Creating Your Literary Ecosystem: The 6 Elements of a Fulfilling Writing Career
After forty years as an agent, here is the essence of what I believe you have to have for a fulfilling life as a writer:
Gaia, the Earth, is an ecosystem—a unique, miraculous, self-sustaining combination of elements that evolved out of each other. You can create a literary ecosystem: a balanced, organic, evolving, sustainable, inter-dependent, international, environmentally sensitive community. Your system will be unified by passion, interest, service, connection, and commerce. The six circular elements of your literary ecosystem will be
- Products and services—as much scalable, first-rate work in your niche as you can generate in different forms and lengths that you re-purpose in other media
- Pre-promotion–test-marketing your work in as many ways as you can
- People—win-win relationships with engaged, committed, growing communities you serve who want to help you, because they know, like, and trust you
- Platform–your continuing visibility, online and off, with your communities and potential buyers about your work
- Promotion—using your platform to share your passion for your work with your communities
- Profit—what you need to achieve your personal and professional goals and maintain the system
Your ecosystem has to stay open to what it needs to learn from–and can contribute to–your communities, the human family, and the planet. Your system will continue to build synergy as long as you keep enriching the soil by producing content that sustains it. The importance of the six elements will vary, depending on what you write. If your mission is using words to create change, make cultivating your ecosystem a lifelong quest. You will accomplish more than you can imagine.
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Do one thing every day to make the world better . –John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman
The 4th San Francisco Writing for Change Conference: Changing the World One Book at a Time
September 15, 2012 / Unitarian Universalist Center / Franklin & O’Farrell, San Francisco
Keynoters: Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism, and Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
The 10th San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / February 14-17, 2013 / www.sfwriters.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com /
http://sfwriters.info/blog /@SFWC/ www.facebook.com/SanFranciscoWritersConference
San Francisco Writers University / Where Writers Meet and You Learn
Laurie McLean, Dean/free classes/www.sfwritersu.com/sfwritersu@gmail.com/@SFWritersU
415-673-0939 / 1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, 94109
Michael Larsen is a literary agent and consultant to nonfiction writers. He and his partner Elizabeth Pomada are co-directors of the San Francisco Writers Conference and the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference.
