Creating a Literary Ecosystem: The 7 Essential Elements of a Fulfilling Writing Career
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 seven circular elements of your literary ecosystem will be:
• Passion---your excitement for creating and communicating your work
• 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 passion and platform for sharing the value of work to serve your communities
• Profit---what you need to achieve your personal and professional goals and maintain the system
The importance of each element will vary, depending on what you write. Promotion will be more important for a book than a blog post.
Your ecosystem has to keep learning from and contributing to your communities, the hyper-connected human family, and the planet. Your system will continue to build synergy as long as you sustain it by enriching its soil with content and communication.
Make cultivating your ecosystem a lifelong quest. You will accomplish more than you can imagine.
About Michael Larsen
Michael Larsen-Elizabeth Pomada Literary Agents / Helping Writers Launch Careers Since 1972 larsenpoma@aol.com / www.larsenpomada.com / 415-673-0939 /1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, 94109
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
These are six wonderful, true points that, as writers remember and refer to them, will keep us true to our craft and ourselves. Thank you, Michael Larsen1
ReplyDeleteHi Noelle,
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree,(six or seven). :-) And I'd like to also thank Mr. Larsen for his time, expertise and generosity of sharing today. I appreciate the feedback, Noelle.
I like the idea of thinking about the elements of our careers as ecosystems. We tend to neglect certain things, either because we haven't learned how to do them or don't like to do them, but that limits our overall careers from flourishing and thriving. It seems it might be difficult to balance all seven of these equally, but there might be overlap between them, or they might sustain each other.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perspective!
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteInteresting indeed! Thanks for stopping by and weighing in.
Thank you Mr. Larsen, for this interesting analogy. I love this idea - my mind is already turning in various directions. I like too, how it can be adjusted for different types of writing. Thanks to you too, Jennifer for hosting and providing the introduction.
ReplyDeleteHave a great weekend!
Karen,
ReplyDeleteMuch appreciation for sharing your thoughts today. Always a pleasure. :-)