{"id":504,"date":"2009-01-03T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2009-01-03T06:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=504"},"modified":"2025-07-26T12:18:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:18:33","slug":"faith-and-hope-and-elbow-grease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/faith-and-hope-and-elbow-grease\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith and hope and elbow grease"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a permablogger over at Publishing Renaissance (for those of you who don\u2019t know). I\u2019m alternating Thursdays, starting January 1 [post is gone] (yeah, I know, it was 2 days ago). And it\u2019s so cool to be kicking off Publishing Renaissance\u2019s year.<\/p>\n

Lately, I\u2019ve been around some blogs that are extraordinarily<\/span> kinda negative and I notice it brings my production down, in terms of writing the next books in the Dunham series<\/a>, in terms of the projects B10 Mediaworx has on the table right now (I don\u2019t have enough fingers to count), in terms of my own blogging, in terms of doing what writers are supposed to do once their books are published, in terms of the DDJ, and most importantly<\/em><\/strong>, in terms of how I treat my Tax Deductions and Dude. I know I shouldn\u2019t allow myself to be that influenced by negativity that it starts trickling down to my fandamily, but I am.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been a positive-thinker type of person, but Dude is and he\u2019s rubbed off on me. I\u2019m also not one of those “think it into existence” people, either. It\u2019s just that I\u2019ve noticed that the more productive I get the more positive I get; the more I hang around negativity, the less productive I get. This isn\u2019t a good situation. I have too many interesting things to do to mess around with things that don\u2019t advance my goals.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting things I\u2019m into is, as you know, independent publishing. While I do point out what I feel are the weaknesses of traditional publishing (and I\u2019ll admit to a certain level of frustration and bitterness\u2014I\u2019m only human), I do that to highlight the fact that one can<\/em> be in charge of one\u2019s own destiny\u2014<\/p>\n

\u2014and it\u2019s an incredible feeling, let me tell you.<\/p>\n

There are “vanity press” naysayers and name-callers and compulsive “helpers” who aren\u2019t really<\/em> helping. The fact that they quite often don\u2019t differentiate between “vanity” and “POD” and “self” publishing is, I think, a function of insufficient research or a measure of insulation from the querying masses or resentment for taking a “shortcut” and bypassing the “system.” Depending on the day, that might hurt my feelings, but I keep on keeping on.<\/p>\n

Mostly what keeps me going is when I look at the pile of projects that have been brought to us (B10 Mediaworx) that are incredible and fantastic. To know we might have a role in bringing such incredible and fantastic things to the public\u2014things that have never been done before and we would never have conceived of on our own\u2014because I took my destiny in my own hands is \u2026<\/p>\n

I have no words to describe it.<\/p>\n

We might fail. I<\/em> might fail.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

But I have to make the effort, cut through the bullshit, and go forward with courage and optimism. Maybe, just maybe, I can offer someone else a hand up or a piece of information they needed or some encouragement along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a permablogger over at Publishing Renaissance (for those of you who don\u2019t know). I\u2019m alternating Thursdays, starting January 1 [post is gone] (yeah, I know, it was 2 days ago). And it\u2019s so cool to be kicking off Publishing Renaissance\u2019s year. Lately, I\u2019ve been around some blogs that are extraordinarily kinda negative and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[525],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15230,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/15230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}