If you've been hibernating for the last few months, you'll have missed the fact that we now have a dog. Time consuming? Hard work? Sure - but totally worth it. I even built him his own blog so that I wouldn't write about him too much here but it's very tempting all the same. There's a lot of things on the proverbial desk this week, let's see if I can make sense of it all. First of all, on the day job front, we have a show this weekend which is always good fun if not rather time consuming. I'm looking forward to this one because my buddy Wayne Simmons is coming up to work on some stuff, but we also have clandestine plans to do a podcast. Wayne figured it would be a fun idea to interview me about my 'career' in magazines (I'm sure he intended the term loosely) and then also about by books and writing - something that I'm really looking forward to because I've never been made to really think about it before. Back in the real world, I know I won't be able to help myself and it will transform itself into a two-way street pretty swiftly, so if you're a fan of his work, stay tuned for the results of that. I'll post them here and Wayne will do his thing with it as well. If the name is damningly unfamiliar to you, Wayne has written a good few books (or a few good books even) - all the info is over at his linked blog there, but the latest is called Plastic Jesus and looks like this...

...and it's totally worth your time. Anyway, if it all goes wrong, the worst that can happen is that we'll have a "hair vs no hair" picture to post. Sometimes, that's as good as it gets. Mr Simmons (everybody should have a friend called Mr Simmons) also puts on his own show - Scardiff - in err, Cardiff (natch). With the wind in the right direction, I'm looking to release Turn The Lamp Down Low in time for it and launch it there, but that's months away (October) but it's a heads up for you all the same.

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I've been reading about.. hmm.. how can I put it... "making things happen when you're out on a limb" this week and came across some good wisdom along the way that I think is worth sharing. In Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception, he puts it like this (and I paraphrase): Oprah (as a show) is dead and buried so you can't go on her show to get noticed, but YouTube actually wants you to host your own show and they will give you the space for free - but neither Oprah or YouTube will call you up. The record company's aren't looking to sign you but iTunes and hundreds of other places will be only too pleased to play host to you. Sadly, they're not likely to call you up and ask either.

The point of this section is that it's in our very nature to wait to be picked. To seek permission and authority for somebody to say you are good enough and that in turn, validates what you're doing - but the world only turns on that axis for a select few and who knows what's gone on behind the scenes in order to get them that far. Sometimes, the very thing going on behind the scenes is the very thing that's being suggested here - getting off your ass and making something because it's there to be made and only you can do it your way.

Later in the book, there's a great section about your audience. How you can read 24 good reviews and one bad one - guess which one you'll hold onto. That's right.. the bad one and exactly why you should never read any reviews - good or bad. Ignore them all. I need to quote this next part:

"After you've created your art, whatever it is, it's done. What the audience does with it is out of your control. If you focus your angst and emotion on the people who don't get it, you've destroyed part of your soul and haven't done a thing to improve your art. Your art, if you made it properly, wasn't for them in the first place. Figure out who your art is for, get better at connecting with that audience, ignore the rest."

There's one final bit that hit home with me: he then describes how a big enough audience will destroy you because some of them will want what you do taller, shorter, wider, thinner, cheaper, more expensive... but (and this is the important part if you're still with me on this) it's only the mass marketers that need everybody. You do not. You only need to matter to a few.

Interesting trains of thought huh. The key is actually believing in it and living by it knowing that it's true no matter how hard it gets.

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Meantime, the best thing the web has turned up for me this week is this fine article on How To Make A Bone Chandelier over at Atlas Obscura. Take a look. What in the world could be simpler than this:

A word about writing - and this might be pretty important whatever it is you're planning to do - now I've decided to go it alone (see post from day before yesterday), a lot of pressure has disappeared. The pressure was self inflicted for sure but I've always worked that way. I've stopped thinking about 'might be' and 'what if' and a dozen other things and have probably written more in the last few days than I have in a long time. The icing and the cherry on the cake for me was that I just read Seth Godin's new book The Icarus Deception which (as I'm sure is the point of the book) snapped everything into a very fine focus. Allow me to drill into it if you will. The general gist of the book is everything as you know it is broken. Some of us know this, some of us don't, but regardless of which tribe you fall into doesn't change the truth of the matter. It's 2013 and everything is different, everything is changing and if you think you've got a handle on it, then you've missed the point because it will all have changed again by tomorrow anyway.

Keeping focussed on the 'being an author' train of thought, I think it's important to chew that over. The only way you can be an author is by finishing your book. Then writing another and another until you don't want to do it anymore or die. It has nothing to with a publisher giving you permission to be one. Or an agent. Or whether the public buys your book or anything else. The money I'm sure is very nice, but if that's truly your prime motivation, you'd be better off becoming an investment banker or a drug dealer.

The story is all there is - and I suspect in my own spiritual way - that the universe will find you an audience when you've done good work - providing you don't just leave it sitting on a hard drive or in a notebook under your pillow.

Anyway, back to Seth Godin (and you should read it, not just listen to my lousy paraphrasing of it): it's time for new 'stuff' to happen. It is a new world out there. A new world in which anything is possible. I realise now (and how could I have been so stupid) that while I was 'waiting' (that might be the wrong word) for somebody to step up to the plate and say "I don't give a fuck what the publishing industry thinks - here's my book", what I should have been doing was to be that person.

Visibly. Not just in my head.

In the back of my mind, in an alternative world, I have sat here many times and said Stephen King should do this... or Gaiman should do this. 'This' being to go it alone - not for the money but to prove it can be done, but why should they? They paid their dues once. Why pay them again? And somewhere inside I think I wanted them to do this because I perceived them as 'safe'. If it didn't work out, they would be OK. That was wrong of me. It may be safe but really, what would it actually prove? Maybe I was looking for some kind of role model. A Dirty Harry style lone gunman of the publishing world... but I have no idea why I thought I needed that. Insert smilie face icon of choice at this juncture if you wish. This searching for answers thing is hard work. I should learn to quieten my mind and stop asking so many damn questions. I'm a big boy now.

The real world answer is that I need to do it for myself and maybe I can help some others out along the way. If it all falls apart and the world thinks my books suck/are incredible, that's fine too.

My job is simply to keep going.

Yep. That was me thinking out loud in public. Thanks for listening...

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That's enough of that. Let's get back to inane-ness. Californication starts again next week. Here's a cool interview with David Duchovny for Rolling Stone.

And to raise the mood before you go, I heard this on the radio earlier on. Great song. Great band. Stupid hat.