AFW

I did this thing on Twitter today. I posted the 15th person to RT a tweet would get a free eBook. Nine people posted. There was no fifteen.  So nobody got a free eBook. Bummer, Twitter peeps! Which got me thinking about the whole showing up thing.

I’ve become a fan of Tim Ferris. He wrote The 4 Hour Work Week.  Tim can be a little grating “I’m so great” sometimes, but I figure any kid who was born with a collapsed lung and cross-eyed and got called “Tuna Fish” by his mom growing up and rebuilt himself as hard as he did probably gets to be a bit too “I’m too cool” sometimes.  He did earn it. He rebuilt himself. Also reading his book and using a few things from it has me going to bed before 5 AM once in a while. Which was not in my normal vocabulary before. But also –

I picked up on this thing he mentioned. He bribes people. Students. A lot. He had a group of students he told he’d give a ticket to anywhere in the world, a free all expenses paid vacation to ANYWHERE, if they participated in and won a competition. And here’s the thing. Most of them didn’t even enter.

Like in the Twitter thing I posted, “Be number 15 and you get a free eBook.” Sure, it’s not a ticket to anywhere in the world.  But it’s the same process.  And I’ve done this with other stuff, not just my book, Amazon and iTunes gift cards too. That is like free cash. But. The same thing happens. No one shows up. I’ve won a lot of these too. On Twitter. On Facebook. On blogs. Why?

I show up.

And this counts with writing. With, in fact, everything. Know who gets the job? The people who show up. Whether it is in the chair, in the classroom, in a workshop, on the runway, at the audition – the people who win are ALWAYS the people who show up.

I can put this in clearer terms.

Why do people open doors?

Because you knock.