creation

Where’d You Grow Wednesday? Into My Writing Business Britches

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WORDS For Sale

As any writer or artist knows, talent alone doesn’t always lead to success. The ability to sell oneself is the difference between those of us who starve for our craft and those of us who have found a way to stand solidly in a fickle market.

I may know how to write, but I suck at selling.

Were it not for my generous, patient, and encouraging husband, I would have been a very hungry writer. Either that or I would have had to get a “real” job. Without his backing, years ago I would have had to abandon marriage books with meagre profits, agented non-fiction proposals that still sit on publishers’ desks, novel drafts, blogposts, Instablogs, and Facebook posts. With him I’ve been able to piddle and hone my craft because I have never had to rely on selling anything while I did it.

It is time for me to step up my game.

The seasonal businesses that have fed our family and financed every part of our lives are all dependent upon crowds of people. The entertainment company where my husband has been employed for over twenty-five years, (also employing other members of our family for nearly eight years) hosts sixteen days of partying for tens of thousands of people and hundreds of employees. Not exactly the essential type of gathering encouraged or dependable in time of pandemic. We also both coach sports teams. Also life-as-we-used-to-live-it-but-now-we-don’t-know-when-we’ll-do-that-again activities. Compounding all of this is the fact that we are in mid-build for our next adventure…yet another business built on events, gatherings, and celebrations for crowds of folks.

We always thought we weren’t putting our eggs in one basket, but we also never imagined that groups of people who would normally and happily congregate in any one of the nests we’ve built would be rightly concerned about that dangerous decision. For a time, it makes sense that the baskets we’ve always relied upon will stay empty and it’s time to build a new one.

It is an #endoftheroad unlike any we’ve ever navigated. I have to do something while we wait it out.

Choosing to Grow has pulled me out of desperately stagnant places before, and I am hopeful it will happen again.  I have no grand illusions that this venture, all on its own, will supplant all that has been paused, but it is an offering I can make right now with the one thing I’m prepared to do.

I am fairly certain my marketing techniques will not include shameless plugs, because like I mentioned before, I suck at selling, but I do think I’ll post announcements about projects I’m doing and I’ll offer invitations to let me partner for meaningful gifts for loved ones where words I can offer might help.

A few ideas percolating right now can be found on the newly created Custom Gifts tab on my website. Other possible projects for sale will include:

  • Personalized Poems
  • Picture/ poem/ prayer prints
  • Video montages
  • Postcards
  • Greeting Cards
  • Photo magnets

If you know of anyone looking for a unique gift, please send them my way.

In addition to these creative offerings I will also engage in more freelance writing opportunities, rewrite Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage (The Pandemic Edition), seek online or in person speaking opportunities and keep plugging on my novel revision.

I made a decision to Choose to Grow through my life and now, more than ever, is the time to do just that.

Meagan Frank

Copyright 2020

An Introverted Writer Goes YouTubing

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I post one blogpost and I feel like I’m yelling from a platform–with a bullhorn–at a microphone.

What? You can’t hear me? Oh. That’s fine. I tried. Bye.

I want to say that. After short efforts to put content into the cyberworld, I want to hole up back in my cocoon and be content with collecting and digesting ideas and information, occasionally creating something new, whispering it to the worldwide web, and calling it good.

But it’s not good.

I’ve learned too much about the projects I’ve tackled to keep the valuable information to myself, for just our little family, or for the teams and families I coach.

I am a writer, so I will write, but there is this other part of me that simply hasn’t been given space enough to grow as it should and I need to pay attention to the gnawing feeling I have to attend to it.

I need to teach.

I HAVE to try to share what I’ve learned in whatever media I can. So, I will try harder.

I will write more. I will step into those places I ventured once and build back up the teaching/presenting/consulting muscles I’ve let atrophy.

I heard a baseball coach interviewed this week and he spoke about the mantra they have for their team: “Work while you’re waiting.”

I am waiting to get feedback on my proposal, on queries, on the next steps for The Team Adult Playbook I need to finish, and I have chosen to work while I wait.

So, I’m working on defining and fine-tuning my Choosing to Grow brand. I wear a lot of hats for the various projects I pursue and I want to share the observations, research, and writing in all the ways I can.

I have been Choosing to Grow:Through Marriage for fifteen years now. I just completed the research for Choosing to Grow: For the Sport of It and The Team Adult Playbook is blossoming because of it. I am chronicling the ways I am Choosing to Grow: GREENER and writing ties it all together.

I wear different hats, and I am now standing firmly beneath my Choosing to Grow umbrella choosing to grow in the ways I offer up the fruits of my labor.

If you are a YouTuber, I’d love to have you as a subscriber on my Choosing to Grow channel.

If you are on Instagram, I Instablog on my account regularly @meaganfrank.

I have an author Facebook Page as well as pages devoted entirely to Team Adult and Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage. Oh yeah, and I’m on Twitter too @meaganfrank_ctg.

Thank you for reading the words I write, listening to the stories I tell, and sharing anything you think will be valuable to people you love.

Copyright Choosing to Grow 2019                                     www.meaganfrank.com    

Writing is a Four-Pronged Fork…Eat up!

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It’s Wednesday.

And, I’ve been walking.

The mind-shifting walk this past week was the one I took with my Littlest Sprout and Mini Sprout.

Little Sprout is our soon-to-be-six-year-old who is currently sitting in her kindergarten classroom for the second day.

Mini Sprout is our ten-pound chiweenie who loves walks more than breathing.

Little Sprout had requested to ride her bike around a new path while I walked the dog.

Request granted.

When we walk around the lake, I see different things than my walking buddies . The dog sees squirrel tag games and peeing posts. Little Sprout sees “pretty gardens” and “secret paths”. They both point these things out to me as we walk, and the experience is fuller for all of us.

She sees a sleeping moon, and I see eternity. She sees a baby turtle, and I see the miracle of new life.  She sees a slinky caterpillar, and I see perpetual change. And she sees an uncatchable grasshopper, and I see courage and strength.

She hops off her bike several times to get a better look… and a picture. She shares what she sees with me, and I eagerly anticipate the days I can share with her what those things make me see now.

We head out of the canopied path and back to the street that will take us home. Little Sprout says, “That was a nice walk, Mommy.  Thank you.”

I thank her in response, and we chatter the last block away as she plans to share the pictures with her brother and sister. It’s all she wants to do.

It is just then that I realize what we have just experienced. This was a fork moment.

There has been an idea swirling in my head for the last few weeks, and it materialized completely on this walk.

The four prongs to writing, or art, or photography, or story-telling, or music, or well, I guess anything we create are as follows:

Experience.

Contemplate.

Create.

and Share.

Life is meant to be lived and experiences are meant to be had, but that is only part of what makes our lives feel complete and satisfying.

My life mantra can likely be summed up by Socrates, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

Contemplation must accompany experience. A moment of reflection…a connection to past, present or future. That’s the logical.

Then there is the emotional. Allowing ourselves an opportunity to create in response to what we’ve thought about an experience. It is a luxury, I know, but it is as necessary as the involuntary rhythm of a beating heart.

Lastly, and most concupiscible… is the sharing. It is the human condition to want to share what we’ve created…what we’ve experienced…who we’ve become in the moments we truly lived.

Everyone is trying to share something. It takes intention to stop. To hear. To see. To appreciate the offerings of those around us. Don’t we all appreciate the people who ask us to share?

My challenge is to get better at celebrating the fork moments. Mine and theirs. To see my writing as what completes an experience for me, and as nothing more than my offering to share. While at the same time, inviting in how others are sharing too.

What do you do to create? What are the ways you share? Are you taking time to contemplate the experiences in your life?

I sincerely hope so…for the sake of all of us!

To learn more about Meagan Frank, you can visit her at her website:  www.meaganfrank.com