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4 Compelling Reasons You Need to Make Time for Your Passion Project
Losing a client is an unfortunate reality of running a service-based business.
That’s exactly what happened to me in June after I landed what I thought was a dream client for my communications agency JL&Co.
(Spoiler: I was very, very wrong.)
We parted ways after just two weeks of working together, and I suddenly found myself with an abundance of free time for the summer.
As many entrepreneurs know, summer tends to be a slower time in the business world. I receive fewer inquiries than other times of the year and rarely start on new client projects between June and August.
With this knowledge in mind, I decided to transform my temporary setback into an opportunity.
Instead of seeking out new client work, I turned my attention to a few personal projects that I’ve pushed to the back burner because of my busy work schedule.
I called it “The Summer of Passion Projects.”
What I Learned About Writing From Reading Stephen King
My senior year of high school, I left my English teacher’s Christmas Party with Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot in my hands and an exciting new strain of the flu setting up shop somewhere in my respiratory system.
As a game (and our winter break reading assignment), we each wrote the title of our favorite book on a scrap of paper and placed it in a bowl, and then we passed the bowl around. It was literary roulette. And now, thanks to a sick classmate, I was about to spend my winter break reading.
Throughout that feverish Christmas holiday, I walked my first lap in the multiverse that would eventually introduce me to thinnies, low men, twinners, ka and ka-tet, and the Twelve Guardians of the Beams—in other words, the wonky fantasy lexicon that has contributed to some readers calling King a master of literature, and others a peddler of low art.
King is a divisive author. Some hang on his every word, while others fall in league with a more critical crowd. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days in polite society are numbered,” King wrote in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #37 With Rand Fishkin
Or listen on: iTunes| Stitcher| Spotify| Google Play| Download
Rand Fishkin is the founder of SparkToro, a PR-style software company that helps people create better marketing by making the publications, people, and sources that influence a certain audience more transparent to organizations. Previously, he was the co-founder, CEO and Wizard of Moz.com, a multi-million dollar software and content company that was based on his own writing and ramblings while learning SEO in the early 2000s.
In addition to his extremely popular posts and Whiteboard Friday videos, Rand is also an author with a number of titles under his belt, most notably Lost & Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. Always more supportive of others than he is of his own accolades and success, he notes in his “official bio” that he is most proud of his prominent appearances in his wife Geraldine DeRuiter’s first book, All Over the Place.
The Power of Pen and Paper: Should You Do More of Your Writing By Hand?
I spend most of my workday at the computer (and a fair amount of my leisure time on a tablet or phone). I expect the same might be true for you, too.
It hasn’t always been this way. As a young teen, I wrote a lot by hand. All my schoolwork was done in exercise books or on paper, with an occasional typed-up assignment. But gradually, I started writing more and more straight onto the computer.
These days, far more of my words are typed than handwritten. But when I put pen to paper, there’s something different about my writing and even my thinking. I’m able to take risks and be more vulnerable—because I know I won’t be publishing the words as written. I also find that I can focus more deeply, without all the distractions of the web a single click away.