You'll see me more often

When I look back at the dismal, sporadic array of postings on this blog, I'm both amazed at what I've written yet disappointed in how little there is at this point.

Well, that is about to change.

While my wife is still undergoing extensive treatments for her acute myeloid leukemia (AML), I am at home, working and taking care of our three children.  My writing time is usually devoted to an hour or so in the morning, about the same amount at night (depending on when they've retired for bed), and during breaks at my full-time job.  My purpose for this blog was to expound on my knowledge of the business of writing as well as helping others achieve their goals, even if it doesn't involve writing.  Up at this point, I've been living in the stone age.  Okay, not the real stone age, but the stone age as far as technology is concerned.  In fact, specifically, as far as my access of the Internet.  Prior to this morning, I had . . . drum roll please . . . dial-up.

Oh, God!  THE HORROR!

Yes, my friends, I had dial-up for many, many years.  Well, as of this morning, I bit the bullet and got hooked up to high-speed Internet, which will allow me to go onto my blog and post more often.

Before I leave this evening, I have to tell you about an inspirational speaker I've discovered.  His name is Simon Sinek.  I heard him mentioned on podcasts I've downloaded from Dave Ramsey as well as the TEDtalks website.  He is absolutely incredible.  So much so that I've renamed the introduction of my blog, to include the "why" of why I write.  I'm sure as I go along, I'll tweak this and hone it down like a sharp knife.  Anyway, Simon wrote a book called "Start with Why".  I haven't read his book but I plan on getting it very soon.  He explains why one is doing what they're doing, why certain leaders are remembered while others aren't.  Please check him out . . . and discover your why.

Smashing through the boundaries

I've heard countless people say, "I want to be the next J. K. Rowling" or "I want to be the next Stephen King" or John Grisham or . . . (fill in the blank)

What's wrong with this?

Simply put: there is only one J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, John Grisham, etc. and they did not create their own success by duplicating the efforts of someone else. They put in the hours. And a great many hours it is too, to write a novel. Most people see the finished product and have no idea what it takes to put one together, from getting the idea to putting it together into a first draft and then the multiple editing sessions.

If one wants to be the best they can be, one has to stop comparing themselves to one who is already published. Everyone's circumstances are different. J. K. Rowling was a single mother who wrote much of her first Harry Potter book in a cafe while her child was sleeping. She didn't do it because her favorite writer did it and thought this was a good idea. She did it because she had to, because she loved to write.

Years ago, I read that Jack London was the first millionaire writer. I thought this was very interesting, and at that moment set a goal of being the first billionaire writer. Now, whether or not she believes it, J. K. Rowling beat me to it. But that doesn't mean I still can't be one because I don't write just to make a huge pile of dough. I'm also not comparing myself to her. My life is different from her's and that's okay. I will be published one day soon . . . in my own time . . . with my own goals, not someone else's.

Instead of telling yourself that you want to be the next (fill in the blank of your favorite writer), be yourself and be the absolute best writer you can be . . . in your own time . . . in your own way. Write today.

Right now . . .

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.