I have been having a lot of fun with my writing over the past few days. It's up for debate whether that is a good thing or not but that debate is another blog post all together.  

One thing that the past few days did bring up that is of value, I think, as a writer is --drum roll please--branding yourself. 

No not burning yourself with a brand that would hurt, or doing something with Russell Brand that may be fun but is not advisable. Creating yourself as a brand. This can be difficult when you like to write in many forms and genres. It can be strength to be able to write this way because you can work in many genres and with many people and that can lead to more freelance work. However, it is also a great detriment when a writer is not able to make any traction in any one genre because their work is too spread out. 

Add into that some attention deficit type qualities and what you have going is a hot mess. Because titles are scattered everywhere and the attention is scattered several unrelated subjects this doesn't work well especially in the world of search engines. You see search engines want you to define yourself. The more postings you have with the same word set in it the stronger your presence on the web for that topic is. For example the more I have with writing, writer, blog, author and other similar terms the higher up the web link food chain I go when someone is looking up information about being a writer. 

Search engines, fans and publishers are the same. They want experts, people who know about a specific something, they don't usually call on Jacks  (or Jills in this case) of all trades. They want to know that you are a sports writer, a romance writer, a poet, a political wonk, an entertainment writer, a fashionista, too much diversity is confusing. 

This can be frustrating to people like me who are children at heart, that have never grown up.  I am constantly curious and wanting to experiment with different things,  I am bored quickly, and move on to something else that I can learn about. So to work at one thing day after day is not fun for me. Some would call it stability I call it tedious. 

However, if I don't pick something and stick with it. At least until I am known as a brand, I will be one of the many "Gee I wish I could make some money at this writing gig." type of writers. Frankly, I think the world has enough of those already.  

Today is the first day of  my professional writing career. Because it is the day that I placed my writing in top priority right after my family being taken care of because that will always be my tippy top priority. 

As I began to work on adding links to my Self Empowerment blog and interlinking them I began to think about my body of work. They spoke about this with President Obama in the beginning when he was getting Nobel Peace Prizes and then not getting an honorary award from the Arizona State University because they felt he had not shown a body of work to deem worthy or not at that time. So I started thinking about a body of work and what I would leave behind. 

A writer's body of work is her immortality. Watching history channel and watching the dusty scrolls being unrolled by excited scientists we realize the power of the written word. What will I leave in the time capsule for future generations both for strangers and my family? Most of my work is online so who even knows if any of it will be preserved it's not written in stone or anything. 

Even that term written in stone challenges my mind. What would I write in stone if I could? What would I want future generations hundreds possibly thousands or hundreds of thousands of years from now to know? I must contemplate that for awhile. 

My words would be my immortality. If that were truly the case. They'd better be good!