Time to Right something Knew

Today I'm going to take some time out from a piece that I've been working on to talk about something that's come up a lot recently, and I feel is an important matter that needs to be addressed. And yes, the title is worded and spelled exactly the way I intended.

In case you haven't seen or heard, the creative team over at The Mad Doser Presents, of which I am a part, just recently announced their very first short story writing contest with a cash prize of $250 to the winner, as well as the featured story in the next book that we publish.

Just as with any career or business, especially when you're talking about the entertainment industry, even if you're outstanding at whatever it is that you do the hardest part of getting going is actually getting going; getting people to know that you're there, and getting them to buy into what you're trying to do. The money we're offering is nothing more than a small incentive to get people moving, and get them doing what they should be doing all the time anyway if they hope to have any sort of career in this, and that's to keep working on their craft, and to keep trying to get people to know about it.

A while back when I had come out with my first book, Ross Richie of Boom Studios, one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, gave me a ton of advice (which he didn't have to do), and now that I'm right in the thick of trying to carve out my own little niche in the business, every single word that he spoke has manifested into a truth, an understanding, that's almost as visual as the comics that he publishes. That's how well I can see it in front of me. What was at the heart of his message? "Write, write, write, write, write."

You're the man now dawg!

As Sean Connery put it in the film Finding Forester, "The business of a writer is to write". You have to do it constantly. And you have to do everything you can to try to get whatever it is that you write out to as many people as you can, and then maybe, just maybe, someone may actually start paying you to do it. And that can take years. And years. And years.

You’re the best!
Around!
Nothing’s gonna ever keep you down

But us writers are an odd group. Every one of us has this arrogance, thinks we're the best around, while at the same exact time we are our own worst critics, scared to death that we're trash, that our work is garbage. We think that we should get paid for every single thing that we do, and good money, even if no one has ever heard of us before. Yet when it comes to throwing ourselves on the altar, entering contests, submitting to editors, publishers, etc..... we're terrified of that ever present horror.... REJECTION. God forbid someone doesn't like our work.

God Forbid!

And so, just as with any business just starting out, its hard to get people to sign on, hence the contest. Now, some people won't think the prize is enough, that they're above the contest, while others who want to enter are too scared that they'll somehow get embarrassed. And their entire attitude can go either way, it all depends on whether or not they think John LaSota, or any of the other members of The Mad Doser Presents, is a good writer, or if they think that the website looks cool enough, or professional enough.

Kate Upton - Sports Illustrated 2013

Shameless SEO ploy? You betcha kiddo!

In social dynamics we call that Social Proof, and any man who's ever walked into a bar with a beautiful friend and had an easier time meeting other girls because of it, or any woman who's seen some momo out in the club with a woman way out of his league and caught herself thinking "I wonder what he's got, what's so great about him, that SHE would be interested" knows exactly what I mean. Its exactly that social proof, precisely that, which makes you a star. The only evidence you need to show you this is Kim Kardasian. Exactly what is it that she does? Yet she's HUGE, and I don't just mean her backside.

Kim Kardashian's Butt

Hemingway believed that this arrogance was essential to a writer, that you believe that your ideas are the BEST ideas, and what is a writer but a person who uses words to get their ideas across? In truth, according to every principal of success, that belief that you ARE the best is essential to ANY career. After all, who's going to believe in your abilities, think you're good in anything, if you don't believe it yourself? Make no mistake, that energy comes through in your work, in every thing that you do, and the people you're trying to connect with read it every bit as much as they do the words off the page.

But what good is that confidence if you're too good to show it to anyone? How do you ever get that social proof if you never actually show off what you do? As good as you may think you are, you're not better than Shakespeare, or Hemingway, or Vonnegut, Twain, Dickens, and the list goes on and on. Maybe you're just as good, but how do I know unless you show me? The world is full of people who know so much, who feel they're so great, that they look down and put down everyone and everything else. It's easy to do while you're sitting on the sidelines, unwilling to put yourself to the very same test. Invariably, 5-10-15 years later, those people are still doing the exact same thing they're doing now; nothing. They go on to lead completely unremarkable lives, ultimately doomed to become as insignificant as they claim others work and lives to be.

Classic Author Iceberg Slim

And the same is true of those timid souls too afraid to lean themselves over the block. No one is ever going to give you anything in this world, you have to take it. Just for this very contest someone admitted to being scared of what I may think of their work, and it was brilliant. They did everything perfectly, the way a story is supposed to be told. But how would they have ever known that if they hadn't thrown themselves into the fray? They wouldn't. We read and write and fantasize about heroes and heroines all the time, but wouldn't you want to be the hero of your own story? Why would you want it any other way? As the great John Wayne once said, "Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." And he would know. He eluded the KGB. Twice!

If you're that good of a writer, then why don't you put your mouth where your pen is? And if you'd like to be, but are afraid of the threats of the unknown, start learning to attack your fears. Either way, get up off the bench, get off the sideline, and get in the game! You don't score until you score! And you can't score from the bench. Even if it's not our contest, even if The Mad Doser Presents isn't for you, there's something out there that is.

Stifler

So spread the word and encourage people. I'm all about helping people get to where they want to go. At the end of the day, your support system is everything when it comes to success. That's the entire concept behind what we're trying to do.

Don't take my word for it though, listen to the ultimate doer, a man who knew everything there was to know about over coming obstacles, and did it so brilliantly that they carved him into the side of a mountain....

Mt. Rushmore

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt

 

You called down the Thunder!

Kurt Russell - Tombstone

Or as Kurt Russell said it in the film Tombstone....

"Get in the fight or get out of the way!"

Stan Lee - Spiderman

In other words, as Ross Richie once told me, "Write, write, write, write, write.", without worrying yourself about how much or how long it will take. After all.... Stan Lee didn't come up with Spiderman until he was 40 years old.

Later People!

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

Joe Paterno - The Alternate Scooby Doo ending!

Alright, I'm in an unusual amount of pain today and mentally just completely out of it, having a hard time pulling it together, so this will be quick today, but like a virgin with a complex, I just want to get it in there, so here we go....

We all know how guys talk to each other, right? Especially in that locker room type setting. Imagine its 1984, way back then before it was acceptable for homosexuals to come out of the closet, before the Rodney King beating pulled Political Correctness to the forefront of, well, everything, even ahead of truth and honesty, when the most insulting thing a man could call another man was.... FAG!

So guys break each others balls constantly, its how we say "I love you, Man!", and they sit down for a meeting in front Joe...

"Jerry, you child molester!"
Jerry looks over with an odd glint in his eye... "heh, FAG!"
"Alright you two" Joe Paterno says, "every day with this fag and child molester stuff, cut the crap, we've got Ohio State this week..... "

Its just guys being guys, right. Same nonsense, just horsing around.

Then an assistant somewhere comes up to Joe Paterno and says to him....
"hey Joe, there are rumors going around that Jerry's touching little boys"

Paterno thinks nothing of it, he here's this crap every damn day, those idiots busting on each other. Its just jock talk, making light of things, having a good time. But, just because he HAS to, Paterno brings it to HIS boss, his athletic director who tells him...."

"Joe, you and I know its just guys being guys.... hard to take that sort of thing out of a team setting, sort of clowning around that brings us together.... but better tell them to cut the crap anyway just in case, don't want there to be trouble over nothing...."

So they take care of it and that's it, lets concentrate on football.

Except 27 years later it comes out that Jerry Sandusky really WAS molesting little boys. The assistant that heard the rumors comes out and says "I told Joe, he went to the athletic director with it and it went nowhere from there".

Now Paterno, old as hell and half in the bag already, has no idea what the hell is going on. He's getting crucified over this craziness, and all he can do is stand around with that stupid look on his face thinking WTF? What just happened?

And if you know people, certainly if you know guys, and you know how things go out there in the every day, this easily sounds just as plausible a scenario as any other. How crazy would it be to piss all over the legacy of one of the real good guys if this is how it went down?

My point today is... until we know, we don't know.

Some 12 hours before the show "Crimes Against Nature" hit my screen, an just before seeing "Fatal Honeymoons", two real attention grabbers, I caught some show about the 10 greatest Hollywood news stories, scandals, what have you... EVER!

And they got into our friend, our pal, every one's favorite sideline reporter.... you know his as Nordberg, you love him...... you guessed it, I'm talking about O.J. Simpson!

Taking a look at this story the way we did with Joe Pa.... imagine O.J. really DIDN'T do it? Imagine the juice was telling the truth, really was away, and Nicole Simpson was the victim of a drug deal gone wrong. That sort of thing happens every single day.

Now O.J. is caught in a bad way. His wife was just murdered by drug dealers, his kids were there, he's distraught, but once the world finds out he's a raging drug addict, his clean cut reputation, everything he's worked so hard for, everything we all love about him.... GONE!

So he flips out, gets in his car and drives to clear his head.... but he cops think he's running.

After all of this a once solid life spirals out of control, he becomes the very thing we all accused him of being.... yeah, this happens too. Think about that for a minute.

I was saw O.J.'s lawyer Johnny Cochran on a Manhattan street going to play pool one night... he was wearing a fur coat, flanked by a group of some of the hottest women I've ever seen, four to each side of him.... if it don't fit, you must.... he's dead now, but did that guy know how to party or what?

Speaking about white women getting nailed by black running backs out of USC, that same show had a spot about Kim Kardashian on it, portraying her as a sweet woman always looking to make everyone happy..... she may very well be. I refuse to watch her show, really know nothing about her, which brings me to the point I wanted to make today....

Communication is everything, and I rarely get the message I want to send the way that I want to, so I wanted to clear something up.... often you'll hear me ripping into people, celebrities, for the messed up things that they do. Well, I'm not perfect either, I'm a total disaster, doing all kinds of messed up things myself. Even with my piece yesterday which spoke of how we need a hero, I don't know that I personally could live up to that standard myself, which only serves to highlight the difficulty of the situation.

Jessica Simpson

 People are people, prone to the same mess, no matter what situations or walk of life they're coming from. So my point isn't to bash people like Kim Kardashian or Snooki, or anyone else for that matter. I really don't care what the do as long as they don't make my life more difficult. Beyond that, people in glass houses.... you know?

Wait, that aint Snooki... Thank God!

What I'm really railing against are the reasons we put the people that we do up on those lofty pedestals, and trying to point out why it leads us astray so far as I can see it.

Hey, do what you got to do, if it makes you feel good do it, all of that. Have a good time, its what we're here for. I'm all for all of that, looking for all the ways I can do that for myself.

Just don't do it on the backs of others. We have a long way to go before we can all be dancing in the streets.

Anyway, I'm on all kinds of drugs right now... and they're really kicking my ass, I don't even know what I'm saying, so I'm out... for now.

Later People!



Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant

Coach LaSota

Slave Girl Princess Leia, and the balance between negative heckling and constructive criticism...

The response to yesterdays post, and all of last week, was OUTRAGEOUS! Thanks for that! Its amazing how that happens when just 1 of you shares these posts with your friends on Facebook.

One of the things that I held back from my coverage of the New York City Comic Con, the review of a book I was given for free from someone that I've seen around at a few different venues just for the purpose of the review, ends up being the perfect lead in for today.

The reason its perfect.... I just can't do it. I can't.

The book wasn't good. Sure, there were a couple of good ideas, but nothing sustainable. It just seemed like a bad rip on the old Tick comics, with a story that just didn't work. But I know how hard it is to do all that work, believe in it, put the time, money and effort into selling it... and it going no place. I just don't have the heart to tear it apart, not like I would do with multimillion dollar Hollywood productions.

The shame of it is, in terms of getting yourself out there, the creator was doing everything right. He had the nice looking booth girl getting attention, he spent the money on a nice sized booth, his table was full of different things like T-Shirts and what not.... but this is what happens when you're selling a product that's just not good.

And its situations just like this that sometimes put me at odds with a lot of the success principles that I've been learning over the passed few years. You're supposed to get as far away as you can from the naysayers. If people don't believe in what you're doing, you're not supposed to listen to them. Negative people will only drag you down, so go out there and live your dream, and all that jazz, right? Except that sometimes they're right.

There's a big difference between belittling someones dreams because you want to keep them down, or because you can't let them become more successful than you are, or whatever other reasons you can come up with, and the genuine warning that a real friend, and only a real friend, can offer.

If we're going to meet some ladies and your breath smells like my taint after a summer softball double header, its up to me to tell you about it. If you have a voice that sounds like someones skinning cats in a back alley behind a Chinese take out joint, and you're scheduled to appear on American Idol, then its my job to let you know what you're in for. If you've got a new man or woman in your life, and I've seen pictures of them online taking the hot lunch.... AND all of your friends think they're annoying and crazy and will ruin you.... guess what.....

So as much I do believe in positive thinking and perseverance, believing in what you do and all of that mess... you also have to know when you're backing the wrong horse.

Now, I could have made a splendid display a ripping this guy apart (I'm can be a real ass when I get my Irish up), just like I could have done a weeks worth of hysterical reviews of people that should never be dressed as Princess Leia in the slave outfit letting it all hang out..... but what would I really gain out of that? I'd effectively be destroying a good, though misguided, guy and his dream and given that gut wrenching twist that any of us with a conscious feels when we've hurt someone for no good reason; that sick feeling we get when we know we've done something really wrong.

Of course, I could have been a good media whore and done whatever I had to for new audience members. I could have blown this guy like a fluff girl at a gang bang so he'd tell everyone he knows how great I am.... but you all know how much I hate people that are full of it.... besides... to do so would not only cheapen the write ups I gave on the people, companies, and work that I really enjoyed... it would have cheapened everything that I have to say.

That's integrity, and its hard to keep, especially when you're up against it. But at the end of things, what else do we really have.

That doesn't mean I have to be nasty though. You know how the saying goes... if you've don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

Maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm just getting soft. Possibly both. The truth is that I probably don't have a right to complain about anything bad that happens to me. If you've ever been standing on a corner on Queens Blvd and randomly got pelted with Wendy's burgers... yeah... you're welcome. And if you've been on a date on cold winter night.... and some ass soaked you with a full Big Gulp.... could have been me too. There was a time that I was a horrible human being...

What am I talking about, that still makes me laugh my ass off....

I'm a terrible person.

My post yesterday was talking about an awesome time we had, mostly at the expense of someone. And now I find myself caught between conflicting emotions. Yeah, that was great, so damn funny I don't have words for it. Yet at the same time, I think I can say for sure that every one of us at one time or another has gone to a party, let it all out, had a good time, only to find out later on that we completely embarrassed ourselves somehow. Everyones that ass sometime, right? Eh, maybe its just me. That's part of the reason I keep the manimal in the cage.... ever on the look out for the return of the ass!

Everyone of us has thought we made a real connection with someone, only to find out that it was the exact opposite, and they want to run as far from us as possible. Eh, maybe that's just me too, I don't know. That's a terrible feeling; its heartbreaking.

What I was going to say today, the point of all of this, was to remember that these people, the guy with the bad book, the nut job at the party.... well, they're people too. Imagine how you would feel if it were you in that position. It puts a whole different spin on the scenario doesn't it? If I have a strength at all these days its empathy, and that's born out of always trying to put myself in someone else's shoes, see things how they're seeing it, feel what they're feeling. Try it sometime, it'll change you for the better.

Of course.... I may have my stalker for the first time in years, so you have to find a way to tell someone. You can't keep having them ruin your parties or life stops being a party, you'll lose the reminders of how awesome life is. If your friends favorite Chinese Take Out has people skinning cats in the back alley, you should probably find a way to tell them that may be broccoli, but that aint chicken. And if they're putting all of their time, money, effort and dreams into a thing that will never catch on because it just completely sucks....

I just don't have the heart to hurt anyone these days. I've been there too many times myself to make someone else go through it too. Unless they're one of the "popular" people or "beautiful" people that have always crapped on the ones they deemed unworthy....

Those people make me LOVE showing just what an ASSHOLE I can be. Really.

But not when its a good person, no matter how crazy or misguided they may be.

But that doesn't mean they don't need help to find the right path. Myself included. So where's the balance? That's my question for the day. Hit me with your opinions, give me some answers.

Later People!

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

 

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant

Coach LaSota

Facebook - The High School Lunch Room, and the power of BELIEF!!!

"All things are possible to he who believes" - Mark 9:23

I didn't think I'd have anything for you today, I've been exhausted for the most part to the point where nothing was passing through my head all day and I really didn't have anything to talk about. I had actually fell asleep until the music from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring had woken me. It was only about 7:30 and way too early to be out like that; that's where you wake up at 2 AM and you're shot for the rest of the day. I know you've been there before, haven't you?

For no reason, just thought you should see this

It got me to shoot up; something had to be done or I'd be right back in the same spot fifteen minutes later. So I checked Facebook; they're messing with the interface again to disastrous results. Its bad enough that the site has now degenerated to a virtual high school cafeteria; think about it, its a big room where you know a ton of people, all of them talking at the same time, all about themselves. Everyone is making a spectacle of themself as they walk in, trying to garner as much attention as they can. You move over to your "table", the twenty or so friends that you talk to everyday are waiting, and you start to shoot the shit.

Every once in a while you spot someone you know on the other side of the lunch room that you have to find something out from, or tell them about something, so you go over to their table for a few minutes, and then back to your friends. Once in a while they come to you. Then the bell rings and its off to wherever it is you have to go next.

Now its worse, you have to filter through three pages of "top stories", which is the type of ridiculous nonsense fifty people trying to nail the girl who made the post comment on that leaves you wishing you never commented yourself in the first place. After a few straight days of steady climbing on the hit chart my readership for this spot fell like a circus freak from the ugly tree. I blame this new cluster for the mess....

But then I got a message from a friend of mine telling me how much she was enjoying what I do here, and I felt that I'd be letting you all down if I didn't do my thing.

Abraham Lincoln once said "I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me, and I didn't have the heart to let them down." It's amazing the power that one person believing in you can have. The thought of that led me to thinking about my first book, VPI - the Saga Begins, and how I came to be published, which I'm not sure how many of you know.

Of course, the swirling energy, all of it flowing together and for a reason theme sticks with us. Fellowship of the Ring on the TV led directly to me writing this now. That book was the very thing that made me decide that I wanted to be a writer. JRR Tolkien is probably still the single biggest influence on my style to this day. Like him, I too tend to be long winded and go off on tangents, but the man paints with his words.

I started writing VPI back when I was twenty years old, mostly for shits and giggles. I'd gotten the idea for the book while reading "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman while I was on a trip to Virginia to visit my sister who was in college down there at the time. During my spare time in my mail room job I would write a scene or two in spiral note pads, then pass it around to my friends. They kept cracking up, so I kept writing. It was the only reason I did it, to entertain my friends, that was the fun in it for me.

I still walk around with the spiral note pads. That's what I wrote this in. I still write to entertain my friends; that's why you have this to read today. The fun of it for me is still when you read and enjoy it; that's my reward.

When I left that job and no longer had people to pass my story to I basically stopped writing. Every here and there I'd do more in it, almost always when someone new got into it, but without that it just wasn't fun. Even my girlfriend, who read Harry Potter seven times while I was with her, had no interest in reading my book, which tells you all you need to know about that relationship. Four more years passed and I hadn't hadn't added one word to it.

In that time was my whole Vegas debacle and the aftermath that ensued. Over ten years I had written sixty thousand words of a novel, and a dream, that was never going to go anywhere.

Then one afternoon, in the midst of being lost and not knowing what to do with myself, I came home to find a package from my dear friend Scotty. I had met Scotty in Vegas and we've talked almost every day since. If it wasn't for the worst thing that ever happened to me I never would have met one of the best friends I've ever had. How's that for everything happening for a reason?

Inside that package was a printed and bound copy of what Scotty had of my book. Seeing that, my book, in print gave me goosebumps and a charge you can't believe. The hair stood up, well, everywhere. I didn't even remember giving him that much of it, but that wasn't all that was in it. There was also a note.

In that note, which of course I still have, my friend told me that I had gone too far to stop now, and if he had done that much without finishing he couldn't live with it. His dream too was to one day be a writer, and so he started a publishing company in order to learn the process. My book he explained, when I finished, was going to be the first one that he published.

Here was someone who believed in me so much that he was going to put his money and reputation on the line for me at a time when I didn't even believe in myself. It seemed to me as though he was the only one who did. But that one person's belief was enough. At that point had taken me more than ten years to write the first sixty thousand words. After getting that letter I wrote thirty thousand words in the next thirty days, and insane task, mostly during lunch breaks and the train ride home, to finish the book.

Since then we've learned a great deal about what it takes to break in as professional writers, as well as the publishing business. No matter how good your work is, people don't buy your workm they buy your name; like the facebook cafeteria, they buy the hype. Now the publishing company's goal is to help new artists build that name.

In case you hadn't known this before, Abraham Lincoln was a collossel failure at pretty much everything he ever tried. He then went on to become, arguably, America's greatest President. All because he had a friend who believed in him, and he didn't have the heart to let them down.

The things I talk about in this space are a reflection of what's happening with me and I feel and what I think about it and the world around me at the time. I've been told its been much better since I've been writing it just for myself. But the part of writing it that's for me is whatever joy you get out of it. And it doesn't take much to keep me going, just knowing that you get something out of it too.

If there's a lesson in any of this, something to take out of it, then I hope its this:

It's amazing what people are capable of with just a little bit of belief. It can turn losers into winners, failures into Presidents, dreams into something real. And that magic can make the change in a moment. But if my good friend didn't let me know it then I'd have given up, and you wouldn't be reading this right now. So if it's someone else that you believe in, make sure you let them know. They could be the next Abraham Lincoln, and your telling them could be all the difference.

Later People

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant
Coach LaSota