With A Little Help From My Friends

I had a friend, once, who was a country-western singer. Oh, I’m a singer, too...but not in the same way as my friend. She was paid to sing. Not long after high school, she landed a contract with A&M records—a real coup—and was on her way to stardom. Or at least to a stringent tour schedule.

Then she became a Christian. For some reason, her conscience was no longer comfortable with her business status, so she negotiated her way out of the agreement. While she tried other music venues, seeking to match faith and fortune, it didn’t really work. She lost her opportunity to sing.

“I can’t just sit at home and sing to my toes,” she complained to me one day. I could totally relate. When you are a performer, you need an audience. You thrive on an audience. Your audience pulls the song right out of you, out into the free air.

This post wraps up two weeks of blogging here. It’s been fun drawing inspiration from the people who make up my family tree, seeking to match flesh-and-blood with stark records of names and dates. But the real inspiration comes not only from my hopes of what I can do to adequately represent these long-gone individuals. My inspiration comes from my audience.

It’s been exciting watching my blog stats. These aren’t posted publicly for you to see, but it was so encouraging for me as a writer to see the number of page views pass two hundred and climb. Slowly, the audience is building. Slowly, it breathes back inspiration.

In sales, there is training on the many ways to close a sale. One technique is simply called, “Ask for the Sale.” And here, I’m going to do just that. I’m going to ask you, the reader, to keep playing your part as my encourager.

You may be asking, “How can I do that?” Simple. There is a box at the bottom of each post labeled “Comments.” Make one. C’mon, don’t be shy—say something!

And make reading easy for yourself—sign on as a “Follower” by clicking the little box to the lower left of the page labeled “Follow” and have these blog updates delivered to your specified location.

It would mean so much to me if you would help spread the word, too. One way to do this is to click on what I call the little toy blocks at the bottom right of each post, next to the comment counter. These are the clickable icons that enable sharing by email or on Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, or through Google Buzz.

There! Now I’ve asked for the “sale.” If you’ve enjoyed spending the time with me on the beginning strands of this blog, I hope you’ll join me in passing it on.