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On Art: How to Join the Consortium

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, July 31, 2010

So there you have it. The Consortium, in all its glory. It took me a month of posts to make the case for it (and right at my 800-word limit just to share the executive summary of my business plan yesterday), but I hope among them all you’ve got a pretty good idea what my vision is at this point.

If not, check out our About page at the Consortium website. It’s got a plain-language description of what drives us, what we’re doing, and who we are.

Patrons, Hopefuls, and Fans

That last is the longest section, and by far the most interesting. The Consortium is all about the artists.

I’ve got access to some incredibly creative people — and if you’re one of them, chances are good I’ve already got plans for you. I haven’t necessarily brought it up with you, but you’d be pretty safe assuming I want to put you to work, whether you’re listed on the About page yet or not.

Honestly, I’m having some trouble finding the time to organize the resources I’ve got. But that doesn’t mean I’m turning anyone away. If you are anxious to get started now — if you’re willing and able to do a lot of hard work for an insanely driven boss who has no real hope of paying you any time in the near future…well, let me know. But consider yourself warned.

Obviously I need more than artists, too. I’m kinda overflowing with unbelievably talented people, but at the same time I’ve got a big deficit of something incredibly boring:

Money.

If you want to contribute financially, I guarantee I can find the time to organize that particular resource. We’ve got webhosts and accountants to pay (and some of those are considerably more expensive than others). There’s a remarkable amount of expensive red tape to get through to start a non-profit. You’d be amazed.

Even if you can’t contribute, though, you can help. We need fans to believe in us, to cheer us on, and to get the message out.

So go check out the site (if you haven’t already). Subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for our newsletter, so we can keep you posted on exciting developments. Leave comments on our blog posts so we’ll know we’ve got a real audience out there.

And, if we ever meet face-to-face, have a little patience if the Consortium comes up in conversation. We do tend to get a little carried away….

When it comes right down to it, that’s what we need most from you, too. Talk about us. Talk about our mission and message if you want, or just talk about our artists and our projects. Whatever you do, though, talk about us.

If you want to see the Consortium become a reality, spread the word. We’ll love you for it.

Your Apprenticeship Papers (Creative Writing Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopIf you want to participate as an artist, though, I’m happy to have you. Send me an email (or say so in the comments). Tell me who you are as an artist, and what you’ve got to bring to the Consortium.

Does that sound a little demanding? I guess it could. The Consortium is going to be demanding, though. It’s all about driving artists to become better artists.
And one of the things you actually must learn, somewhere along your path, is to give yourself credit for the mastery you have achieved. Until you do, it’s really difficult to find the time you need to spend to keep getting better. As soon as you accept that you’re on a mastery path, though — patron or no — you’ll make the time to keep moving forward.

So start practicing now. Whether or not you want to volunteer for some unpaid work, you’ll benefit from having your apprenticeship papers in order. And share them in the comments! We’ve probably got no idea just how talented you are, and that’s something we need to know.

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Art: Supporting the Artists to Support the Arts

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, July 30, 2010

The Consortium is an Oklahoma City-based non-profit organization that provides serious, talented artists with all the benefits of a traditional career path, so they can afford the time necessary to perfect their craft, and produce high-quality artwork for the public.

Our Business

The Consortium is founded on the systems of patronage and master craftsmanship that drove the artistic excellence of the high Renaissance. With an intensive focus on interdisciplinary study and collaborative work, Consortium artists both learn from and contribute to each other’s skills.

In service of their salaries, Consortium artists commit 40 hours per week to pursuit of their craft. Weekly progress reports in the form of publicly-accessible blogs not only provide accountability, they also provide a valuable educational service to the public – a glimpse into the day-to-day processes of professional artists.

While the bulk of our employees’ time is entirely self-directed, Consortium artists commit 20-40% of their time (1-2 days a week) to Consortium projects. That might mean an apprentice in the Writing school spending two days a week on proofreading and line-editing services, or a journeyman in the Photography school shooting illustrations for an album cover.

Because of the diversity of artistic talent available within the Consortium, we are excellently-positioned to take advantage of the changing marketplace for new media created by the proliferation of digital distribution. The Consortium will begin publishing professional-quality e-Books for the Kindle and iBookstore within 2010, and will grow to become a new media music label, video producer, and all-around art-house as we expand into new schools of art.

Our People

Founded by Aaron Pogue, a storyteller with extensive experience in creative and professional writing, the Consortium opened its doors in mid-2010 with a handful of dedicated artists working tirelessly as volunteers in support of the company’s mission. These founding members included writers, photographers, painters, graphic designers, and top-notch programmers.

The Consortium also has the support of a phenomenal board of directors, including an esteemed university professor, a successful entrepreneur, and an MBA working in corporate governance. With resources like these, the Consortium is prepared to face the real-world challenges of building and growing a project on this grand scale.

Our Funding

To acquire the services of the very best artists, the Consortium is committed to offering salaries competitive with “real jobs” – the bane of the artistic community. In order to insulate these salaries from the fickle financial straits common to many non-profits, and to protect Consortium artwork from the soulless commercialism endemic to contemporary American craft, the Consortium is funded through an endowment. 100% of the endowment’s annual yield goes to provide salaries, job benefits, and resources for Consortium artists.

Because of our funding system, the salaries and positions available to our artists are stable and reliable, and any artwork they produce is already fully funded at the time of publication – there’s no extra pressure for a given work to “earn out.” In fact, because of this, the Consortium releases every original work produced by our artists into the public domain, irrevocably and without restriction.

We rely for our funding primarily on a combination of charitable contributions to the endowment and arts grants that fund individual creative projects. The Consortium also anticipates modest income from digital sales of Consortium publications. (All proceeds from the sale of any Consortium public work return directly to the endowment.)

To whatever extent necessary, the Consortium may seek additional revenue by providing master-quality freelance services appropriate to the skills and crafts of our artists, ranging from sales of stock photography and freelance editing to book shepherding and professional web design. The dedication and training of our artists will allow us to provide superior services in less time.

Our Goals

We’re working aggressively to establish strong foundations and begin getting the message out. Our immediate goals are to acquire 501(c)(3) exemption status with the IRS, and to fund the publication of two or three novels before the end of 2010. Beyond that, we’re anxious to begin hiring artists full-time, and expanding our available schools of focus.

If you’d like to learn more about the Consortium, the artists donating their time and skills to make it a reality, or the products and services we currently offer, please visit our website at www.ConsortiumOKC.com.

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On Art: The Academy of the Arts

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, July 29, 2010

I’ve said several times that I started writing when I was twelve. While I was in eighth grade I finished a first novel, The Scorekeeper, which is tragically lost to the sands of time.

My next effort, though, is preserved in all its emo glory. The Poet Alexander is basically the 180,000-word story of my adolescence, chronicling my experience getting a first job, falling in love (and dealing with all the drama of high school romance), and navigating the treacherous social undercurrents of a tight-knit church youth group.

In other words, it’s probably not something you want to read. But I wrote it under the guise of a fantasy novel, so I spent considerable time developing the setting, figuring out the tangled political dynamics of the town, and creating interesting fantasy parallels for the tedious real-world obstacles I dealt with throughout those tumultuous years.

To that end, I invented a high school for him — the Academy of the Arts at Three Cities. I dreamed up a career path for him, too. In the end, though, it was all about a young man with a love of words trying to pay his bills with his writing

He traveled to a new town, made some new friends, acquired a job that provided room and board for minimal writing-related work, and spent all his time hanging out at the local art school. I spent most of three years writing that book, and looking back on it now, the plot is easily the book’s least interesting element.

The setting is good, the characters are…passable. The male characters, anyway. But the most interesting part of the story by far is the premise.

I only discovered that when I sat down to write up a plot synopsis for this blog post, too. I never realized before how perfectly that story described (when I was just fifteen) exactly what I wanted to do with my life — something I wouldn’t discover for myself until I was several months into my thirties.

The Consortium

I’ve been talking all month about writing as a profession, and I promised way back at the start that I’d offer an alternative to copyright. That alternative is, in a way, patronage. In another way, it’s the Academy of the Arts. In another way, it’s something new altogether.

Whatever it is…I’m working on it.

If you read the series I used to start this week, you know I’ve been doing some research on business plans. That’s not a coincidence. Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you the Executive Summary from my business plan for the Consortium. Really, truly. The time is now.

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What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, July 28, 2010

That title might be slightly misleading.  Mr. Koontz’s and Mr. Anderson’s writing is, indeed, the foundation upon which this particular article rests.  But there are several additional authors whose works would make great building blocks for the ideas I’ll endeavor to convey to you today.

I’ll mention some of them later.  But Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein — Book One: Prodigal Son gets my spotlight for now, since this tale of mystery, science, and insanity is what made me want to start building this blog post in the first place.

To Sit — Perchance To Read…

If you’re a writer (and I assume you are, since you’re reading…a blog…about writing), you’ve more than likely heard this question: “Where do you get your ideas?”  As many writers as there are in the world, that’s as many answers as there are to this question, and more. 

I’ve talked to you before about one of my sources for inspiration.  And, my dear inklings, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that another of my idea-triggers is reading the writings of others.

Reading is a wonderful thing, and I believe that most literate people take it for granted.  We glance at something; we know what it says.  We don’t even have to think about it, unless it’s a word like “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as the longest word in the English language.

Reading unlocks entire universes for our casual perusal or our in-depth examination.  Reading gives us the keys to doors marked Language and Culture — not to mention Power.  Reading lets us see into the minds and hearts of our fellows.  Reading feeds our souls.

And it does a lot more than that for us, but I don’t intend for this article to degenerate into propaganda for the lengthening of summer reading lists.  The point is that reading lets us intake the ideas of other human beings, and these ideas trigger new ideas in our own minds.  In this way, inspiration is self-perpetuating, passing from one human to the next.

Inspiration is a benign virus that invades imagination’s cells.  But instead of copying itself and replacing host DNA with its own, inspiration inserts an entirely new DNA called magic — thereby changing the host in wondrous ways and enabling the host to think up the most amazing concoctions of worlds and characters and landscapes.

This is how the ceilings of Sistine Chapels get painted.  This is how paradises get lost and regained.  This is how revolutions begin.  No wonder despots of history have tried to abolish books.  (Fahrenheit 451, anyone?)

Hosts, Monsters, and Lunatics

The inspiration virus is most contagious when one good author reads another; that’s when the bug bites hard.  When the carrier is Mary Shelley and the readers are Dean Koontz and Kevin J. Anderson, the virus metamorphoses (’cause it does that, y’know) into a series entitled Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein.

Koontz, Anderson (of present-day Dune fame), and Frankenstein.  Just those names together are enough to make this reader go, “Oh yeah.”

Basically, and without spoilering the whole series for you, I summarize the premise thusly:  The Frankenstein legend is true.  Mary Shelley wrote about it, but she got a few things wrong.  Crazy Dr. Frankenstein is very much alive and well in modern-day New Orleans.  He’s at it again — or still at it, rather — creating man in his own image.  Sadly, crazy can be catching (kinda like inspiration, but more nefarious-like), so the good doctor’s creations all have a screw or ten loose.  Add a couple of serial killers and some homicide cops into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a story that Courtney puts into the UPDA category, yessireebob.

You can tell I’m loving this series, right?

Get Your Hands Dirty

Koontz and Anderson got themselves inspired — by an old tale that has been redone and rewritten and remade ad infinitum.  And guess what?  They’re not the only modern authors who are digging around in the root system, looking for long-buried treasure.  Seth Grahame-Smith has done it with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (the former of which I guffawed my way through, latter of which I greatly anticipate guffawing my way through ).

Steve Hockensmith has drawn upon both Austen and Grahame-Smith, penning Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls.  There’s a Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.  Huck Finn is…immortalized? dead-ized? in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim. And heavens to Betsy, there’s even an Android Karenina.  It would seem that no classic is safe from the twists of modern, humorous, and fantastical mashup.

And that, gentle readers, is exactly as it should be.  Inspiration does not belong to some elite, untouchable realm.  The joys of public domain belong to everyone.  Come one, come all!  Read the writings of our predecessors — and be a Frankenstein.  Re-write those stories in your own image.  Be lunatic about it.  Or, if re-writing classics isn’t to your creative tastes, let them plant other seeds in the oh-so-fertile soil of your imagination.  Something will grow.  You just gotta let it do its thing.  Y’know — germinate and whatnot.

Back to the other metaphor:  Let that inspiration virus spread, let the fever grip you…and when it finally breaks, you’ll have crafted something you thought would never exist.  I’m willing to bet on it.

Bring on the lightning.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

(Click a link.  Lightning won’t strike your computer, I promise.  All you gotta do is buy something, and I’ll get a few pennies with which to pay Igor’s wages.)

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Document Types: How to Write a Sales Plan

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, July 27, 2010

This week I’m diving into document types with a case study in sales pitches and business plans. Yesterday I talked about the purpose of a business proposal and gave you a brief glimpse at the people who will be reading it.

Today I’m supposed to tell you how to actually write one. The good news is that the template is pretty straightforward — a single standard font throughout, minimal document metadata, and nothing much more complicated than a Table of Contents in terms of page elements. And pretty much everything you need to say is prescribed, in standard, required sections.

The bad news is that, even with all that organization done for you, filling in the blanks is a lot of work. Then again, everything about starting a business is a lot of work, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

And when it comes down to it, document templates aren’t really supposed to make writing projects easy, they’re supposed to make the setup easy. As I said yesterday, when I went searching for a good business plan template, it made my setup remarkably simple.

Filling in the Blanks

These are the sections an investor expects to find in a standard business plan:

  • Executive Summary
  • Market Analysis
  • Company Description
  • Organization and Management
  • Marketing and Sales Management
  • Service or Product Line
  • Funding Request
  • Financials
  • Appendix

Each section serves a specific purpose. And while the content changes from project to project, nearly every business benefits by presenting its information in this style.

The Market Analysis describes the market your business hopes to compete in. It should address the competition in the field, customers’ expectations for the delivery and service of similar products, and any notable regulations that would dictate how companies do business in this market.

The Company Description explains in high-level terms what you do. Building on the foundation provided by the Market Analysis, the Company Description  should clearly establish a market need that your company is capable of satisfying. Explain what makes your company a viable alternative (whether it’s better service, better products, better prices, or just better marketing).

Organization and Management tells the reader who you’ve got working for you, what makes them great resources, and how you plan to put them to use. This includes an analysis of your board of directors and your management structure (or founding members), as well as a description of your company’s legal status. This section is one of the most critical in establishing your company as a legitimate enterprise with the resources to achieve its goals.

Marketing and Sales Management investigates just how you’re going to find customers within that Market you analyzed earlier. This includes your plan for getting your message out, as well as how you’re going to position your business competitively and how you’re going to getting your products or services to the customers once a sales is made.

Service or Product Line seems a little late to the discussion, but this section presents what it is you actually have to sell. This should be your real sales pitch, too. You’re not just focusing on what you have to sell — you’re convincing the reader that real people are interested in buying your product.

The Funding Request makes a case for a specific amount of funding you’ll need to start your business. It should include what you’ll need for the next year, what you’ll need over the next five years, and a description of what you would do with that funding if you had it. It’s absolutely crucial here that you go back to your audience analysis and write this section with a strong focus on how it will read to the potential investor (and thinking hard about what they’re looking for in it).

Then your Financials section backs up the Funding Request with hard numbers, showing an analysis of the historical financial data related to your market and prospective financial data (describing how things will look in the future if you get some or all of your requested funding). This section is often composed almost entirely of charts and graphs — and you’re on your own, for those.

And last (as it should be), there’s an Appendix, which contains extra information you’ll provide on an as-needed basis — things like resumes of your key board members and managers, a credit report, and legal documents like licenses related to your ability to conduct business. You won’t share that with nearly as many people as the main body of your business plan, but it’s handy to have it ready.

When all that’s done, you get to write the very first item in the list: the Executive Summary. That’s a one- or two-page narrative that provides an overview of information included in all the other sections. It’s your opportunity, in just a few hundred words, to describe your business.

Describe Your Business (TW Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopIf you’ve made it this far into the business plan series, you’ve got to have something big you want to put on paper. Maybe you don’t realize it consciously, but I’m certain that if you’re here now, you’ve got a project that deserves a detailed business plan.

A business plan can do more than secure funding — it can help you formalize a vague idea (or daydream), and decide for yourself if it’s something you want to pursue, or something you’d prefer to forget about altogether. And if you’re not interested enough to even fill out a business plan, you’re probably better off forgetting.

Try it out. Check out the business plan template in your version of Word (if you’ve got access to Word) or use this one I found on Google Docs. Then start at the top, and do your best to fill it out, whether it’s a description of your ad-supported blog or your dream of opening an haute-cuisine restaurant on that abandoned lot you pass on your way to work.

Or if you’re part of my Thursday crowd, maybe your dream is to be a professional novelist. More and more, that’s an entrepreneurial endeavor all its own. So figure out the Market Analysis for your genre and your Service or Produce Line, and if you’ve got the patience, even put your Financials into words.

And then if you’re really brave, share it with us. At least tell us that you did it, though. I’d love to know how your experience goes.

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