Hello again!
According to legend, George S. Patton described defeating the Germans this way “Break through the front lines and then do something [expletives deleted]. Pitch a fit. Burn a town. Do something!” It’s actually good advice and applies to more than warfare.
No, it might not be a war. And you’re probably not fighting the Germans. But one of the keys to winning is breaking through the obstacles in front of you and then following up by taking action.
The next question is what kind of action. That really depends on who you are and what your goal is. Moving from war to faith, David A. Bednar offers a universal solution broken out step by step in three books:
- Increase in learning
- Act in Doctrine
- The Power to Become
As we learn what our actual goals are and the whys behind them, we can follow a correct course of action, one that gets us where we want to go. With each step we take, we gain more learning, and we gain the power to become the people we want to be and achieve the things we really value.
It’s not always a straight-line course. In fact, it rarely is.
Where we’ve been
Our lives are our stories. Like all stories, ours has a plot. That plot very much follows Brandon Mull’s description of plot (as presented in a workshop at the 2024 LDSPMA conference): choice and consequence. We make a choice (we control that part). The natural consequences happen. Then we evaluate what happened and make another choice. Hopefully, this next choice brings us closer to our goal.
We’ve been doing that here at FMP and on the FMP blog. To be honest, some of the old material really didn’t meet the standards we want to keep. Some things will stay. We’re keeping old posts about our themes and others that seem to help readers:
- The Theme is… (April 2025)
- Sally Port and Rising Authors (January 2025)
- The door is open (October 2024)
- Opening the Sally Port (August 2024)
- Sally Port Magazine Good Fantasy… (July 2025)
Other material’s been pulled for reworking.
Where we're going
As the leader of Seal Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, Jocko Willink shocked a number of military officers. How? By taking responsibility for his mistakes and mistakes made by his team. He explained how better training and effort would have changed things and pledged to take action on the discovery. He and his men went on to win many victories (Willink and Babin, Extreme Ownership (chapter of the same name)). Right now, my team is seeking to do the same thing.
We’re taking responsibility for the things that went wrong, and taking steps to make them go right in the future.
We’ve spent a fair amount of time determining what’s needed, what will help the readers and authors we work with, and what we can do here to meet those needs. In the future, this blog will focus on the business side of writing and creating. It will focus on skills, tools, events, and publications that help writers and other creators to reach their audiences, succeed in their goals, and support themselves.
We’re also very interested in creativity and the creative process. Those thoughts and interests deserve their own place. We’re giving them one: the Creating Worlds, One Story at a Time Substack, which will launch one week after this post goes live. There you will find our voices and others speaking on creativity and the joys, terrors, and miracles of the creative process.
Here you will find wisdom on how to find your audience, work with your team, and survive the adventures of being a professional creator. At Creating Worlds, we will explore what creating really is and how to do it.
We are born to be creators. It’s embedded in us even deeper than the DNA level. It’s not something we can replace with AI. It’s at the core of who and what we are. And at Forever Mountain Publishing, we’re here to help you do it.
Come on, team, we’ve got obstacles to break. And then it’s time to really do something! I’ll see you next post.
