Available Darkness: Chapter 17: (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can…

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I can’t believe it’s already the last day of July. Seriously, time could not be moving any faster…

I started Monday with a post at the Inkwell about writing (shocking I know). It was in my first post at the Inkwell where I declared, “I am a writer,” but on Monday I made the case that anyone could make their living as an online writer.

On Tuesday I wrote a post at Writer Dad called, “The Apple and the Tree,” about how the things we see in our children that we wish to change are often those things inside ourselves which need a little fixing.

On Wednesday I wrote about article writing over at Ghostwriter Dad. That’s not the biggest news for GWD however. A post I wrote a couple of months back about proofreading tips got picked up by LifeHacker, leading to three months worth of traffic and a quadrupling of subscribers in a two day period. It’s funny that happened just as I was finishing reading Brian Clark’s Freelance Factor X and learning about the power of links vs. SEO. Big exciting cool things in store for GWD.

Thursday I finished a commercial I’ve been working on with Dave for our potty training help product, Potty Training Power. It is adorable and you can see it below.

Today is Friday so of course we had a new chapter of Available Darkness, the first in or Serial and Milk series. We’re up to chapter fifteen after four months. Pretty cool I must confess.

Other cool tidbits – yesterday I had a long chat with Jonathan Fields for an upcoming Career Renegade podcast. Jonathan is awesome, a true gentleman, and a fellow writer dad. One of the highlights of my week for sure. I also am helping one of my good friends with a Long Beach real estate project.

That’s it for now! Until next time…

Another week, another link roundup.

Though I didn’t know it on Monday when I wrote about the perfection of Pixar, this was apparently to become my week to talk about the Marin County wizards until I was red in the fingers.

Monday’s post got me primed for Tuesday when I decided to rank all the Pixar movies in order from ten to one. When your work is as sterling as Pixar’s, it is difficult to separate the slightly different degrees of perfection. Any top ten list would be bound to change from one day to the next. Of course, I’m already looking back on Tuesday’s Top 10 Pixar list and smiling as I rearrange the order.

I wrote a good deal about Pixar in general and their ten films specifically, but didn’t do more than slightly mention their shorts. A disservice for sure. I made it up by putting all the Pixar shorts together in one place and spinning a sentence or two for each of them.

On Wednesday I wrote about the need for online writers to occasionally revisit old work over at Ghostwriter Dad.

As a counterpoint to the light genius of Pixar, I capped the week with chapter 14 in Available Darkness. This was the darkest chapter yet and a harbinger of the amazing work that is to come.

This week saw three new additions to the Potty Training Power site. There is no single post to link to, rather I just wanted to acknowledge the site and say that after the last three weeks of diligent work on tweaking it in the right direction, it is finally yielding a payoff in the promise of passive online income.

Until next time…

Awesome stuff happened last week.

We started off Monday at Writer Dad with a guest post from Lori Hoeck from Think Like a Black Belt. Her guest post was How to Think Like a Black Belt parenting. Great post, great comments. Of course this is no surprise as Lori is awesome and a half.

Monday also saw my post at Collective Inkwell beg the question, “Are we qualified to create?” Yes, I believe we are – each and every one of us.

Tuesday I wrote a rather honest post over at Ghostwriter Dad where I discussed being a ghostwriter. The post was appropriately titled, “On Being a Ghostwriter.”

Wednesday I dropped a little poem about potty training over at Potty Training Power. I’ve posted it before on Writer Dad, but it’s so adorable, I decided to repurpose it.

Thursday was lucky #13 for Available Darkness, possibly my favorite chapter so far, at least as far as the writing process is concerned.

Friday was awesome for two reasons:

1) The official launch of Potty Training Power 2.0, the best potty training system online. Cindy, Dave, and myself have poured a lot of hard work into this product and we are thrilled with the results. I can honestly say I couldn’t be prouder of the product.

2) It was the one year anniversary of Writer Dad and thus also the one year anniversary of my time online. I’m far from all my dreams coming true, but I’m working toward them. I spent my birthday talking about a few of my favorite projects.

Until next time…

“Wasn’t that great!” Preston Pup said.
“Not really,” said Cletus, shaking his head.
“People are different.  No two are alike.
You love your car, but I love my bike.

I go to bed early and you stay out late.
You are impulsive.  I’m willing to wait.
You like excitement and I like things still.
I hike up mountains while you race down hill.

You love loud movies.  I’d rather read.
We are two different flowers from two different seeds.”
“What makes this world special is the difference we find,
in the way in which each of us works our own mind.

Some people like black, for others it’s white.
Neither are wrong and neither are right.
Some drink only coffee while others sip tea.
Life would be boring if we all agreed.

I’ll go back to the country and you can stay here.
But you’re welcome to visit whenever you’re near.”
Preston was quiet, and a little surprised.
What Cletus was saying, he hadn’t realized.

And so goes the awesome tale of the Country Bear and City Pup. Click on the link to read the story in full.

Asking people for stuff is kryptonite to me. I can’t stand asking for favors, even when I’m confident that the favor I’m asking for will directly benefit my benefactor. Contacting affiliates is on this list.

When I first put out Potty Training Power back in January, I had exactly four affiliates. These were all people I felt comfortable asking. The affiliate sales of the product, as you can imagine, were a precise reflection of the work I had done to gather the team.

Fast forward half a year later and I find myself with an entirely different outlook on the process. I don’t enjoy it one molecule more than I did previously, but I now understand the essential value in assembling the team.

I’ve gathered a list and am going through it person by person. So far, I must confess, it has been an enriching, rewarding experience. I’ve received two declines and quite a few affirmatives. The declines both made perfect sense and I would have made the same decision were I in their shoes. The best thing about it isn’t just that things are going well and that this little launch is sure to be better than the last one, it’s that I’ve learned something valuable that I can take with me from every launch or product release in between now and my forever.

Until next time…

Most everything on my plate is a collaboration of some sort. Moving online has stripped me of the need to do everything by myself. Most of my projects involve Dave in some fashion, which is why I wrote about online collaboration today over at the Inkwell.

Here is an excerpt from the post…

I am proud of my friendship with Dave and look forward to pulling the most we can from our mutual workspace. I love placing my thoughts against his, not merely because of the creative rewards it welcomes, but because of the potential it holds. As people, we are often imprisoned by the looping patterns of redundant thought. Even the best of us have a difficult time spotting the obvious circles in our reasoning until we are coupled with another and able to stare into the prism of their unique perspective…

Click here to read the rest.

Until tomorrow…