Even if you’re not into this genre, and admittedly, I’m hardly the target audience either – do you know how lucrative this market actually is? A few years ago, I got a book called “The Art of Romance Writing” as a gag gift, but am now seriously thinking of writing a racy novel and retiring on the inevitable movie deal.

Local writer and social media consultant Monica Hamburg talks about how to tap into the hidden job market online in her excellent blog post. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Java programmer or a hairdresser – creating an online presence and fostering a network can benefit you. If nothing else, it’s way more fun than cold calling!

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”

You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again.

Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind – a scene, a locale, a character, whatever – and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also, severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you have meningitis. Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you’re working, and you say yeah, because you are.

Sound familiar? The hardest part about writing is definitely the writing part. Anyway, just wanted to share that with you.

He advises us to model ourselves after Leonardo da Vinci, who believed that seven key elements allowed him to become one of the most incredible innovators of our time. Here they are:

1. Curiosita: An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning.

2. Dimostrazione: A commitment to test knowledge through experience.

3. Sensazione: The continual refinement of the sense, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience.

4. Sfumato (literally, “Going up in smoke”): A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty.

5. Arte/Scienza: The development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination. Whole-brain thinking.

6. Corporalita: The cultivation of grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise.

7. Connessione: A recognition of and an appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.