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Charles Bukowski and the Secret to Immortal Writing

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Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. was arguably the greatest American fiction writer of the last half of the 20th century. Fortunately for his book sales, most think of him as the archetypal drunk, misanthropic male pig. Don’t let the hype fool you, though. Bukowski possessed the secret to something nearly every blogger wants: what makes truly immortal writing. As I’ve only spent a few minutes with his now 16-year-old corpse lying in San Pedro (see photo above), I can’t speak to his personal life. But the words, the lines, the books, they are evidence of a generous, staggeringly imperfect, stoic genius and lover of life. Sure, a stack of tangled contradictions, who isn’t? Before (and after) his relatively minor fame hit, Bukowski spent decades mailing his poems and stories to small press magazines, mimeographed booklet makers and the like. Thousands of pages, hundreds of thousands of words. Usually these would go out as originals, no carbon copies. He once estimated that he’d lost hundreds of poems this way, the publisher usually wouldn’t return the rejected work, and it was gone forever. It forced him to move on, to work deliberately, to punch through again and again and again without sentiment. The poetry business, in my opinion, is largely an inbred, favor-driven, audience-less racket. Most folks don’t think about poetry until Terry Gross drags some poor, expressive soul into her studio for a literary interview. And when he or she begins to talk, most folks switch the channel. Bukowski eventually acquired a raving audience despite this reality. An audience that continues to grow exponentially 16 years after his death. An audience that begs, borrows and steals to get his stuff. An audience that he famously never chased down. An audience that he, in fact, largely pushed away . How did he do it? How did he go on to sell endless books of poetry and finally lay down in the dirt making an almost six-figure literary income? Several reasons of course, but try this one on for size … The secret is in the line. ~ Charles Bukowski Yeah, I know. Don’t dismiss that. Read it again. The secret is in the line. ~ Charles Bukowski No 10 point PR plan. No elaborate structure. No budget. No reader polls. No blog. The secret is in the line. ~ Charles Bukowski Sure, Twitter wasn’t around in 1980. And he eventually had John Martin at Black Sparrow Press backing him. But Bukowski himself attributed so much weight to the single line that it eclipsed all else in his philosophy of writing. If the single line was magnificent, the rest would take care of itself. In a 60,000 word novel, the working focus was on the single line . In the dirty stories sold to skin mags for money, the working focus was on the single line . In a small poem that maybe 50 people would read, the working focus was on the single line . Not easy. Not fast. But this must certainly be the path to immortal (and powerfully influential) writing. If you can stomach it. If not, there’s always a place for you in the pedestrian lane . About the Author: Robert Bruce is an American writer. And day job man. And beer drinker. And Presbyterian. All from the rain and fog of Portland, Ore. Get him on Twitter .

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Charles Bukowski and the Secret to Immortal Writing

Gravity Forms Review: Powerful WordPress Forms Made Simple

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People ask me all the time for recommendations on premium WordPress plugins, and I often have nothing to say. With people like Chris Pearson, Sean Jackson, and Tony Clark as partners, if we want WordPress to do something it doesn’t, we build it. Many times the things we build for ourselves end up becoming products and services for you, like Thesis , Scribe and the upcoming Premise . If we have a need for it, we figure odds are you do, too. Luckily, the premium WordPress market has matured to the point that excellent developers are building things we happily buy rather than build. Gravity Forms from Carl Hancock of Rocket Genius is one such product, and that’s why I’m doing my first ever WordPress plugin review for you – I’m that impressed. What is Gravity Forms? In their own words: Gravity Forms for WordPress is a full featured contact form plugin that features a drag and drop interface, advanced notification routing, lead capture, conditional logic fields and the ability to create posts from external forms. Got that? How about once more in English? Basically, Gravity Forms is software that makes WordPress way better by allowing you to empower people to send you any sort of information, and even publish directly on your site in certain circumstances. The plugin adds a “Forms” section to the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area, from which you can quickly access the multitude of things Gravity Forms allows you to do. Let’s look at four of those things: Contact and Support Forms The most basic use of Gravity Forms is your general contact form, which just about every WordPress site has some form of. Whatever the reason people need to get in touch, Gravity Forms makes it easy. But it’s the versatility of what you can do in terms of contact and support forms that makes even this seemingly mundane use of forms exciting. You can create any variety of form, collect any array of data, allow for file uploads, set up notifications to route to different email addresses based on rules you define, and place the form on any page or post at the click of a new button that shows in your posting interface. So think about it. Instead of a lead generation call to action that requires the click of a link to reach a form (2 steps), you place the form itself at the bottom of the post. Conversions go up when the number of steps go down. Plus you can include hidden fields that transmit data like IP address, use conditional form fields that appear only if the preceding responses are a certain value, dynamic pre-population of form fields, and lot of other stuff that opens a world of possibilities beyond the boring old contact form. Surveys and Polling That versatility goes way beyond contact and support forms. Gravity Forms allows you to quickly build surveys and reader polls with open-ended text fields, drop down menus, checkboxes, numerical fields, and multiple-choice questions. You can create lengthy reader survey forms in minutes that provide feedback on a regular basis. Even cooler is simply popping in a quick multiple-choice poll at the bottom of your post for instant data in a format that in many cases will be more useful than free form blog comments. And don’t forget the conditional form fields. If someone chooses a certain option from a drop down or multiple-choice question, you can then ask follow-up questions based only on that response. Pretty cool functionality that you usually have to buy separate survey software to get. Guest Post Submission Guest posting is one of the best methods of building quality back links for bloggers and other content creators. The win for the publisher, of course, is additional quality content from other sources, but it can become a management pain to keep up with the submitted content, much less format it and post it. With Gravity Forms, you can create a guest post submission page that allows regular and prospective guest writers to “post” outside of your WordPress admin area. You create a form that contains all the regular post fields (title, image, body, excerpt, category… you can allow all or just the areas you want), and the content submission become a draft post inside WordPress. You get instant guest content organization while also reducing the normal workload that accepting guest posts involves. For many busy bloggers, this feature is worth the price of admission alone. User-Generated Content Okay, here’s where things get really interesting. Using the exact same functions that allow you to accept guest posts, you can allow user-generated content on your site that goes way beyond comments. Or you can build a review, Q&A, or wiki-style site using nothing more than WordPress. This is an amazing site-building breakthrough in my opinion. For example, using Thesis and Gravity Forms, you could build a local hotel review website without writing a single line of code. The layout of the site and the user posting mechanism would all be built point-and-click, drag-and-drop from inside your WordPress interface. Time to kick your imagination into high gear. And Gravity Forms allows you to do much more than what I’ve highlighted in this review. Lifetime Support and 25% Off I bought Gravity Forms with my own money for my own personal use, with no intention of promoting it. As soon as I understood how powerful it was, however, I asked Carl Hancock if we could become a marketing partner. Carl said sure, but he also told me that they were changing their support offer as of April 1, 2010. The original deal was Gravity Forms came with lifetime support at no extra charge, but they were changing to an offer that limited the initial support period to a year, beyond which you’d have to pay more to continue to get support. I asked Carl if he would consider extending the deadline to May 1st so I could get you all in on the better deal. Carl again said sure. Then because I’m a slacker busy person, I missed the May 1 deadline too… and had to plead for another extension. Carl not only said sure once again, he threw in a 25% discount for Copyblogger readers who use a special promo code. So here’s what you do: Go to the Gravity Forms website and explore all the features and details. Select the plan that’s right for you – the 1-site, 5-site, or Developer option. Use the promo code LIFETIME when you check out. Get this done before May 8, 2010, or the deal goes bye bye. Do a happy dance. Seriously, I think you’ll get a lot of value out of Gravity Forms . About the Author : Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter .

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Gravity Forms Review: Powerful WordPress Forms Made Simple

Are You Burning Your Most Important Writing Client?

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If you are a writer , congratulations! You have magic to be envied. You possess the rare skill of being able to make something from nothing. You can change thinking, create emotions, paint pictures in your readers’s minds. You can manufacture money from thin air. Just by moving your fingers across the keyboard. Through the alchemy of writing, you can take what makes you unique and turn it into consistent revenue. Write with a plan and you can turn your thoughts into an asset that keeps paying you over and over and over again. Yet many writers make the same mistake . . . over and over again. Instead of building for their future, they keep running around in circles. Chasing deadlines, spiraling toward burnout. Sure, they are writing each day and working to get a long list of appreciative clients. But too many writers ignore their most important client. If you are writer, your most important client is you If you are writer, your most important assets are the words that you create. You create great content — blog posts, email newsletters, special reports, landing and web pages, scripts for viral video — for your clients. You know that words on the page (or screen) are crucial to building a business. And you know that strong writing is one of the most effective ways to create a valuable product. If you are writer, you owe it to yourself to deliver your best work to your best client, building up your business’s most valuable asset. Day after day after day. Whether you are building your business with your content , creating an information product to teach others and help them to grow, or writing the next literary masterpiece , you have the opportunity to build a future without limits. You have an obligation to your most important client It is not enough to stockpile ideas for your own blog or email list, or promise yourself that you’ll get to it later. Chances are, later will knock on your door at the same time as Publisher’s Clearing House. Don’t be the chef who gets crummy takeout on his way home, or the plumber with a steady drip in her kitchen sink. Be the writer who writes. Not just for others, but for yourself. Each day pulling your dreams taut, one sentence at a time. It’s easy to get off track Like the mythical Monday that keeps you from sticking to your diet, flimsy excuses are always in reach. And like dieting, it is seeing the results that can keep you on track. The steady accumulation of words over time is a remarkable thing. A large project can feel daunting, but the most important thing you could ever do is to simply get started. The first 500 words are seeds. Every syllable after that is fertilizer, sun, and water. Whether you write 250 or 2,500 words per day, be consistent. Watch them grow. Soon enough you will have a thriving business, a solid product, or perhaps even a bestselling book. No one’s going to make you do it You probably started writing so that you could be your own boss. I know I did. Don’t get me wrong, writing for others is a wonderful way to make a living and I’ve never had more fun in my life. But I also understand that there’s a magic to being a writer which goes beyond the page; a magic that stretches right into forever. Long after the waves of time have rinsed my footprints to memory, my words will be read, shared and remembered. You are a writer as well. So book some time today with your most important client, and make that client’s dreams come true. Sean Platt writes direct response copy , as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter .

burning dollar Are You Burning Your Most Important Writing Client?

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Are You Burning Your Most Important Writing Client?