Why I Write About Money (this here thing you’re reading right now)
Why I Write About Meaning
Together they were going to form my trifecta of fabulous, my manifesta, my polemic. My launch into the New Year with a clear heart and clear intentions.
Then…delicious distraction. I had so much fun with the first one that I haven’t made it to the other two. They’re still in my cauldron, a-brewin’, but…hey. The new year is in hours. They’re not all going to be here, by then.
- and more special than the New Year *which isn’t special at all, really, because the event of New Years Eve is overhyped, overpriced and wildly under-taxi’ed* are all the secret projects I’m imagining and conjuring and constructing…think Goddesss, think Godiva (the story, not the chocolate), think frenzy, think Truth, mmmm I am and it is gonna be goooood –
coalesced into a question:
What’s your currency?
Currency. Coin. Let’s talk about money.
I write about money because I like shiny things, but more and more, I’m realizing that money is not my currency. Maybe – ‘though I kvetch and complain that I’m not making much – because I have enough. More doesn’t do much more for me except magnetically attract more possessions to my house which requires more maintenance and care from me and I don’t have time for that. I have enough money and stuff. I don’t have enough time.
I write about money because money is a measure of success, and I do want success. Money is just a way to articulate and document success. Money is a way to say – mostly to myself – see people DO like me and my writing and I’m on to something and this isn’t just a cute hobby. This thing I do – it is about truth. And talent. And coin.
I write about money because, online, that’s credibility. If you’re blogging and you’re making money, then you’re For Real. There are millions of people blogging and about 15 (I jest, but not really) making serious coin.
I write about money because I’m about creativity, and art, and money is the foundation from which those flow. I cannot create when I’m worried. Bills paid, regularly and in full, form my bedrock.
So I write about money because I want to make a living from my writing. My creative writing. I’m feeling my way to freelance, to publishing, to hot online content that I can sell. I’m figuring it out. Mostly right in front of your eyes.
And all of this figuring-money-out led me to figure something out:
Money is not my currency.
Adulation is my currency. Love feeds my wolf. I just wanna be a famous writer.
___________________
PS – Want more Cleavage? Regularly? Subscribe with your e-mail address below and I’m yours (in a virtual and direct-to-your-inbox kind of way):
PPS – and just so you know, I like it when you follow me on Twitter. I’m @KellyDiels.
(and when I say “buddies”, I really mean “stalkers”. Mike and Nathan stalk me with compliments and guest posts and lascivious comments, which is to say, I LIKE THEM A LOT.)
They sent Beyond Blogging to me, asked me to review it, give them some feedback, and maybe a testimonial.
I agreed and then Christmas and liquor and late nights and mooning over lost love and writing about sex and interviewing/flirting with a porn star and blah blah blah blah. I’m sure we’ve all got the same story.
Now there are two days left in the year, and I can’t waltz into a new one with things left undone. And unsaid. (Ex-lovers, watch your inbox.)
To ease my conscience and my workload, I propositioned them both with a sexy alternative to a testimonial. Here it is.
Kelly Diels: So, Nathan, my darling clementine, I’ve been terribly flaky with you. You asked me for a guest post…and nada.
You’ve asked me to write a testimonial for your 200+ page (whaaa???) e-book, Beyond Blogging, which you wrote with Mike Cliffe Jones, whom, based on his comments on my blog, I do believe is my one-man fan club.
(Hi Mike, are you married? Because I seriously loved your response to my love letter to kissing. So, you know, just askin’.)
And I just have not come through for you or the two of you.
I’m up nights thinking about it, and the more I think about it, the more blocked I get, the more time that elapses, and soon we’re all going to be 106 years old and you won’t even remember that I owe you some pretty words and pixels, but I will.
I have a solution. An interview. Let’s do a three-way. OMIGOODNESS my blog will never be the same.
Good? Yes? Let’s go.
Nathan Hangen: I was cursing you up a storm, wondering what I did wrong to deserve such a fate…and I thought we had something special.
Just kidding, it happens, don’t worry about it.
Mike Cliffe Jones: Haha! I Like it. I like the three way idea.
[KD note: Mike said more here, but it sounds so much naughtier and more tawdry if I abbreviate it and take it out of context. Editorial perogative, say hey!]
Kelly Diels: So what’s up with the book. It’s massive. Usually an e-book is 12,000 – 15,000 words, or around 30+ pages. Your is like six million times that length. Who couldn’t control himself?
Mike Cliffe Jones: We didn’t set out with any length objectives in mind, and as we all know, size doesn’t matter, right?
But seriously, we didn’t have any objectives in terms of the overall number of words. What happened was that we realized quite early on that all of these guys and girls have really interesting back stories, and we wanted to explore them as well as produce a book about their blogging careers. It’s that part I’m most proud of – I passed a copy on to a friend who knows nothing about blogging, nothing about the net, and he loved the book – describing it as a fascinating story about interesting people and their entrepreneurship.
Nathan Hangen: You can’t really do justice to these 15 bloggers with less than we have, but honestly I feel like we could have done more. But…we kept writing until we were spent, and then we’d write a bit more just to be sure. The results is a lot of content, and something I’m really proud of…and I know Mike is too.
In my mind, even if we didn’t sell 1 copy, I wanted the book to live up to the dream, ya know? I felt like I couldn’t let that dream down.
Kelly Diels: Tell me about hooking up with all these biggies – how’d all that go down? Inquiring, aspiring copycats wanna know.
Mike Cliffe Jones: We couldn’t have done it if we hadn’t spent a lot of time as bloggers, interacting with each of them on their blogs and our own, as well as on Twitter. But having done that, it was simply a case of being bold enough to ask. Some said yes straight away, and others needed a lot of persuasion. It was like a snowball though – once we had a couple of big names on board, it became much easier to get the others.
Nathan Hangen: We split up and then nagged them to death. We hired a team of ninjas to sneak in and steal their most prized possessions…but that didn’t work with all of them so we had to beg and plead.
Really though, we just asked. Mike and I have spent a year or two building relationships with people like this, hoping that they’d come through for us if we asked. I met Chris, Darren, David, John, Brian, Chris Garrett, and Shama in Vegas for Blogworld Expo 2009. I think that helped. In my case at least, they got to see that I wasn’t just a dreamer, but I was willing to work hard. We got to talk about a lot of things, and I put my best foot forward. I felt like a groupie at the time, but I tried not to act like one. I wanted to earn my way in, not beg for access, if that makes sense?
I go a ways back with Chris Guillebeau…he’s been a great friend, mentor, and inspiration.
It’s not like we have them all on speed dial, but I think it came down to the fact that they knew us a bit, and liked the project.
Kelly Diels: What’s the point? I read it and thought, oh my goodness, our first history of blogging! And we’re all still babies! Blogging is a genre in its infancy, but somehow a history is overdue. But was that the point? Am I missing the point? What did you guys set out to do?
Nathan Hangen: That’s great insight, and something we probably should have marketed with! As I said before, it’s supposed to be a case study of how to make it as a blogger. The mindset you need, the steps involved, and the action plan. In some ways, it’s similar to a history, but I think it’s a bit more intense than that…how about an active history of blogging?
Mike Cliffe Jones: We set out to do two things: One was to simply record their stories for posterity. And the other was to try to capture the elements of their success and distil it into an easy format for others to digest. By all means buy it as simply an interesting book to read, but also remember that it comes with a workbook, which takes you through the five steps we identified as areas common to all. The workbook will prompt other bloggers to analyse and refine what they are doing.
Kelly Diels: How did you two hook up? Tell me your love story.
Mike Cliffe Jones: We met in the classic blogger’s way. By commenting on each other’s blogs. We then found we were inhabiting the same blogs and forums, and we each started reading each other’s work regularly.
Beyond Blogging was Nathan’s idea – he emailed me one day and told me about it and asked if I’d be interested in co authoring. I didn’t hesitate for a moment.
And it turned out to be a great decision – we are so different and our skill sets are so disparate that the partnership simply works. I’m a middle aged, very posh Brit who lives on a desert island near Africa. Nathan is a young American, still serving in the military and bringing up a young family. He excels at technical stuff, he’s cautious and thoughtful, where I have much more business experience and more of a “Screw it, let’s do it!” attitude to life. We’re both decent writers.
Staying in touch on the project has been a challenge – time zones are an issue, and we’ve ended up using every media available from Skype to Google Wave.
Nathan Hangen: I honestly can’t remember. We saw each other around, but I can’t point to a specific instance as a beginning. What I do remember is for some reason thinking that he’d be a great guy to partner with, and I had a few beers one night (as I often do) and sent out a feeler for the project. He was instantly into it, and the rest is history. It seems like we’ve known each other for years…like it was meant to be. I believe a bit in destiny…Karma, all that stuff. I think that’s where it came from.
Kelly Diels: What’s your favourite part of the book? Tell me the juicy, scary stuff, like how Steve Pavlina nearly swallowed you whole. Tell me I’m not making that up or please confirm that I am. Sometimes it is hard to tell.
(I was in Las Vegas this month and had this weird lil’ idea that I should call him up *AS IF I have his number or AS IF he even knows I exist* and have a raw smoothie with him and talk sex – because, like, POLYAMORY* HELLO – but then I had a $14 lemonade on The Strip and got way too scared to make myself known. KICKING MYSELF. And now he’s all about fashion and shopping, which is basically what I did while I was there. Don’t even get me and the good folks at Visa started on how Las Vegas is the lingerie capital of Plus-size Planet Tawdry aka my world. So. Me ‘n Steve n’ shopping. WE COULD HAVE BEEN SOUL SISTAS.)
I digress. Discuss.
Mike Cliffe Jones: Despite my best efforts otherwise, Steve didn’t participate – he was one of the case studies. I’m impressed you have his number because he’s a difficult man to contact! [KD note: I totally DO NOT have Steve Pavlina's number.] Interestingly I found working on his case study one of the most interesting – he breaks every rule! For a start you can’t contact him, you can’t even comment on his blog, and he doesn’t hang out in any of the social spaces online. And yet he has this hugely successful blog!
I have so many favourite parts of the book, here are a few:
Discovering that Chris Brogan has tweeted an average of over 50 times every day since he joined Twitter
Feeling physically sick with nerves before calling Penelope Trunk for the first time – pathetic really, but I was totally intimidated by her. Then we spoke, and she’s fabulous, interesting, eloquent and funny – a thinking man’s babe for sure
Picturing David Risley trying to save his business by copying and packaging CD’s of data to send out to clients
Researching how Pete Cashmore started Mashable and seeing that he was posting 15-20 times a day when he started the site from his parent’s house in Scotland
I could go on and on……
Nathan Hangen: My favorite part of the book was Brian Clark, because he’s a big inspiration for me. Brian is a true master…he has all these people working for him, working with him, and doing his bidding. He’s got deals all over the place, and he’s been very successful walking the line between marketing and blogging. He doesn’t apologize for making money, and I like that about him.
I also enjoyed Chris Guillebeau’s chapter, because he’s a big inspiration for me in terms of getting where I am today and taking my blogging seriously. The final chapter was good too, and I really enjoyed studying these cases and trying to bring them all together.
So that was the easiest three-way EVER. Thanks, Mike Cliffe Jones and Nathan Hangen, for giving great interview.
One last thing: Guys, in your book you called polyamory ‘polygamy’. Big, huge MASSIVE difference. Can you change it? Sexy people everywhere say thank you.
Thank you.
(I crack my-damn-self up.)
_________________________
Beyond Blogging launched December 28th and you know what? I am NOT an affiliate and I don’t make a cent off it. I just like Mike and Nathan and their project. Check it out.
Today I meant to write about money but I’ve got more exciting topics to cover.
Yesterday, I found The Spot. My place. Where I’m supposed to be.
I wrote an essay about sex that was so beautifully received that my eyes do watery things just thinking about it.
Then I interviewed CJ Wright, a porn performer/director/website owner/content producer (We’re in the SAME GAME!!!) who knocked me out with his blazing passion, vision, sincerity, sweetness, and bad-ass business savvy.
Preconceptions and stereotypes begone. (Insert purposeful waving of magic wand and clicking of heels, here.)
After that, I spoke with Cathy Empey, a boudoir photographer with a mission and mantra to support self-esteem in the women she photographs. She uses her lens to help a woman connect with her sensuality, beauty and essential self. Her vision is larger than that, though. That’s all I can say for now. But watch her.
The first time I had sex, I said, Let’s do that AGAIN!
So we did. And then I wondered, like many a teen heroine before and after me, how does anyone have time to do anything else???
But it was Christmas vacation of my first year of University and I had to work. So I reluctantly dressed and dragged myself to my job at a trucking company where all day the drivers alternated between hitting on me and taking me down a notch or two.
One said to me: You’re a pretty girl. You dress just like my niece. She’s a refugee from Kosovo.
(It was the nineties. I was knee deep in knee highs, Doc Martens, baby doll dresses and grandma cardigans. He was probably not wrong.)
Slings and arrows and fashion digs aside, I glowed all day. I wondered if it was obvious I was glowing. I glowed about glowing.
Ah, young love and new sex. The giddiness. The knowing of a new corner of yourself. The poetry and physics of what a body can do; the magic of what two, together, can do. Divine. A dividing line.
First sex is a dividing line: you step over it and transform from girl to woman, boy to man, child to adult. Conversion. Communion. It is called ecstasy for a reason.
Which is why virginity cannot be lost. There is no loss. There is only gain. Unfolding, knowing, more.
This, of course, is why there are so many rules about sex. Sexuality is a basis for power and agency and awe. Stepping over the divine line into the miracles of body and self makes you wonder: what else is possible? What could possibly be impossible?
This is why cults encourage celibacy or polygamy. Dyads are dangerous to cult authority. They give you an ally. Directing your passion towards the cult with celibacy or fracturing your affection across multiple relationships is a great way to ensure that your first loyalty is your guru. Religions, too, encourage celibacy or monogamy or rigidly circumscribed polygamy. How would the Vatican get rich if priests had families? Families tend to accrete resources rather than direct them to the Church. In any case, in any system, the first order of business is to regulate sexuality.
With good reason.
Desire can be destructive, and divine. That’s the nature of mother nature and creation. There is a reason Kali the destroyer is revered as a mother. Because raucous, joyous sexuality is a source of strength for women. This I know.
When I started having regular, raucous, loving sex with my first big love, we broke the bed. The heavy, oak, four poster bed from the Empress Hotel in Victoria – which is to say: expensive, well-made, and presumably, unbreakable.
His father fixed it. Once. Twice. The third time he said, I’ve got to meet this girl.
And that is what we should do when our young ones start having joyous sex. We should celebrate. Congratulate. Smile at the fumbling attempts towards fluency.
I used to say that you can tell a story with a kiss, that kissing is a form of communication. Or communion. There are exploring kisses that say I want to know every corner of your body and your soul (mmmmm); there are I-want-to-fuck-you kisses (mmmmm); and there are half-assed, soul-less, empty kisses that say everything in their nothingness.
Crash: Well, I believe in the soul. The cock. The pussy. The small of a woman’s back. The hanging curveball. High fiber. Good scotch. That the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitution Amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve. And I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days…Goodnight.[He exits]
Annie (with a voice that could melt butter): Oh my.
Oh my, indeed.
___________________
PS yes, there is a point to this. It is not all titillation and indulgence (though that’s most of it.) I’ll post The Point tomorrow.
___________________
want more Cleavage? Regularly? Subscribe with your e-mail address below and I’m yours (in a virtual and direct-to-your-inbox kind of way):
and just so you know, I like it when you follow me on Twitter. I’m @KellyDiels.
I think this is an excellent philosophy. It makes my dreams real. Opera singer? Never. Playboy model? Nope. Writer? Sex pot? Mama extraordinaire? YESSIREE X 3.
So I don’t waste a lot of time with things I’m just not good at or don’t like or just plain can’t be bothered. Instead, I spend my time feeding my joys, leading with my strengths, and strengthening my strengths. I don’t work at being well-rounded. (I let chocolate do its job, there.)
Except…
I have a core weakness that is almost physical. It spreads, painfully, through all the musculature of my life.
Ask.
I don’t. I rarely ask for things. Anything. Help with my girls, help with my house, help with a task, help help help. I don’t ask. I don’t ask for business. I don’t ask for the job or the promotion or the next step or even what is the next step.
I could fold this into my philosophy of lead from strengths and don’t worry about the weaknesses. It would look like this: I’m not good at asking, so I’m not going to do it or work at it.
And I kind of do, do that. That’s what this blog is about. If you like my writing, by the time you ask me to do some for you, we’re best friends and it is all sunshine and roses and paypal. I don’t have to ask for a damn thing. And we have a great time.
That’s sweet. I like that, a lot.
But I think this is a stuckness*.
In love. All the worst of me comes from skating around asking and trying to get what I want without articulating it. There’s a word for this: manipulation.
Or, accepting what is on offer, no matter how inadequate or unappealing.
In parenting. All the worst of me comes from reacting to transgressed boundaries that I NEVER ARTICULATED. Friction and fights flow from imaginary lines being crossed because I don’t ask for those lines to be noticed or even respected.
In my career: I get frustrated because I’m not getting what I want, but I don’t ask for it. (If you have employers with ESP, I need to work there.)
Clearly, my askus requestus** muscle needs exercise.
So I’ve been thinking about this: what is the worst that can happen if I ask?
The answer could be no. Instead of getting what I want, I could get nothing.
Well, how is that different from what I had before I asked?
Not much, except that I skip the regularly scheduled ambivalence and anguish. I can live with that.
____________________________
* stuckness. That’s all Havi Brooks, baby. She’ll help you destuckify.
** totally copped the phrase “askus requestus muscle” from Danielle LaPorte who, like the Digital Underground, also preaches the gospel of doowutchalike. Amen, sister.
________________ this is a lesson I learned from my brush with the Very Bad Lying Man.
If you want to know more about THAT story, here it is:
In the very beginning of the year, my friend Ricardo Scipio talked to me about art. Creating it, offering it, and selling yourself shamelessly in service of it. (Havi Brooks wrote a terrific piece about ‘shameless‘. Shift.)
He talked about audience and the need for an artist to have one.
NEED. Essential.
Exhale. Shift.
I have always written. I am a compulsive journaler, short story writer, wannabe poet – I have held court at many a drunken grad school party with end of night poems and yes, I’m cringing a little (a lot) – essayist and love letterist.
What I have rarely done: shared. Published.
Oh, I share technical stuff – briefs, proposals, applications, marketing copy – on 9-5 basis. Sometimes I even sell a journalist-y piece or two. But my private, creative stuff lived in the shadows.
And now, light.
Ricardo Scipio, just by example, just by the way he lives his life – and that is art, at its most real and profound - showed me that I needed to find my people.
When I was only tentatively blogging, Josh Hanagarne told me that to reach more people, I needed to guest post. And then, when I clung to hesitation, he demanded a guest post from me for his site. And then he kept nagging/encouraging me to submit to ProBlogger. And, finally, I did. Several pieces later, Darren Rowse offered me a weekly spot.
Danielle LaPorte, six months ago, told me:
you’re hot shit and the real deal and should be getting your ass published as widely as possible.
Sometimes we think we do it all, alone – and sometimes it feels like that – but the truth is that we are all in this, together.
The truth is that a well-timed word, a life lived, love offered, can shift everything.
so…I’m crushing madly on a site I’ve recently discovered. Storyfix. THE place to go if writing is your thing.
(And Larry Brooks. He’s my kinda thing. Smart, hot, has a nekkid photo, funny, killer writer, gives great e-mail, flatters me endlessly, married. Sigh.)
And guess what? Larry asked me to write a guest post for him about how I developed my voice as a writer. So I did. After all, he wrote something for my blog – and I SWEAR I did not ask him to kiss my ass the way he did. But I liked it. Lots.
_________________________________
want more Cleavage? Regularly? Subscribe with your e-mail address below and I’m yours (in a virtual and direct-to-your-inbox kind of way):
PS – I like it when you follow me on Twitter. I’m @KellyDiels.
11 people have
The scene. Christmas Eve, 2009. My niece, A, (age 11) greets me at the door.