The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Get

My grandfathers were both full of wise sayings and silly jokes, and as a child it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. Sometimes they would twist an old cliche expression into having a different meaning, or into a joke, by saying it backwards or by changing key words.

So, when my trickster grandfather told me, "The harder I work, the luckier I get," I assumed he was making a joke, or spoofing some other quote.

Then a couple years ago, my Screen Writing teacher told us that College Newspaper classes would get us into the habit of completing articles on a deadline. I joined the newspaper right after a campus cop got embezzling parking meter money, and I followed his trial for three semesters. I also wrote at least one article for each issue, and tried covering every type of story, with movie reviews, news, sports, editorials, photo features, business, and history.

I ended up getting three news writing awards for my trial coverage, but only because I spent hours taking notes at dozens of hearings over the months. It was a lot of work getting court articles up online the same day, but I considered myself lucky to join the newspaper at the same time as the college's Trial of the Century. I was also lucky in finding a great teacher, whose Magazine Writing class changed my life.

This led to my first professionally published article, in North Bay Bohemian, based on several months worth of microfilm research into Frank Herbert's photojournalism for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat from 1949 to 1953 before writing Dune. My Journalism class visited the Press Democrat on a field trip, where I first spoke to the Editor about compiling Herbert's lost archive of news articles. My hard work researching, luckily, uncovered enough material for a book. (currently at #2 on my To-Do list)

This first article led to a second article, about another sci-fi writer who had lived in Sonoma County, Philip K Dick. This ended up being the Bohemian cover story for their Sept. 30, 2015 issue. When it finally got printed, I handed out copies to all my friends at the local pub. A young lady I never met before asked me for my secret, what catch-phrase or grovelling I had emailed the editor to convince him to put my article on the cover of their weekly magazine.

I thought about it and said, "Well, part of my secret was this wasn't the first article I wrote for them. And for that first article, my email to the editor said I had a Journalism degree and three news writing awards for courtroom coverage of a local high-profile trial."

She looked crestfallen. "Oh." She realized my "secret" to getting my article on the cover was that I had paid my dues, that I did lots of hard, boring work for a long time. My secret was I had worked hard to get my lucky break.

Although I'm nearly finished with my first draft of my "True Crime" novel, I took a short break setting up social media, like this blog, for its pre-release. That put me into a position I have long avoided, to write regularly for something besides my regular writing. It seems inefficient taking time away from writing my books, and my other projects, in hopes of gaining "followers" interested in buying the books I'm writing about, while not actually writing them.

For years I had shunned this often-repeated advice, that I needed to write a blog

promoting my writing projects. When I begrudgingly set one up last week, and started thinking up different things to write about, it occurred to me that I could create a new e-book from thin air, out of articles I had already gotten published. Even better, I can write a book from all the research I gathered for each of these articles. So not only will this book from thin air be quick to e-publish it ill also promote four more of my upcoming books.

Because I was working hard finishing my book, and then getting out of my "comfort zone" by starting this blog, a new book fell into my lap out of thin air. What luck!