Discover Something Greater Than Working for A Dangling Carrot

I’ve been quiet on the blog here for a few weeks, because the Lord and I have been in conference behind closed doors. The question I brought to the table was about my success as a writer, and by that I mean how many.

In the professional writing world, everything revolves around how many. Publishers won’t give you the time of day unless you can show them your own full bushel basket of readers to whom you can sell a book.

So when I started blogging four years ago, I was immediately hit head-on by the industry’s demand to count heads.

Seven readers (but one of them is my mom and another my husband and another my daughter, so that number didn’t count.)

Twelve readers.

Seventy six.

Four hundred.

One thousand.

“It’s a start,” says the agent.

In the book DRiVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motives Us, Daniel H. Pink says that a dangling carrot of extrinsic motivation can actually work like a hit of cocaine. In the writing world, that means you hit a certain number, but then you reach that number and the next time you need a bigger number.