Creation of the New
I’ve been writing a blog. Yes, a blog.
Actually two blogs. Creating them was a suggestion on the list
of endless suggestions from my new publisher about what I can do
to pave the way for my new book, The
Given Self. I fought it, as
I do all marketing suggestions. They seem such a hassle. I don’t
expect any of them to work.
I’ve always had a lot of magical thinking when it comes
to writing: like, if it’s good enough, it’ll be found.
Or this one – if someone needs it – God or spirit will
lead them to it. Or, how about the reason of integrity – marketing
feels so commercial – so non-spiritual. They’re all
more or less valid sentiments, but it sure seems like the right
time to give people, and even God, a little help if it’s
needed. The world could sure use a lot more wholehearted people.
There wasn’t any promotion for A
Course of Love. Next month
it’ll be eight years since the first edition was published
by New World Library. I can’t tell you how many copies have
sold since then. I assume the original 5000 copies are gone and
simply being re-circulated on the internet, but I could be wrong.
I can’t guess at how many have sold overseas. For those who
don’t know how publishing works (and I’m one of you),
simply rest assured that when a foreign publisher buys the rights
to your book you’re lucky if you get a single copy. Since
I began publishing the series with Itasca/Bookmobile, I’ve
not kept much better track, but since 2006, I’d guess about
350 books a year have sold (or about 30 a month of each title).
Recently that number doubled, I suspect in large part due to Dr.
Page’s article in “Miracles” magazine. I’ve
also got two new friends, one in Georgia and the other in California
who are growing small Course of Love communities. You never really
know what makes things happen, but I’m grateful to each of
you who have contributed to this growth, whether I know about you
and what you’re doing or not.
There’s still a long way to go, but a sudden doubling like
that is good news. They (the great “they” – the
experts) say that once you reach a certain number – it used
to be 10,000 (not sure if it still is) – that word of mouth
will be great enough to start a real awareness surge. If you imagine
30 titles a month becoming 60, and the next doubling being from
60 to 120 and so on, A Course of
Love may be only a year or so
from breaking the awareness barrier. Of course, it all still seems
terribly slow.
I just had a lovely man write me recently
after visiting this website. He’d had A
Course of Love for years and hadn’t
known about the Treatises and Dialogues. So there’s still
an issue, even with that. Who knows how many people bought this
Course in 2001 or 2002 and simply thought that’s all there
was and never looked further?
One of the activities I’ve undertaken, which is much easier
for having a “new” book out, is writing a whole lot
of spiritual teachers, writers, organizations, and media to let
them know about it (i.e., new book = a reason for their interest),
and while I’m at it, I get to introduce A
Course of Love.
I think every one of us feel it in one way or another – that
desire to have this new way find its place in the hearts and minds
of quite a few more people.
So…back to the blogs. I’ve been investigating, trying
to find the ways of building awareness that will suit me. Since
I love to write, writing a blog seemed a reasonable idea but I
didn’t know a thing about them. Had never visited one. Never
cared to. Didn’t even know how to look, or if things like
FaceBook and Twitter qualify as blogs. What are they anyway?
I had a vague idea, starting out, that
if I started a blog, I could attach it to the website and it
would be a way of communicating
without having to pay for web-updates. I’d post and folks
would comment and we’d have a bit of a forum.
What feels like a million hours on the
internet (not my favorite thing) later, I’ve learned a few things. One thing I learned
is that blogs aren’t meant to be used for selling and you’re
not supposed to talk about your books all the time (or maybe not
at all). Another thing that caught my attention was when I read
that most blogs fail because they’re directed at an audience
that already exists. Since I do want to invite a vast new audience,
I started paying more attention.
Then I started to find a few blogs I liked,
and they didn’t
break these rules (although tons did). They were more like columns…say…Thomas
Moore writing in Spirituality and
Health. In those columns, Moore
doesn’t talk about his own books – he talks about whatever
he’s feeling like talking about. The only one I can remember
right now was one on grief, but I always liked Moore, and when
I subscribed to that magazine would turn to his column first.
Other blogs seemed to match the Twitter
dictum that says you write to the question: What did you do today?
Even the column-like blogs
that I enjoyed were like that – very immediate, somewhat
chatty – like writing an email to a friend but maybe with
a tad more content. Looking at the most successful of them, they
seemed like the writings of people who were simply being themselves.
Needless to say, I didn’t visit any political blogs, since
I didn’t find anybody trying to convince anybody of anything.
They were full of stories, or ruminations, and very present moment.
It was truly bizarre…surprising to me. With the really good
ones, I felt as if I got to know the person writing and quite quickly.
I liked the style. It felt new. No teaching, no learning, no promoting,
no discussion points: just sharing.
With these ideas in mind, I decided to
do two blogs, one that was my own idea and the other a suggested
idea. My idea is a blog
called Spit and Vinegar (Thoughts on Living from Solitude and Chaos).
The suggested idea was that I write about the process of getting
a book published as it happens. That one’s called Pubjournal.
I happily began writing away – whatever was on my mind that
day, although I have to admit that I have not yet quite got the
style, or the proper length, down completely. I got on a roll with
my own themes and have not talked about what I eat for breakfast.
I’ve only mentioned the cat once. I could do more of that,
though. It’s almost like learning a new way to write and
I’m finding it fascinating.
Only thing is, I still don’t really “get it.” I
didn’t have a “feed” at all for a while so that
it was like writing for myself pretty much. Now I have a feed but
I can’t say I see what it does for me. Apparently you can
subscribe to tons of feeds and even make money off the advertisements
that then pop up, but I couldn’t handle that and didn’t
want anyone to suffer through flashing ads for Viagra or even aspirin,
so I settled in with the one standard feed. I thought that once
you had a blog and a feed you could type in a word on a topic (at
least on Google, blogspot is Google’s version of the blog)
and if I’d been writing on that topic I’d appear. I
was wrong about that too. Maybe my blog shows up as piece of information
number 999. I’m still not certain, but my guess is the more
people who visit your blog the further up the information highway
your site travels so that you slowly inch your way from 999 (or
page 500 of a search) to 105, (and page 6), but you’re still
not going to show up on the first page of anybody’s search – whether
they’re searching for the title of your blog, or the title
of your book. Suffice it to say, I’m a novice and I’ll
likely stay one, but I do have two blogs and you can link to them
from here.
They’re not about A
Course of Love but the Course of Love
is the foundation of everything I feel and do, the center of my
life, and since no one’s likely to kick me out of the blog
club if I mention A Course of Love or The
Given Self once in a
while, they’re occasionally there as more than foundation.
At first I didn’t think this way of writing was optimal,
but now I do. As happens so often when things occur in that accidental, “you
don’t know what you’re doing” way, the optimal
occurs. Whatever grows out of our freedom to be who we are, our
compassion for each other and for the world, and our passion to
create the new, can’t be held narrowly to book discussion
topics. I’ve felt for a long time that spirituality needs
to break out of its box. To be the faces of love and bodies of
Christ in this new time, we’re going to each have to try
new things, express all of our concerns, and let our hearts grow
into embracing the suffering as well as the joy of the world.
As I get more radical with age and time
and with a heart getting broken all the time, I have to admit
that I’m saying more
in these blogs than I would have if my initial idea hadn’t
grown. I’m being more true to myself, and although there
are some who might argue that this makes me less than true to ACOL
as they see it, I hope there will be as many who are coming down
from the mountain, walking whatever path they’re set upon,
and following whatever mysterious ways their hearts speak to them
as far as they possibly can.
We are the people, this is the time, and wholeheartedness is the
way.
We’re in this together. We’re spreading the love (and
the word) – no matter in how many different ways – in
one united voice for change. I’m open to suggestions. And
I’ve discovered one very important thing in this process:
if I’m open to blogs, I’m open to doing all kinds of
new things. I only hope my service, and yours, is called upon – that
we’re asked, invited, and compelled – more and more,
into creation of the new.
See Creation of the New
(Comments? Send to mari@thedialogues.com)
