Wanna be a WANA?

I landed in the blogosphere at the right time. I met a group of writers who told me about this chick Kristen Lamb, and how all the cool kids were reading her blog.

Kristen talked about this thing called MyWANA which stands for We Are Not Alone, the title of her #1 best-selling social media book.

I read Kristen’s archives. I taught myself how to use Twitter so I could use #MyWANA in my tweets.

I was amazed how adding that one simple hashtag often doubled the traffic to my blog.

This Little Lamb is pretty smart, I thought to myself.

I stuck to her like a chigger and started commenting on her posts regularly.

There was no way she was going to shake me.

The more I read from Kristen, the more I realized I wanted to be her when I grew up.

(Except I am older than she is. Whatever.)

In the meantime, I started to look for other WANA writers, and I quickly discovered that the type of writing produced by a WANA writer was of a different caliber. These people dared to call themselves writers. They dared to declare putting the pen to the paper was their profession and that it needed to be taken seriously. And they made time to do it everyday – groceries be damned.

I joined Kristen’s Warrior Writers Boot Camp where aspiring writers have the opportunity to experience Kristen’s process. I got to learn a secret handshake and abbreviations like EVOS and BBTs other things that normal people wouldn’t care about.

One afternoon my phone rang. It was Kristen. We over-talked each other for an hour. (Girl might be from Texas, but her mother was from New York.) She told me all the places where my story was solid and the many more places where it had holes so big there was water pouring out of the bottom of the bucket.

She made me whine and stomp my foot.

But she also made me believe that my book had potential.

So I had to go and fix. And keep writing.

Meanwhile, I kept visiting WANA blogs and networking with many fabulous people. None of this connection would have been possible without WANA but especially Kristen, the beautiful, brainy girl with the big ideas. Kristen makes people feel like our dreams really can come true if we just work, if we don’t fear failure, and if we keep trying.

WANA has always featured creative professionals dedicated to serving and supporting one another. WANA understands that life as an artist is hard, and is often lacking support from family and friends. WANA is about serving others first and trusting that good always comes from love.

By now, many of you have seen Kristen’s post on how she plans to take over the digital world with WANA International.

Just kidding.

No, seriously.

She is.

We are.

As Kristen says:

“These days, creative professionals all need more training than ever before. Writers are not the only creatives who must learn to use social media in order to stand apart from the competition and to help lay the foundation for a career.”

So what’s new? WANA is branching out. WANA International is ready to teach creative professionals how to marry technology with humanity to build effective online platforms. There is instruction about craft, business, social media, and more.

I hope those of you you are interested in learning more about what WANA has to offer will click HERE.

***As a longtime English educator, I am looking forward to teaching a few courses later this year.***

If you are a wanna-be author who needs help with creating a blog to showcase your talent or a self-published author who needs to know more about all this confangled social media, or whether you seek information about how to design a book cover or need to figure out if you need an agent… be grateful that you are here now.

Because everyone who knows everything is gathered in one place.

And remember – as Kristen says: We Are Not Alone!

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