I have a blog for the express purpose of connecting to the World who will find my stories and order them!!!  That is how I came to have a website (storykim.com) and a blog.  Friends say I am a natural blogger.  I think that was a compliment.  Or at least it was not really an insult.  I have many many interests and love to "think on paper."  But I have had this blog for how long now? And this is about the fourth entry I've made.  Because it's PUBLIC yet highly...unseen.  So I am overwhelmed by the perplexities of the paradox that I am shouting to the world but no one is listening.

Yet.

And while my publisher continues to struggle to get the purchasing side of their site up, I struggle with things like getting the time and energy to address what I have yet to learn---like how to change an adobe file to a jpeg so I can load my book cover image onto my website.  Or how to fix the sidebar on the blog back to being able to read the stuff...it just disappeared the last time I wrote an entry...I looked at my choices of how to put what where in the sidebar and somehow made the words disappear.

So the blog is about blogging and ...

Oh yeah, that's what I was going to say.  That I think part of the problem I'm having with blogging is the above mentioned paradox, but also...what tone do I want to convey?  I'm considering loading up haiku.  Literary stuff.  Observations on the world immediately in my vicinity.  I named the blog "InnerActions" because ever since I was really young I always wanted to have a newsletter with that as the masthead.  That was way way way before "blogs" or even email.

I will find my voice.  I always have.

"Chip away at it" is good advice.  Patience is a virtue.  Writing is hard work.  Great bumper stickers all.  I have "owned" a domain name, website, this blog, and a ... traffic blazer, for about a month now.  I thought it would be a great learning experience.  However, I feel rather pummelled by technology these days.  Today I finally published the website.  It is skeletal and incomplete.  I had to remove a picture that I tried to upload a million different ways to decrease its "size" because the site wouldn't publish otherwise and yet the account says I'm only using 1 of 50 mbs.  Do what now?

I didn't realize how frustrated and moody I am today until a friend called and she asked me what was wrong and I could tell that my explanation that I am frustrated with the website and my publisher didn't seem to ring true to her.  Bless her, she has not experienced having a publisher nor having a website.  But then I called the wonderful folks who are hosting my website to ask questions but I'd left pertinent info in the car, and my cell connection was breaking up so I have yet to call them back, but as I was speaking, I could hear my own bad mood, totally unintentional, but decided to do all I can first, at least get stuff up if not running and call them back another day.  I've spent an abundant amount of time and energy on this and all I've managed to do is confirm my own ignorance.  Unknowing is a great place to be if you're a buddhist...

As for the publisher...I am merely concerned with promises unkept and condescending comments reflecting difficulties I know nothing about.  I'm investing a lot of time and money into the marketing of my novels, and I assume they are investing similarly and are perhaps as frustrated with not actually having available the titles they are showing on their website.  Mine is among about 30 that as of this date cannot actually be ordered.  But the word I get from my managing editor, no doubt through clenched teeth, is to be patient.

So I'm chipping away at it.  I will blog.  I will now add a bit onto the website a little at the time.  I have to figure out how and why this blog doesn't link to the site and vice versa...

And I'm hungry.  That will be a blog soon.  Being hungry while trying to lose 20 pounds. 

When I was in college, Madeleine L'Engle was a guest speaker for a writing and literature conference.  In fact I believe she came rather frequently.  And what a sight to behold! She was larger than life with a wide face and clothes that draped softly over her and she seemed more to fly than walk, but her gestures were large and her walk was in slow motion.  At least that's how I remember it.

I remember her great expanse of creativity.  She could write anything.  I don't remember the first time I heard her name or the first book of hers I read.  "A Wrinkle in Time" was published the year I was born, I believe, so it is quite possible that I grew up with a smidgeon of everything.  I loved her Wrinkle books.  I don't believe I read the Austin family series, though my sister probably did.  I thoroughly love (still) the Crosswick Journals.  If you haven't read them, do.  I believe their titles are "Circle of Quiet," "The Irrational Season," and "Summer of the Great Grandmother," probably not in that order :o).

It was my privilege to be able to proofread a couple of her manuscripts that are quasi theological, though she never ever wanted to be considered a theologian.  She was a creative writer, story teller, with questions of God...and enjoyed pursuing "what if" answers. 

Oh, her other stories that I was quite taken with, specifically, were "The Small Rain," which was her first novel.  Then she wrote the sequel something like 20 years later--"A Severed Wasp."  Such a good book. 

The story of her first book being written on trains and backstage of broadway or off-broadway productions as she worked as stagemanager, and later wrote in the brain-dead hours of night after putting her kids to bed have left me with great guilt when I feel I can't get to the story.  I'm glad, however, to have had such an example at a relatively young age that there are no excuses.  Gotta keep writing.  I have a friend whose mantra is "keep chipping away at it" and that has become my life's mantra, as well.

I think I read that L'Engle wrote 60 books.  Then I have barely read any of them.  Seems like.  How awesome to have shared the planet with her if only for a handful of decades.

This first entry is rather experimental.  As a story teller/writer, I have never ever feared the written word.  Until now.  I would rather sit in my small room with my computer and create stories than try to sell them.  I'm proud of them.  They're fun and worthy to be read.  But somehow trying to sell them brings out all the stage fright I've ever experienced.  Marketing, blogging, directmail, websites...suddenly I'm too self-conscious to think straight. 

The tech people for the website are fabulous.  But ultimately, the risk of experimentation and seeing how everything looks, all rests with me.  I don't even have all the components up and running yet.  I don't have the website like I want it so it's not up yet. 

I keep picturing toddlers who magically rise up and start walking and then fall on their face.  That's what this feels like.  So I'm going to post this...and then modify stuff...figure out how to involve search engines---which is what this is for, you see.  You, the reader, will find this blog and fall smitten at my feet and link to the website and purchase my stories.

Ah well, one can hope it will become successful.  The coordination with my publisher is another adventure.  The book is available but ... not quite yet available.  The instant society still takes forever to get clicking.  So, as a friend of mine says, we'll just keep chipping away at it.  This is my success for today.  I have uploaded a blog entry.  Be kind.