How To Come Up With An Idea, Turn It Into A Novel, Find A Publisher, And End Up With A Bestseller, in 437 Easy Steps: A NEWSBREAK!

This is superimportant news --

SUPERDUPERIMPORTANT, 

as Isaac Newton (huh?) would say, and definitely merits not yet getting to Step 1 of the 437 Steps To All That Stuff In The Headline That I'm Not Going To Rewrite.

The news is:

I have a new Twitter account.


It is:

"@BrianePagel,"

 and if you click that link you'll be  magically transported to the land of Tweets, where you will again be treated to the kind of wisdom I can only lay out in 140 characters or less, wisdom like my very first Tweet from my new account, which I will reprint for you, and posterity*

*posterity couldn't be there this morning, something suddenly came up

here so you can see what you won't be missing when you click and go follow me. Here is the first-ever @BrianePagel tweet, in its entirety:

Just setting up my Twitter. #myfirstTweet
— BrianePagel (@BrianePagel) September 18, 2014

I know, genius, right? Like it was handed down from God.  It's so awesome, it should be written in... what was that stuff that people would write on like whale tusks or something? SCRIMSHAW.  It should be written in scrimshaw, which seems the best possible way of pointing out how important the things I say are, doesn't it? I mean, now that anyone can publish any old piece of junk on the Internet*

*this blog post, for example, and everything else I've ever posted

And now that apparently they will give print book contracts to anyone, apparently, no matter how little talent he has**

** it's okay, I know you were thinking it

 and how much pizza he's eaten today (a surprisingly small amount, for me), then the only way to truly show that your writing is valuable is to have your book done in scrimshaw:

This is actually George R.R. Martin's next book.

That, of course, is how I am going to be even more of a snobbish jerk than Stephen King and Garrison Keillor and those other "writers" who don't like ebooks because GET THIS DID YOU KNOW THAT ANYONE CAN WRITE ONE OF THOSE THINGS KATIE BAR THE DOOR and keep my 'prestige' as a 'real' writer whose books are worth paying $39.95 for (softcover; hardcover requires that you literally give me your teeth, so that I can have them recast into fake narwhal tusks for the scrimshaw because I am certainly not going to hurt animals, all right? I'll just use your teeth and whale ivory from free-range whales who died of old age surrounded by their family and friends, peacefully, after pleasant lives in which they never had to turn of "Twin Peaks" on Netflix just because it was Sweetie's night for the TV.

I forget where I was.

OK, so here's the reason for the new Twitter account:

(A) My website that I came up with the idea for, Arquebus (the site where you only get to post ONE THING EVER, and that's it) isn't yet ready to go, because I have (technically) no idea how to program such a website (although you have to admit, it would be awesome) and

(B) Marketing requires branding solutions that energize your constituency into upgrading their ARRGGGHGH I CANNOT DO IT I CANNOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT THEY KEPT REPEATING TO ME IN THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT THE LIGHTS WERE SO BRIGHT DON'T HURT ME.

The reason for the new Twitter account is that my publisher told me to do it.  So if you are keeping track of my priorities, let's review:

-- Had a heart attack, was told to maybe lay off the pizza, did not lay off the pizza. 

 -- Was told to switch Twitter accounts by a publisher to maybe sell a few books, DID SO IMMEDIATELY. 

Actually, I more or less doubled down on the pizza.  I'm going to make those doctors earn their money.

So this is the part of that headline where we jump ahead, obviously, to the "Best Seller" part, because (in case you are new to this writing thing) creating a Twitter account and randomly following four hundred and fifty five people in one day has nothing to do with coming up with an idea or writing it or finding a publisher, and while I'm pretty new to the formal publishing end of this, I have done exactly what they said, so I assume that my book is already number one on the New York Times Best Seller List, even though it won't even be published for several months yet.  Isn't that how this works?

Next time, Step One: Steal An Idea for sure, though.

Also, I just realized I never ended that parentheses up there.  PROBLEM SOLVED. )