Hey y'all,

I stayed up way too late last night working on presentations for tomorrow's event at the Austin Museum of Art and a trip this weekend to Washington, D.C. for TEDxPennQuarter. I'm stoked for both of these events, and excited for some breathing room afterwards, hoping to get a bit of recharge time in for the rest of the summer.

My TEDx presentation is centered around a flowchart that compares my own publishing journey with what I was taught in college was the traditional route of becoming a published author:



It strikes me that no matter what route you take, everything always comes back to the simplest beginning:

Write something good.

It's easy to get caught up in the madness of the machine, and not get any time to do the thing you love. Brittany Forks said the same thing on her site recently:

The release of my book came and went. There was no big hurrah, no parties, no signings. As I am writing this, it is over a year after my book release, and finally I have climbed out of that depression and I am ready to start creating beautiful things again.