Letters for Creatives #44: Seth Godin advice to aspiring authors and authors
Plus: Currents over wind, a poem about the sea
Hello, I am Celeste. Welcome and thank you for being here. If you would like to receive Letters for Creatives every Thursday, subscribe to receive weekly letters on creativity, mental wellness, mindset and more. You can go to the directory to see the topics I have covered and read the ones that interest you.
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Reads of the week
The current and the wind
Seth Godin pointed out that daily drama, news are like wind. The wind distracts us from the current that changes slowly as the society evolves. The problems that have been around for decades, such as racism and climate change, are the currents. The current is persistent and usually takes much more effort and actions to change.
[The wind] might be a useful distraction, but our real work lies in overcoming the current, or changing it.
It helps to see it first, and to ignore the wind when we can.
— Seth Godin
Advice for authors
Since Seth Godin have published books and have 20 bestsellers, his advice for aspiring authors are useful for people who want to publish their book.
Don’t try to sell your book to everyone. First, consider this: ”58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.” … Far better to obsess about a little subset of the market–that subset that you have permission to talk with, that subset where you have credibility, and most important, that subset where people just can’t live without your book.
— Seth Godin
Cat on teabag
Poem of the week
I picked my way nearer along the shocking rock shelf,
hoping the spray would rise up to meet me, myself.
Seagulls roared louder and closer than anything planned;
I looked out to see and forgot I could still see the land.
Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me;
shrunk in a tidepool, I heaved, and I wondered. The sea
grew like monuments for me. Each wave and its coloring shadow,
bereft, wild and laden with wrack, spoke for me and had no
need of my words anymore. I was open and glad
at last, grateful like seaweed and glad, since I had
no place on the rocks but a voice, and the voice was the sea’s:
not my own. Just the sea’s.
— Annie Finch
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See you next week,
Celeste