Just an extremely long self-indulgent, navel-gazing "me" update on fiction/non-fiction, and the like

So I haven't written much about writing, and a large part of that is likely that I haven't been writing all that much of late. The truth is that I have a few projects underway, and one that I started last year that I got so bored with that I am likely just scrapping.

But I still have to write.

If you write much, you know it isn't what you want to do, or a fun hobby, or something "neat" to do when you don't have anything else going on. It is a bizarre compulsion that you feel super guilty when you are not doing it, and super frustrated when you are. OK, maybe the frustrated part is just me.

Anyway, I did some random self-reflection around my writing, which to-date has taken two forms, primarily: fiction, primarily in the mystery novel genre; and non-fiction, generally around business and whatnot.

I'm giving the non-fiction element a try again I think (I say this but all I have are a few ideas right now, but I'll explain). It doesn't mean I am done with fiction. But it means for the short, foreseeable future, I have a whole lot of work to do to develop a non-fiction property or portfolio that I can work on. So to start, here's my reason for the focus shift that may have been long-time-coming:

• I don't feel I am getting too much "better" at (long form) fiction writing of late
• There isn't a market for short form fiction that offers any career pathing
• I have little motivation to revise and rewrite much of my fiction. I blame that on lack of passion for the ideas behind the stories. If I am not passionate about the story, it is hard for me to write them in such a way to convince others to be passionate about them either.
• I don't think I come up with great ideas for twists in fiction. I have good ideas, sure, but not great ones. It is frustrating to an egomaniacal perfectionist (at times, in arenas like this) like me.
• There's an appeal to me of researching and developing and sharing opinions and conclusions based on research that I just have not found a way to express creatively through fiction.

OK, so all of that (and more introspection and just overall inaction on the fiction front) had me start thinking about writing non-fiction. When I first attempted to write some business-oriented non-fiction, it was all about me. Look at my great ideas, let me share these ideas with you. Don't you think my ideas are great? If everyone thought like this, business would be great!

I know now that that is crap. A few things have changed or I came to realize:

• I read more non-fiction. I have LOTS more to read, but I read more over the past several years that gave me a sense for the flavor.
• I realized I'm not an expert that anyone wants to listen to (yet). There's work to be done there. It is much more beneficial to utilize research studies from Stanford or MIT to prove my point than to just assert they are true like an opinionated jerk on the corner. Data is key.
• Someone somewhere wrote "show don't tell" but angled it for non-fiction instead of its typical use as an instructional tool for fiction authors. I read that. It resonated.
• I started thinking up ideas for what I would possibly write about and came up with seven book ideas in under thirty minutes. I have since come up with more. 
• Non-fiction books don't necessarily need to be as long as fiction books.
• Once you have written and published one or two non-fiction books, you might can even get new book deals on outlines and a couple of chapters. I am guessing you can do this in fiction too, but novel ideas seem more difficult for me to come by.
• I realized I'm a business guy. At heart, I understand (and actually like and appreciate) accounting, finance, operations, management, marketing, and technology concepts.
• I actually think I have a talent for taking complex problems and concepts and explaining those to people who may or may not actually know anything about that in a way that they understand. Heck, I spend a large portion of my work-life doing exactly that, translating between business operations and IT departments and explaining network and product design to both. If I could switch that into something less tailored, more mass marketable, then that could be fulfilling, just to help people (let's not start planning on trying to be a Malcolm Gladwell or Dan Pink or Jim Collins just yet).

And the honest truth is, I have been paid for writing on exactly two gigs in my life. Paid. The first was when I was a kid, and made a little money writing a music review. The other, my ongoing gigs at WebMonkey in the late 90s early 2000s. Oh, look - BOTH NON-FICTION. Perhaps if I want to make money at this little hobby of mine, I should look where people have been willing to pay me before.

So here we go down this fun road. I am not sure that I will have many updates here on actual writing for a while (maybe I will), since I'm in the process of outlining all of the work that I need to do to develop this other path to writing something I might could actively get some income from (and is in tandem with my actual career instead of just a bizarre parallel path).

Anyway, here are a few things on my plan of plans to get started down this path and we will see how far it rolls:

• Convert CameronMathews.com into an actual blog site where I can deposit thoughts on business and topics actually related to some of the writing I might want to sell
• Build upon my existing platform and connections to develop a conversation around some of the topics - get feedback, etc.
• Write a book (or three) (or seven) based on some of the concepts I have come up with
• Edit said book(s)
• Start collecting rejection slips on those books while writing others
• Either publish traditionally or self-publish while continuing to write books to plan, post regularly (goal is 5x/week we will see) short blog posts and build that dialogue
• Write more books
• Maybe even take up some speaking engagements over time

I give it five years. If this doesn't work out by 2020, then maybe there is yet another path for me, eh? That would be roughly 1300 blog posts, 3 books, and a few other tricks up my sleeve (likely another 3000-4000 tweets over the next five years as well, I guess). We'll see. Check back.

In the meantime, feel free to follow/subscribe/whatever to CameronMathews.com - if you are interested. If you are still reading this, come on, you're interested.

Thanks!