Ken Fite

It’s hard to believe that Halloween is in just two days. Soon, my four and eight-year-old will be dressed up like ninjas, scouring our East Orlando neighborhood for the sweetest treats on Earth.

And two hours after that, as they drift off to Candyland, their dad will display ninja skills of his own to collect his dad tax and scour their candy cache for his share of any Kit Kats that he can find.

For me, the days seem to be moving more quickly now than they did earlier in the year. In three and a half weeks, we’ll be eating Thanksgiving dinner. Eight weeks from today is Christmas Eve.

I just can’t believe it. This is usually around the time of year when most people will take their foot off the gas. They’ll sit back and coast for the next two months while things start winding down.

I’m all for enjoying the holidays. But there’s one thing that’s keeping me from coasting for the rest of 2016: my list of goals for the year. And the one staring me in the face is ‘finish writing novel #3’.

Like anything in life, that means I’ll have to deal with some trade-offs. I may be a little sleep-deprived for a while. I may not be able to write this blog every Saturday morning like I want to.

And I might not even make it. Maybe I’ll finish it in January. But would that be so bad? A friend once told me that if we try to chase perfection, we’ll usually only end up catching excellence. There’s still time left for us to catch one of the two and make a dent in this world, if we choose to.

Because our story has not been fully written yet. Most people give up on their goals before January is even over. They shrug their shoulders and think, Maybe next year. Well, how about this year?

We still have 64 more days left to write the ending we want. I’m going to try to make mine count.

You may have never heard of the Hero’s Journey before, but it’s a framework for story structure that writers and screenwriters use when crafting their breakout novels and blockbuster movies.

It puts an unlikely hero through a three act structure. There’s the setup and buildup (first act), the reaction, realization, action, and a renewed push (second act), the recovery, and climax (3rd act).

As a writer, it’s both a delight and a distraction knowing all of this story structure stuff, because it’s the lens that I can’t help but read every novel and watch every movie through as the story unfolds.

If I had to choose my favorite part of any story, it would be what writers call the first plot point — the thing that happens at around the 25% mark of any good story.

Everything in act 1, the first part, is all backstory. It shows the protagonist in their ordinary world doing ordinary things. It’s what makes us care about the character and what happens to them.

And it’s the part of the story that represents you and me in our average, normal, everyday life.

But at the first plot point at the end of act 1, right around the 25% mark, that’s where life is turned upside down and triggers the real story to begin in act 2. And it’s what I look forward to the most.

The reason it’s my favorite is because this is where the protagonist of the story is given a choice, much like you and I are often given: go back home to life as you know it, or enter a new world. And that choice is what will define the protagonist, show us his character, and create a good story.

And it’s only in this new world and the decision the protagonist makes to step through the door that starts the adventure into the unknown and puts him on the path to becoming the eventual hero.

In life, sometimes the choice is ours. Like in Cars when Lightning McQueen tears up the asphalt and after doing his time to fix the road, he’s given the opportunity to leave, but decides to stay.

But we’re not always given the choice in life. Sometimes we’re forced into a new, unknown world and we have to fight to get things right, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when she talks to Glinda. Dorothy has to find the wizard if she wants to go home, she can’t just turn around and leave. She has to follow the path to adventure and take a step in faith, one step at a time.

Stories are metaphors, they help us make sense of our world and what’s going on in our lives. So what’s important to focus on when we find our world turned upside down and we have to make a decision about what we’re going to do about it, is to realize that we’re really at the 25% mark of what could be a great story. Life might never be the same, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good.

Accept the call to adventure. Walk through the doorway. Enter your second act. Choose the path that will make for the best story. Because life’s too short to stay in the comfortable, ordinary world.

My oldest son, Kyle, turns eight today. We had his birthday party yesterday morning at a nearby park. Sometime after ten, my friend Mark showed up with his son who’s in Cub Scouts with Kyle.

Carter and Kyle stormed off to seize control of the playground while Mark took a seat at the bench and I joined him. “How’s the new job?” I asked, remembering how Mark had been unemployed for 18 months and wondering how he was adjusting after sitting on the sidelines for so long.

“Going great,” Mark replied and told me how much he liked it. While we caught up, my four-year-old son Noah came up and tried to talk to me and I shooed him away because Daddy was talking.

I’m not sure how we got there, but somehow the conversation veered toward self-improvement.

Mark turned to me. “You know, Ken,” he said. “Someone once told me that a good man has a job. But a great man always has two jobs — the one he has and the one that he’s working towards.”

I nodded as my wife Missy walked up to let me know it was time for me to go pick up the pizza.

So I didn’t get a chance to smugly tell Mark that I had it all figured out — that I did have two jobs, and that the one I was working towards was writing and becoming a full-time novelist one day.

And why wouldn’t it be?

I write every day. I think about writing. I read about writing. I study story structure so I can be a better storyteller. I don’t want to be a good man, I want to be great and see my dream come true.

I take my writing seriously and work hard on every new writing project I work on.

But as I drove away, I started to think about Noah and I felt bad. What had he wanted to tell me? Something silly like Daddy, the slide is blue! or obvious like We’re gonna eat pizza soon, I’m sure.

Maybe it was more. I’ll never know, because I didn’t bother to listen to him.

When I returned with a stack of pizzas a mile high, I saw things differently. I saw that my kids are projects in and of themselves, probably the greatest projects I’ll ever get a chance to work on.

The great thing about being a parent is that every day is a chance for a do-over — you know, that thing we used to say ourselves as kids when whatever we were doing wasn’t going as we planned.

Today is your do-over.

And if you’re a parent, know that you already have two jobs. That can be (and is) overwhelming, especially if you’re following another dream, but it’s also an opportunity for us to become great.

I think it was late Wednesday afternoon when I finally thought about preparing for Hurricane Matthew. The track kept shifting west throughout the day, inching closer to Orlando where I live.

So Missy and I disassembled the trampoline in the backyard (the one the kids use about 5 minutes a month) and brought everything on the porch inside. We popped way too many bags of popcorn for the boys. We filled up the bathtubs with water. We charged all of our gadgets. I went out and bought overpriced batteries and filled up both cars with gas, because that’s what you do, I guess.

We waited.

Kyle, my seven-year-old, kept asking when the electricity was going to go out. “Any time now,” I’d say and seriously considered if I should sneak into the garage and flip the breaker off for a while.

Kyle and four-year-old Noah slept in the large downstairs closet. Missy and I slept on an air mattress just outside their door. They stayed up late, anxious for the hurricane to get here already.

We waited some more.

I read about the destruction in Haiti and said a prayer. We turned the TV on and watched our local weatherman Tom Terry take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves, an inside joke for those of us who live in central Florida that means things are getting serious. We kept watching, hoping Tom wouldn’t loosen his tie (or remove it completely, that would be a DEFCON 3 situation right there).

We kept waiting.

We never lost power. Never got hit. Hurricane Matthew moved east, missing us for the most part. But Matthew did have an impact on my friends and family. Just not the kind you might expect…

I spoke with family members that I hadn’t connected with in months.

My mom stayed a few days with her best friend who she hasn’t seen in a very long time.

Noah asked me to pray for ‘the tornado’ to not hurt us and for God to protect our house. Kyle prayed for the deer who live in the woods just behind our backyard so they wouldn’t blow away.

And we had the best time ‘hunkering down’ at home. We played games. I wrestled with my boys. Kyle and I watched countless America’s Funniest Videos and laughed so hard he almost peed.

Before bed, I scrolled through my Facebook feed one last time. In between the Florida hurricane memes, I read many heartfelt posts from friends and family all over the state giving us updates on their safety with countless comments from their loved ones showing their support and concern.

Something about preparing for the worst helped us bring out the best in each other.

With the destruction in Haiti and the east coast, I know things could have been a lot worse here. But I can’t say the hurricane didn’t impact us.

On Saturday mornings, I wake up and write this blog. I share whatever’s on my heart, usually a lesson I learned in the prior week that I want to share with you, then I hit publish and start my day.

A few hours later, I’ll come back to my laptop and will see a few email replies to my post. At close to 700 readers, the replies are growing every week. And I can’t wait to read what you’ve written.

Sometimes the replies are very long and heartfelt. Often they’re just a few words. I read them all.

And I sit here in amazement. You don’t even know me. Not really. Still, you read my words and care enough to reply whenever they connect with you to show your gratitude for what was written.

As a writer, that means the world to me.

But this week, I have a favor to ask of you: instead of hitting reply, hit forward — and tell someone you care about how grateful you are for them. It can be long and heartfelt. Or just a few words.

Because gratitude is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. And because gratitude has a really bad memory; it forgets our past hurt and helps us focus on the present instead.

Gratitude changes everything and can make someone’s day, no matter how dark, brighter. And maybe best of all, gratitude will change you. Because a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.

A few weeks back, I wrote about how I try to improve with every novel that I write by continuing to read books on the craft of storytelling. I want to improve and push myself to get to the next level.

But sometimes it’s hard to see the results and I wonder to myself, Am I really getting any better?

So the day I finished writing my second novel, I didn’t light a cigar or open a celebratory bottle of chardonnay or take a nap or gorge myself with Chipotle or decide to finally grow a writer’s beard.

No, what I decided to do was read my first novel which I hadn’t looked at in about four months.

While the advice given to new writers is to never go back and read what you’ve written so you can focus on the future, I thought that rereading that first novel could help me write a better book #3.

As I read, I couldn’t believe what I found. It must have been on page two, maybe three, where I first saw it, a huge grammatical error staring right at me. I cautiously read on and found even more.

So I had a decision to make — should I keep reading? And if so, do I make the corrections?

Of course I should and I did. I opened the manuscript and started making the updates to whatever issues I found. As I read on, I found poor sentence structure paragraph after paragraph. I fixed it. Then I found missing quotation marks, incomplete sentences, unclear dialogue, all of it corrected in my manuscript and fixed on Amazon with a mental note to have a talk with my editor.

After making the updates, I closed the lid to my laptop and just sat here and thought for a while.

As disappointed as I was to find all of those issues in my first novel, I realized something — I had improved. Not from someone showing me all of my mistakes, but from seeing them for myself. Somehow, maybe from the books I read or from the sheer act of writing more words, I got better.

It also made me realize something else. We’re so focused on improving, on comparing ourselves with where we want to be, that we never take the time to see that we’re already getting better.

They say comparison is the enemy of joy, that we should never compare ourselves to anyone.

They’re wrong.

Because there is someone you should compare yourself to — who you were yesterday.

If you think you’re not improving, look at your older work. I think you’ll see how far you’ve come.

I’ve worked for a lot of managers in my life. I’ve been one, too. There have been great and not-so-great ones over the course of my career. Both have taught me a lot over the years, some showing me how to lead, others showing by example how not to lead. Through it all, I’ve come to realize that the term manager isn’t really a good word to describe the person who’s in charge.

Because people aren’t managers — they’re either bosses or they’re leaders. They can’t be both.

The difference isn’t really clear at first. You might consider the terms boss and leader to mean the same thing. Trust me, they’re not. You have to be very careful about who you work for. Because your boss will influence what you spend your time learning by the examples they set every day.

If your boss drives people, you may not learn the importance of coaching and investing in others so they can improve.

If your boss depends on their authority to influence others, you may not learn how to rely on goodwill to get things done.

If your boss manages out of fear, you may not learn how to create genuine enthusiasm for the work and why the team’s work is important and matters.

If your boss demands respect, you may not learn how to earn respect.

If your boss depends on hearsay to address problems, you may not learn the art of investigating an issue before addressing it.

If your boss criticizes those who struggle, you may not learn the joy of helping someone get back on their feet and overcome what’s holding them back.

If your boss takes credit when the team wins, you may not learn that a leader should give the credit to anyone on his team except for himself.

If your boss knows it all, you might not learn that a leader should be more interested in asking questions about what they don’t know so they can learn.

If your boss enjoys being in the limelight, you may not learn the importance of quietly blowing out your own candle so someone else’s can burn brighter.

We spend so much time in jobs, working for bosses that don’t teach us by example how to become better people. And we often put up with it because looking for something new is too much work.

If we were as picky about who we work for as recruiters are when hiring the right candidate, we’d be far better people. Because not every job or boss or client is worth your time, attention, and love.

Where you work matters. Who you work for matters. And who you become in the process matters most of all.

I remember being really nervous as I walked into the building where I had worked for close to ten years after graduating college. I was headed for my boss’s office so I could resign from my job.

It was 2011 and I had just landed another job across town. I wasn’t nervous because of how my boss might react. I wasn’t worried that she’d call security to escort me to the door right then and there only to grab me by the collar and throw me out onto the curb followed by, “And stay out!”

I was nervous because I wanted to be remembered differently from a friend who had just quit.

Ron had been with us for five years and about four years too long. He didn’t give any notice when he left. He got frustrated, took off his badge, and threw it on his desk as he walked down the hall.

He not only left us shocked, wondering if he was coming back or if that was the last time we would see him. He also left us in a bind. We didn’t know where he left off programming the system. Nothing was documented. Nobody else was trained. He let all of us down. And he became a running joke. “Don’t go out like Ron,” people would say whenever things would heat up at work.

And I thought about all of that when it was time for me to leave.

So my last two weeks of work were and to this day still are the hardest two weeks I’ve ever worked in my life. I had worked as hard as I could up until then, but I really stepped up my game after resigning. For the next two weeks, I was the first one in the office and the last to leave at night. Not because I had to. Not because I was asked to. But because I knew that I had a personal brand.

You do, too — whether you want one or not.

When you think about brands in business, they make implicit or explicit promises to us as consumers. And if they keep their promises to us, we trust them. Because they’re consistent.

If you think about it, ‘brand’ is really just a fancy word for story. And your story is how people in your life make sense of who you are. But it’s up to you to define or redefine your personal brand.

Maybe you don’t like your brand. Maybe you’re known as the guy who always shows up five minutes late to everything. Or maybe you’re the guy that never finishes anything that he starts.

The good news is that you can change your branding — your story — but it’s going to take commitment to do things differently and it will take consistency. It’s also going to take a lot of time.

If you’ve never given much thought to what your personal brand is, that’s okay. Zig Ziglar had a name for this kind of person — a wondering generality. He’d say that most of us are wondering generalities, but we really should aim to become a meaningful specific. And if you want to have a personal brand that’s not only meaningful but also resonates with people, you need to get specific.

And if you’re not sure where to start, I’ll tell you. Care.

Care about everything. Care about the conversations that you have. Care about your job. If you don’t love it, leave it. But care about how you leave things when you decide to walk away. Care.

When should you start working on your brand? Yesterday. When is the next best time to start? Right now.

Don’t go out like Ron.

Anthony nodded to the captain and flight attendants as he stepped onto the aircraft that would be taking him from the west coast to the other side of the country in less than half an hour. After he got to his seat and settled in, he checked his phone and saw that there was an issue at work. He didn’t have much time before they departed, so he shot off an email and it was handled.

As the plane raced down the runway and lifted off, he thought about how he was going to spend the next five hours. Anthony looked to his right and noticed an older gentleman across from him. The man pulled out a tattered paperback from his carry-on and it reminded him that he had brought a book as well. Just in case I get bored, he had thought when packing a week before.

Anthony smiled. He didn’t get bored much anymore. Most people didn’t, thanks to technology.

In a way, he was looking forward to making a good dent in his 800+ page copy of 11/22/63, King’s latest and greatest. A novel Anthony had tried to start several times before without much luck.

But before he could get past the introduction, the captain came on the PA. Said they’d soon approach cruising altitude and had good news to share — there was free WiFi for the flight.

The people surrounding Anthony cheered. Young and old, they each found their devices and fell into the rabbit-hole of social media and the Internet. Some business types — executives, he decided — put their magazines away and opened their laptops to catch up on work.

Anthony closed his novel and looked at the front cover. Then he reached for his work phone. He pulled down the tray attached to the seat in front of him and set each of them down and thought.

Do I read the novel I’ve been looking forward to, but never seem to ever have time for? Or do I look at my work email again? Before Anthony could choose, the decision was made for him.

Passengers sitting around him started tapping their screens frantically with furrowed brows. The execs with their laptops lifted their hands in annoyance. Then the captain came back on.

“Sorry folks, Internet seems to be down. We’ll get it back up as soon as we can,” he said.

But they never did. Anthony turned and looked all around. His eyes searched the cabin, finding anger and frustration on the faces of the passengers that his eyes fell upon. All but one.

The older gentleman, carelessly turning page after page, lost in the story world of a book that Anthony decided the man must have read several times, based on the condition of the paperback.

Anthony thought about the passengers upset by being forced off-the-grid who had given up control of their happiness. What had been a miracle minutes earlier had already become an expectation.

The gentleman across the aisle looked up from his novel and laughed to himself, as if he had heard a familiar but still funny joke that he had looked forward to. Then he turned to Anthony, saw his novel resting on the tray, and smiled before returning to the tattered paperback and climbing inside the rabbit-hole, one far different than the one the rest of the passengers had hoped to enter.

Anthony looked at the tray in front of him. He picked up his novel, then reached for his cell phone. He turned it off and slid it back into his jacket pocket. See you in Florida, he thought.

He read the first few pages of 11/22/63 and within minutes, found the entrance to his own rabbit-hole. Waiting just inside was the story’s hero, Jake Epping, who was about to time-travel back to 1963 to try and stop the JFK assassination and fight an obdurate past that didn’t want to be changed. Jake wanted Anthony to join him. Before Anthony stepped inside, he took one last look at the people sitting all around him. Bored. Upset. Wishing they were there already, wherever there was. Anthony thought they should know about what he discovered. That they could escape like him. And like the older gentleman with the paperback. They’re not ready yet, he thought. But I am.

With that, Anthony turned the page, stepped inside, and entered a Kennedy-era America.

Monday will be two weeks since I published Credible Threat, book #2 in the Blake Jordan series. That means it’s back to business and time to buckle down and start writing book #3.

One thing I like to do when writing a new thriller is to read about the craft of storytelling. I want my readers to get the best experience possible with each new book. And because I want to improve.

While writing Blake Jordan #1, I read How to Write a Damn Good Thriller by James Frey. It helped me understand the best way to structure a thriller so it would be, well, thrilling.

While writing #2, I read The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne (and listened to about 50 of his corresponding podcasts on my daily walks). It taught me how to write more compelling scenes.

On Monday, I’ll start writing #3, and the book I’m reading right now is Story by Robert McKee. McKee’s students have gone on to write Toy Story, Friends, Batman Forever, Beauty and the Beast, Seinfeld, Forrest Gump — I’ll just stop right there, but the list goes on and on (and on).

With any kind of self-improvement, they say if you try to change too much too soon, it’ll never work. So with each book, I try to not only learn to be better, but I also try to focus on just one thing I can work on to improve. With book #1, it was how to create twists; to zig when they expect you to zag.

With #2, I focused on improving my pacing, on writing the right thing at the right time, according to story structure; to hold back on the action until the characters were introduced so we could care about them first before really bad things started happening to them (that was really hard for me!).

With book #3, I’ve decided to focus on creating a better villain for my hero, Blake Jordan.

Because what I’ve started to realize from reading McKee’s Story is that a hero is only compelling to the level of there being an equally compelling (and even more powerful) villain. I’m not sure how I’m going to pull that off just yet, but I’m up for the challenge. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Character is revealed through choices made under pressure and the villain must pressure the hero into more and more difficult choices, ultimately revealing the hero’s true character.
• The choices the hero makes reveal not only who he is but also what he cares about.
• The villain will use that information to learn the hero’s weakness and will exploit it to attack the hero where it hurts him the most — that’s what makes the villain so powerful.
• This makes the hero grow wiser and deepens his resolve to find a way to defeat the villain.
• The hero and villain must compete for the same goal. In The Dark Knight, Batman and The Joker both compete for the same thing, the soul of Gotham. In a way, they are two sides of the same coin. Only when the hero and villain want the same thing do they become destined to battle.

I’m looking forward to sitting down with a coffee on Monday morning and creating the best villain I can come up with for Blake Jordan #3 to see where life takes my story’s hero. Challenge accepted.