Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

This time last year I was working at Fred Flare, the online retail store my son and his partner owned.  And I was working with my assistant, E.

She arrived at our home today, just as she has every year in the past so we could work together, face-to-face.  Only this time, it’s not about Fred.  It’s about me.  And it feels strange.

There are no stacks of paperwork around my office waiting for her to handle in Fred Flare’s name.  There is no bookkeeping or research or payrolls to manage, because Fred Flare has been officially dissolved for almost six months. So why is E here?

She is helping me establish my “platform” for my writing career. (‘Career’ may be a stretch of the term.) Since Fred closed I’ve tried to edit some of my own creative work and want to send it to agents.  But these days, you need a platform first.

I won’t go into details of what that means.  Instead, suffice to say that E and I are building one so that more and more readers visit my website.  In turn, those readers are potential book purchaser customers, which is what an agent is really interested in.

It seems literary merit is second in importance to the number of people who visit one’s website.  It’s all about the clicks and not about the writing.  I’m struggling with this, because clicks don’t necessarily mean anyone has read you.  It just means you had your mini-seconds of fame.