We writers should be delirious over the new opportunities opening up for us.  The steep, narrow, winding path to a book deal has almost overnight become a multi-lane superhighway.  Writers can nowadays afford to go almost anywhere with their work.  But we do need roadmaps.  Chris Brogan has delivered a broad-brush landscape of our unfolding world at the just-completed Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York City.  And, magically, it’s already available in online video from his website.

Brogan is one of a growing list of social media gurus.  At the TOC conference, he was speaking to a roomful of book people — writers, publishers, distributors, bloggers and such.  His workshop was very long; it was very rambling in nature.  But I found the video provided one of the thought-provoking mornings I’ve had in years.

You may have noticed that my blog posts have veered somewhat away from the tools of writing and more toward the new avenues to distribute our writing.  We writers simply must pay attention to these changes.  And we must begin to digest the mass of information that tells us how to travel this new super-highway.

No writer can now complain about the difficulty of getting one’s words into distribution.  On the other hand, the challenge of getting our words noticed — to gain attention in an emerging “attention economy” — is huge.  And no one will do the spadework for us.  We must ourselves learn how to gather our audience.

Brogan points to many strategies and tactics writers can follow.  I myself am amazed that I learned about this video within hours of its release.  How did that happen?  Because I am getting increasingly plugged in to the new channels of communication.  I sniffed a hint of something new I wanted to investigate.  I spend an hour following a string of links from one thing to another.  And I’ve ended up with a number of incredible discoveries, all from the meandering series of unpredictable links spreading out in front of me.

That power that the internet provides is available to all of us.  We simply must start planting seeds and tending to the sprouts as they emerge and water the trees as they grow.  It takes time.  But as a writer, I’m enjoying tending to this garden of opportunity that grows in productivity every day.

The Chris Brogan video will be available for a few days in our sidebar — just click and watch.  And it will be included in my collection of VIDEO FOR WRITERS for future reference.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?  Do you believe that we are indeed in a major revolution that affects writers directly?  If so, is the effect good or bad?  Does it open new doors for you — or do they annoy you?

POST SCRIPT:  I’ve just discovered that many other presentations from the Tools of Change for Publishing conference are available online.  Click the “Episode Archive” button at the top right to see a list of all videos available.  Now that should keep you busy all weekend!

POST POST SCRIPT:  When checking my VIDEO FOR WRITERS collection at Vodpod about an hour ago, I discovered that this collection has already been viewed over 1350 times.  On one day recently, over 30 visitors viewed a video that day.  I’m of course pleased to see VIDEO FOR WRITERS is developing an audience of its own.

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Even poets take account of the internet these days.  Some even write about it.  Storyteller and poet Rives, perhaps best known for his work on HBO’s Def Poetry, did so a couple years ago, with a reading captured for the online TED video series “Ideas Worth Spreading.”

You can view the four-minute reading at the TED website.  I encourage you to visit, not only to savor the poem but also to learn about TED, a venture sponsored by AutoDesk and BMW.  Each week, TED presents several talks or performances by provocative authors, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs.  I personally go there a lot for my own intellectual stimulation.  Sign up for the weekly newsletter to learn what’s upcoming.  [I learned about the Rives poem from a link in today's issue.]

This week, TED presents four talks that deal with creativity in one form or another.  Two of them seem of particular interest to writers.  From the TED newsletter — click on the links to view the videos:

Isaac Mizrahi, the fashion designer/talk-show host/cabaret star, gives a dizzying tour of his motivations for staying creative in so many fields. What’s his secret? “Always be a little bit bored all the time.”

Documentary filmmaker Franco Sacchi tours us through Nollywood, Nigeria’s booming film industry — where local crews telling local stories can shoot a feature film in a week. How do they do it? Focusing on their audience, and the kinds of stories meaningful to them.

For those of you who can’t bear to leave Becoming A Writer Seriously, you will find the Rives poem reading video in the sidebar.  Just click the screenshot to open a player without leaving us.  This is a new feature here, which I’m calling VIDEO FOR WRITERS.  The sidebar presents four recently discovered videos.  For my entire collection, with each video carrying my annotation about its significance to writers, go to my site VIDEO FOR WRITERS, hosted by VodPod.

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When I first started this blog almost 2 years ago, it appeared to be the only one around that focussed exclusively on productivity for writers, surveying software and tools for writers and exploring a broad compass of topics relating to the business of writing. This arena is so new that the Writer’s Digest 101 Best Resources of Writers doesn’t even have a category of it.

Now there are THREE OF US!

The Writer’s Technology Companion, maintained by Dustin Wax, joined the fray last year and has already established itself as a major blog for writers seeking advice about productivity.

I recently wrote about Juiced On Writing, the newest blog in this sphere, hosted by Michele.

I do not consider these as “competing” blogs. In fact, I’ve been amazed at how little we overlap in actual content. We each seem to have our own perspective and interests, and we constantly dig up differing material. In short, I recommend that you follow all of us. To make this even easier, I have just added continuously updating headline links to their five most recent posts in my sidebar. Just click on a headline and go right to the site to read it.

One last suggestion: how about recommending ALL THREE BLOGS to Writer’s Digest for its next list of best resources for writers. Maybe the magazine will even add a category for us! You can send WD an email from HERE.

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Image by kenleyneufeld via Flickr

Not quite four months old now, Michelle Thompson’s blog Juiced on Writing has already climbed into the top-tier of blogs for writers. As she descirbes it,

I want to write. I want to make a living writing – fiction, and non-fiction. And I want to share all the writing resources I find. This is my writing blog. Simple as that.

I’m amazed at just how much information Michelle has already gathered and posted. And the blog is, to boot, beautifully designed. The blog’s content tills similar ground as my own blog, accounting partially for my enthusiasm about it. And as I dug deeper into her social media activity, I discovered that our interests coincide right across the board! Her blog already joins Writers Technology Companion as my favorite writing blogs.

Michelle also actively uses Twitter and FriendFeed, two Web 2.0 facilities that you may wish to check out. Both help you gather breaking information, great tools for writers that wish to stay ahead of the game. Michelle has also participated in the 30-Day Challenge, which amazingly I am working my way through at this very moment. This remarkable Challenge is essentially an online course to lead one through the intricacies of setting up an online business and earning one’s first online dollar by the end of the challenge. If you are a plugged-in writer, this challenge may interest you as well. And there are even more areas when Michelle and I intersect. Oh, the joy of encountering a kindred spirit!

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Glen Stansberry, who blogs at LifeDev, knows the feeling:

As a serial entrepreneur, I’m addicted to ideas. I feed off of ‘em. And
nothing makes me more upset than having a great idea… and losing it.
Ideas never happen at opportune times, and having the proper idea
capture tools can make sure that you’ll capture all your ideas for
later processing.

Glan has compiled a very comprehensive annotated list of various tools to capture ideas. His readers have tossed in a few he left out in comments on the post. He has suggestions for pen-and-paper people, Mac users, web app aficiandos, as well as PC die-hards.

If you visit the site, look back through his past articles. Much of what he writes applies to writers.

You can read the Free Download A Day review HERE for details. If you are a software addict, you may wish to subscribe to the free weekly email newsletter while you are at the website.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Still in beta, Microsoft Office Live Workspace offers to users of Microsoft Word an online workspace where one can store and share documents, and even do modest work on them. It is Microsoft’s answer to such challengers as Google Documents, Zoho and ThinkFree. So far, this facility leaves a lot to be desired, but then it is only still in beta. This new online facility may develop into an important resource for writers wedded to Microsoft Word. For an excellent review, take at look at the brand new blog Vacant Cubicle, which, by the way, even on its second day of existence promises to be a particularly fine source of reviews and information about productivity software and tricks.

Jeff VanderMeer on Writing Novels

Novelist Jeff VanderMeer wrote a particularly good post at his blog Ecstatic Days entitled How To Write A Novel In Two Months. His blog, by the way, is an excellent case study of a writer’s promotional blog and website, worth study to see how such a site can be put together. His blog started out on the free Blogger platform, before he transferred over to the more powerful WordPress.

Resources for Freelancers regarding, ugh, taxes

Jessica Hupp at Bootstrapper has pulled together 50 sources of information about taxes for freelancers. Not the most entertaining of posts, but informative at this time of year.

If you maintain a home office for writing, you may wish to look at this discouraging post at Web Worker Daily.

FOR MORE ONLINE RESOURCES:

I scour over 150 blogs and websites for the best information available online for writers. My discoveries are all gathered at my Google Reader Shared Items page, which is frequently updated. I tag many more items than I write about here, so a visit to this summary page may uncover something you’ll find useful.

The Bootstrapper blog has just today come up with a remarkable list of 100 resources for freelancers, most of them new to me and many of which look truly helpful.

The problem with such lists, of course, is that they simply overwhelm — how can a busy freelancer, for example, ever find the time or energy to sort through this list and find what’s best for oneself. A suggestion: bookmark the page in your browser in some conspicuous place so that you can easily remember to return. Then as you confront problems, see if any of the tools here might be helpful right at the moment. OR simply remember that a link to the list is always available right here at Becoming A Writer Seriously — after all, this blog is meant to be a resource center for writers, with information available as you need it.

Susan certainly knows what she is talking about. Author Mark Levine, in his book evaluating 58 self-publishing companies, ranks iUniverse in the top-tier of companies.

Susan underscores the value of traditional publishing, and she thinks it’s here to stay. These publishers find good books with identifiable audiences large enough to justify the cost of publication. They have a well-oiled system for getting the books into stores across the country, in many cases timed with book reviews and perhaps even advertising. But she does point out that traditional publishers can only serve a sliver of the aspiring authors out there

One of the truly distinguishing characteristics of the self-publishing industry is that the books seldom make their way into the big book chains. Marketing simply must be done via other channels, with the author usually carrying most of the load.

Writers considering self-publishing will pick up lots of information about various steps involved, the different “levels” of self-publishing, the costs associated with these levels. And she emphasizes that quality still counts, quality of writing, of cover design [some interesting observations here about genre-specific design], of marketing plans.

This interview is worth downloading and filing away so that you can return to it as necessary. If you are unfamiliar with Podcasting, the show’s website provides step-by-step instructions,

There have been a wide array of guests on the podcast. For a full list of guests, go HERE. There’s enough here to provide a good education about the business of writing.

A 5-minute video on YouTube tells you everything you need to know in the clearest and simplest of terms. And it’s entertaining as well, fun to watch even by those already familiar with RSS. I strongly recommend that you check it out. [You can also check out other informative videos by the same producers -- just look on the right side of the YouTube page.]

If you do not already have a Reader installed on your computer, I strongly recommend Google Reader. Just last week, it graduated from Google Labs as a full-scale application. It’s free.

Once it’s installed, then test it out by subscribing to the RSS feed of Becoming A Writer Seriously. You will recognize, after viewing the video, the RSS link to click over on the right hand column.

For what it’s worth, you may be interested to learn that word about this blog is beginning to spread. Over the past two weeks alone, RSS subscriptions have jumped by 50 percent. We are now averaging over 150 unique visitors a day and over 1000 unique visitors a month; and there are over 60 RSS feed subscribers. That’s good incentive to keep me at work searching out tools and trade secrets for writers that many of you might not uncover on your own.