As you know, if you follow my blog, I’m taking part in an interesting exercise in crowd-funding.  After doing a bit of Googling, I noticed that there appears to be some confusion as to what the purpose of crowd-funding is and why people do it. In my case, I’m doing it to raise money to hire a marketing company. Marketing is expensive.

I won this opportunity based on the pitch I wrote for “The Blue Diamond” and I wasn’t about to pass on the chance to be able to afford something I know I otherwise wouldn’t be able to for quite some time. This isn’t a sure thing. You put yourself out there and it’s up to the general public to decide if you’re worth it. It’s quite humbling actually. I’m an award winning author, not a best selling author…yet.

Although this hasn’t yet been anything I’ve experienced personally, I definitely know now that there are some folks out there who frown on crowd-funding. However, the reasons I saw were very disappointing but sadly, I wasn’t completely surprised.

Not that what I’m about to tell you is anyone’s business but mine but I’m all about keeping the record straight and I like things crystal clear. So here it is…there’s a lesson at the end of this too. For the sake of transparency:

• I’m a hard working woman as well as a writer.
• I write my own books.
• I do at least 75% of my own marketing.
• I work a full time job as an office manager for a copier and printer dealership and manage the advertising and marketing for the company and wear a closet full of other hats as well.
• I have three children and three granddaughters who I love spending time with. I also babysit for my daughter who teaches dance two nights a week. I choose to spend time with my granddaughters because I adore them.
• My husband is unemployed and has been for eighteen months. He has not gotten an unemployment check since December of 2013. We are by no means starving but we are struggling and have been for quite some time. We are just blessed to have a loving family.
• I write almost every night of my life. If I’m not writing, I’m blogging and if I’m not blogging, I’m advertising.
• I get an average of five hours sleep a night because I am the owner of this company and if I don’t bust my ass, I’ll never reach my goal of becoming a full time writer.

I saw something on my web travels tonight that raised my eyebrow so high I nearly lost an eyeball.

Authors, we all have our own paths to walk. None are the same.

Everyone’s journey is their own and it is beneath us to criticize and ridicule someone for the way in which they choose to travel. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, certainly but it isn’t necessary to be mean and self-righteous just to make your point.

If you are blessed with a good life and the ability to pursue your passion as a writer, without having to hold down a full time job, support your household financially, keep a roof over your head almost on your own and work tirelessly in what little free time you have to pursue a dream, why do you care how someone else chooses to pursue theirs?

If someone sees an opportunity to raise money so that they can at least TRY to level the playing field a bit, leave them to it. Show some compassion for those who don’t have the ability to write when they want to or enjoy the same freedom to pursue their dream as you’ve had or have. It smacks of superiority when you look down on someone, just because they may not have had the options and opportunities you’ve had in order to pursue your dream. Even if perhaps someone is going about promoting their cause the wrong way, why not reach out to them and express your position on that as a colleague and human being and let it go?  Why would you want to judge someone just because they have chosen a path you never had to or chose not to take?

I’m still sitting here shaking my head because I can’t believe I even have to write this blog but I needed to get it out.

There are no guarantees in crowd-funding. To be honest, speaking for myself, I would have never tried this had I not won this opportunity because I have always been a bootstrap girl. However, I believe everything happens for a reason. When opportunity knocks as they say.

For anyone who’s ever made a success of anything and may be sitting back and saying things like, “Do it yourself like I did.” Stop and think about this; did you really? Did you really pay all of the money yourself? Did you really do it all yourself with not one single itty bitty bit of help from anyone else? If you did, I salute you but either way, to look down on others because they need a hand up in the world puts you in the light of a department store dressing room in your underwear and let’s face it, nobody looks good in that light.

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”

Thank you Mister Washington. You’ve made my point.