of another woman.

Though I’ve spent hours (and hours) of every day curving my thought into copy, it is not a daily alchemy I ever expected to have in my life. Were I to travel back a few years and speak with a Sean who was not yet wearing the few sudden strands of silver which have sprouted here and there throughout my otherwise dark thatch of chestnut hair, and tell him that he would one day start writing and never stop, he’d probably look me in the eye, laugh his smug little snigger, and maybe say something like, “Sure thing Pinocchio. I’ll write a book right after I finish my next triathlon.”

It’s true. I never saw it coming. Now that it’s here I wonder how I ever lived without it.

There is something wonderfully self-indulgent about writing. People willingly part with hundreds of dollars per hour for the chance to lie on a couch and unleash their demons. Yet the honest writer has the fortune to see their reflection staring back from every ink filled page.

“Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning:  I wanted to know what I was going to say.”  That quote, by Sharon O’Brien says it perfectly. Whether I’m writing fiction with my partner, copy for my clients, or stories for my children, paying attention to what I’m saying and how I’m saying it, allows me to know a little more about myself each day.

In the last year I have realized that the more I know about myself as a writer, the more I know about myself as a person.

The more I know about myself as a person, the better husband, father and friend I can be.

Life’s Better With the Right Words…

I’m only here a short while. No matter how hard I might claw at the inevitable, one day I will be gone. POOF, just like that. It could be a slow and lingering departure, or as sudden as a changing wind. Either way, as sure as water’s wet, I’ll be gone. Who I am affects how much I can do in the time that I am here. Clarity of voice will lead to clarity of purpose, sharpening the tools I need to be a better man and raise better children, who will then be more equipped to be the best citizens of the world that they can possibly be.

The tagline chosen for Writer Dad over a year ago was decided without much thought. It was simply my favorite from the three I thought up one Sunday afternoon. It is wonderfully fitting, though. And a year later, I find it beautifully true.

The words we use are important, essential to who we are and how we assemble our thoughts. As I’ve been digging deep into the language of my own life – the language that has led me toward this particular today and impending tomorrow, I’ve stumbled across many stories that I would love to share. These are the stories that helped to make me who I am. They are, I am sure, similar in many ways to stories you have yourself. My tales have different settings and a different cast, but like yours, they are the aggregate of what made me who I am today, and eventually, what turned me into a writer.

Life is better with the right words. I appreciate you letting me share mine with you.

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