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Now let's dig a little deeper into the idea of message, because we're going to need to
find some history. Once people have asked you; what's your message, you tell them. You've
got a little thirty second, one minute pitch or even shorter that tells them what your
message is. They're going to maybe want to ask more questions. Well, hey how did you
find out that you wanted to be a writer? Where did your art begin? Where did it come from?
This is important when you're talking about things like interviews. You need to be ready
and prepared for this. So, know your story. My story is that when I was in my college
room at UT, I was a freshman at UT, some words popped in my head one evening. I wrote them
down. I looked at them and went I wrote a poem. That's cool. That's fun. Nice. So, I
started writing here and there. You know I started coming up with poems and I just thought
it was fun. Slowly, but surely I started developing this collection of poems. Pretty soon, there
was this arts festival that came up in a few years. I saw; hey, maybe I can submit one
of my poems for that. So, I submitted a few of them, they got accepted. Then I started
performing. Pretty soon I started performing at more festivals and more little spoken word
events. Then I found out about these things called the Poetry Slam, right, and I started
performing at those. Then at one Spoken Word event somebody said, "Hey, can we play music
behind you while you're doing it." I thought well sure we'll try it out and see if it works;
everybody loved it. So, I thought, man I need to get some musicians together. I need to
make a CD. I need to get serious about this. Pretty soon I discovered that when I was up
on stage that was where I felt at home, that is what I felt like I was made for. So, knowing
that, well, then I got the opportunity to leave Motorola, my job as an engineer and
do it full time. I launched out into this new career. See how simple it was to find
out exactly where my story came from? Where did my art begin started me on that path to
being able to tell a story to you in a minute and a half of exactly how my life has been
unfolding. People love that stuff. They want to know more and more about you. If you have
it ready to give to them they'll eat it up.