What is success?

What is success?

Webster (the dictionary, not the child actor) tells us that it's a "favorable or desired outcome."

Okay, so what does that mean? We've talked a lot about attaining success over a great many blogs, but never really talked about what it means.

Success is different for each and every person. For a homeless person, it might be a warm place to stay or finding $20 dollars on the street. For someone else, it might be having a million dollars (or ten million or even an astronomical billion dollars) net worth. Success is, to put it simply, the achievement of your larger goal. Not your daily goal (or writing 1 page a day or whatever it may be), but the larger achievement.

To publish your first novel, and create enough income to be able to do it passionately for a living . . .

That's mine, by the way. In a nutshell.

What's yours?

Dream big, succeed big.

Statistics say that 97% of people are not financially independent. In the same breath, those 97% are also not going worth to achieve their goals. Be one of those 3%. Don't think it's crowded and that everyone else is doing it. They're not. There's plenty of room.

I'll save you a seat next to me . . .

The meaning of what to do - part 2

Now that you've decided what it is you're destined to do, some of you may ask, "Okay, Mark, I work forty hours a week, Monday through Friday, and have been doing so for fifteen years. I'm still doing the same thing as when I started. How can I be called successful?"

The difference is what you put into your work, what passion you put forth to constantly expand your knowledge, making yourself an expert in your field of work. Do you hate your job, even though you've been doing it for fifteen or twenty years? Then change it. It's probably the reason why you haven't gone on to something different, because you have no passion for what you are doing. And that is the reason why some people spend twenty years doing something to become an expert in that field where others go on and go nowhere.

So, you need to find out what you are meant to do . . . but only if you are passionate about doing it. If you are an auto mechanic because you are not only good at it, you have an absolute passion to know everything there is about cars (to the point where if someone has a question in that field, you are the one they turn to) then you will be a successful person.

Success doesn't always have to do with money. Money is good, for it buys the things we need and grants us a position in life to help others who are hurting, but success is also having the deepest passion for what you want to do . . . and then doing it.

Change of tactics

The point behind the previous posting was to lead into this, but it didn't quite turn out the way I meant, as I wanted this post and the previous one to be together (and titled "Change of tactics"). As I wrote it, I decided to separate the two.

What change of tactics?

As you know by now, I'm working on a lengthy fantasy epic (one to rival The Wheel of Time by the late Robert Jordan and now the brilliant Brandon Sanderson or even Tolkien's Lord of the Rings). But during a writers' group meeting this spring, one of our members brought in a how-to from the Amazon.com website on how to publish e-books. At the time, there was also an article published about a southern Minnesota author by the name of Amanda Hocking who made millions publishing on Amazon.com. After much thought, I decided to temporarily cease working on my fantasy epic and polish my serial killer thriller. In the past, I've tried to get a literary agent to look at it, but with no success. After sending 30-40 queries to agents, I stopped to work on the fantasy epic. But now I am back to the thriller . . . with the end result to publish it online.

Is that the end?

Far from it. I thought I'd spend a good deal of the summer and polish up the thriller, but it's not going like I've planned. In fact, it's going much better. Call it a maturing in my editing process, I'm going through each chapter extremely thoroughly, polishing them to a gleaming shine. I am only halfway through going through the initial round of hard copy edits, but then I'm doing the tedious act of making the changes on the computer and then going back through what I've written over and over and over and over again. I even read it out loud, which is something any writer should do to. If you read your piece out loud and are stumbling in places, your reader will too. (And so will an agent, for that matter, which could hinder you from even landing an agent to begin with).

So, where am I in this thriller? I have the first chapter completely done, hard and soft copy. Now, it's on to chapter two and three. And a total of 61 chapters total. This will take up the rest of the summer and a good deal of the fall too. In the end, I haven't completely made a decision on whether or not to e-publish it or try again with the agent hunt. I'm leaning towards the latter right now, because the story is just so darn good. I just hope that future fans will like the various genres that I write in. Many stick with one genre and that's it. I want the best of all worlds, and will always continue to write what I want to read. Fantasy and horror are my favorite genres, but thrillers, suspense, and mysteries are a close second.

The meaning of what you are to do

It is said that successful people are quicker to make decisions (larger than normal decisions, not the day-to-day factions of life) but are slow to change those decisions once they have been made. That being said, the rest don't make any decisions that could impact their life, and if they do, they're constantly changing them and never sticking to one thing for very long.

Growing up, there are many "careers" I wanted to do. As a child born in the early 1970's, I loved the Rocky movies. The second one was my favorite, starring the ultimate Mr. T as one bad-ass character. Anyway, I wanted to be a boxer. So, I woke up one Saturday morning and started training, just like Rocky Balboa. Wouldn't you know, it was a lot of hard work. I ran around our house about 6 or 7 times before stopping, completely exhausted. My boxing career was officially over. As a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, I of course wanted to be an archaeologist like Harrison Ford's character. But when I did a little research into what archaeologists do, none live the kind of adventurous life he did. Which is probably a good thing, I guess.

What does all of this mean? Had I stuck with anything for very long, I would've gotten better at it. Maybe not the Indiana Jones thing, but I think you get the point. Most people flit around and try so many different things that they never stick with anything long enough to get even mildly competent. I've met a lot of people who want to be a writer. Great. What's the problem? They may have a story to tell (and it could be the next instant bestseller too!) but they never start. Oh, they may write a dozen or more pages, even, but that's it. They move on to the next get-rich scheme.

Bottom line: make an honest decision about what you want to do. I don't care what it is. If you want to be an auto mechanic or a stock car driver or a janitor, that's fine. But work hard and be the best mechanic/driver/janitor that you can be. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best by this quote: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Find out what you are best at . . . and do it. Today. Right now. Even if you completely suck at it, roll up your sleeves and do what it is that you are meant to do.

Just when you think you have everything all planned out . . . life happened

I didn't realize it had been so long since I've last posted, but then again I've had life smack me in the face.

Oh, where do I begin? In the beginning, as the Great Books says. Here we go.



On April 7th, 2011, my wife had a bone marrow biopsy performed at the Altru Hospital in Grand Forks, ND. Afterwards, the doctor said the results could take up to a week to come back. Needless to say, if you've consulted a calendar about now, you know that this would've been on a Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the doctor called and said she wishes to meet with us Monday morning, on the 13th of April.



What led us up to this point? For now, I'm just going to tell it from this point on and not rehash the countless tests and procedures my wife Melissa had gone through before the bone marrow biopsy.


Okay, on Monday morning, the doctor and an entourage of two other nurses come in and inform my wife that she has Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and that she has to do her treatments in Rochester, MN. Long story short, she has been home two times since then, and is currently residing at the Hope Lodge in Rochester, MN (with her brother as a caretaker). Needless to say, I feel very blessed for all of the support and prayers that have come from the community that I live in, as well as the community I grew up in. The largest town I've lived in was Bemidji, MN, back when I was at the university, but I have to honestly say, you are treated so much more warmly in a smaller community than if we lived in, oh let's say anywhere in the Twin Cities. On May 19th, ironically on my 8-year-old daughter's birthday, there was a benefit held for us at our church in Red Lake Falls. My one wish was that Melissa would've been able to see it, but she was of course down in Rochester. Several hundred people showed up - it was very overwhelming. I feel very blessed by the experience, and can't wait to bless countless others down the road when life throws them a curve ball.


Although I won't go into too much detail about Melissa's treatments and what the future holds, I will do so at a later time. I am still writing, it's something I work on almost every single day, and will add more to this blog very soon.

For updates on my wife's condition, go to the caringbridge.org site and type in melissapeterson1 in the search box.

Reseach and Development - R & D of your writing business

The "head" of your writing business is Research and Development. Okay, what does this entail? Very simple: learning new things.

"Learning new things?" you may ask. "You mean, like English composition and stuff like that?"

Not necessarily, but it could be, depending on your situation.

First, the publishing business, like any other business, is ever-changing. No writer in the history of the world ever got published without some influence or "help" from experts. If you are serious about writing, there are a few books about writing that is essential to have. The first is "Elements of Style" by Strunk & White. This is a small book about the mechanics of writing, and is vital to have in your arsenal. The next is Stephen King's "On Writing." King talks about not only his life and how he got published, he also breaks down the crucial parts of a writer's life and offers excellent advise on writing style, plot development, dialogue, work habits, query letters to literary agents, and even rejection. If you read at least these two books, you are well on your way to knowing a lot more about the writing industry.

Are there other books about writing that I recommend? Certainly . . . although, for the sake of time, I will only mention one more here: John Gardner's "On Becoming A Novelist." This one was recommended to me in April of 2010 by a literary consultant named Ian Graham Leask as he stopped for a writing conference at the library in Red Lake Falls. I read it, and I can certainly say that one area in which I was lacking was forever changed because of Gardner's book: editing. Gardner's book gives a straightforward and moral approach to writing. Of the one area in particular that I was lacking, Gardner helped to influence my writing. Or, more specifically, my editing. Before, I would read a particular chapter three or four times and then more on to the next one, and the changes in that chapter would sit for a long time (anywhere from a few months to a few years) before I made the changes on the computer. Gardner's method is as follows: break each chapter down into parts or scenes. Read each scene 3-4 times, immersing yourself into it, until the chapter is done. Then, make the changes and repeat the process. It may seem slower, but I have actually gotten more accomplished using this method.

Bookstores and libraries are full of books to help you with your writing. Are these stinkers out there? Of course, but you'll have to weed through them. Besides, you do not have to do everything that these books tell you. Take the best parts out that fit your life.

What else can be learned in this R & D section of your business? Well, simply reading a good novel or story in the same genre that you are writing will help. In fact, over the years, I have made a study on reading the first novels of the most successful fiction writers, to see what they wrote to become as successful as they are: Stephen King's "Carrie", John Grisham's "A Time To Kill", J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and so on. Read the first novel of your favorite author. Even read a different genre. You'd be surprised what you could learn, depending on what it is that you read.

Okay, anything else, Mark? Yes. I would read anything you can about success and motivation. "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People" are only two such examples. Also, reflect on your own life. Find an author who is coming to a town near you and watch his or her presentation. Can you see yourself doing that? You can even get a good book on public speaking, if that's one area in which you are lacking. Also, how about a good book on marketing. Because if you want to be successful at writing, you will need to take the bull by the horn, so to speak, and learn how to market your book.

I hope this has helped you get the perspective on the R & D portion of your writing business. Now, this does not need to take up gobs and gobs of time. Earl Nightingale taught that if you devote 15-30 minutes a day to learning your craft, in a few short years you would be classed as an expert in your given field.

I would also recommend, if you want to be published one day, that you also learn about query letter writing and literary agents. In fact, even if you are still on your first draft, start writing your query letter. Believe it or not, your one page query letter is harder to write than a 1000-page novel. Don't ask me why, it just seems to be. Also, go on the Internet and find blogs about writing. The first that comes to mind is www.guidetoliteraryagents.com - the blog on this site in extremely valuable and there are even more links to other sites. I highly recommend this one.

Now, go forth and conquer. Learn . . . expand your knowledge . . . and you will succeed.

Writing as a business introduction

We previously discussed about your writing as a business. Because if you want to succeed to the next level in your writing (from the "playing around" stage to publication) and are serious about doing it, then that is the mind-set that you need.

First, what I am about to discuss is a variation of a motivational talk by the great Earl Nightingale. In his excellent audio collection "Lead The Field" he talks about the four components of a successful business, which can be shifted to how one can learn to succeed at whatever you put your mind to do. I take this one step further, but at an elementary level I still credit Mr. Nightingale for the knowledge I am about to share.

Think of yourself as the CEO of your company. Or, better yet, the CEO of your life. There are three main components to it, which, depending on how successful you put them to work, influences the fourth. Since we are in the writing business, you are the CEO of that business and how successful your writing will become, will largely influence how much . . . money you are able to earn.

The three main components of any successful business are as follows: Research and Development, Production, and Sales. If any given business works these three areas to the best of its ability, it increases the fourth component: money. If one area is lacking, then the business becomes stagnant and eventually fails.

Earl Nightingale put this in a personal perspective when thinking of your own life, of which you are the CEO. If you look at your own body, the head is Research and Development, the hands are Production, and the legs are Sales. Your chest . . . let's put a huge Superman-like S in the center, but instead of an S let's put a dollar sign. How successful you are in R & D, Production, and Sales will affect how much money you are able to earn.

In the next few blogs, I will break each of these three components down for you.