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Words and Birds: Catching the Write Flight

January 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Birds in flight … are not between places, they carry their places with them-claims the architect Vincenzo Volentieri. We never wonder where they are: they are at home in the sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world.

–Goeff Dyer, quoted in The Global Soul by Pico Iyer

More people in more places have access to more books faster, more easily, and more inexpensively than ever. If you don’t want to splurge 99 cents to download all of Charles Dickens’ books on your e-reader, you can still have more than 80% of the best books ever written for free.

Public-domain books are available in print and for your e-reader from your library. If, as I do, you prefer print, they’re also available in low-priced editions at bookstores. Want to discover new authors for free or at low cost? Online booksellers and social reading sites like Goodreads will help you discover your next favorite writer.

What a glorious time to be a writer or reader! It’s far from heaven, but it’s about as close as you can get in this mortal coil. And sharing your passion for books online and in book clubs will make friends of strangers.

For birds, the sky’s the limit. But you can soar on the wings of words as far and high as your ability, freedom, resources, creativity, and imagination can take you. If reading and writing are your way of being in the world, now is the best time for you to take flight. You were born to fly. I hope you find home in the sky. May your words be wings that transport you wherever you want to go. Bon voyage!

 

The blog aspires to help us both understand writing and publishing. To make the blog as helpful as it can be, please respond with your questions and suggestions for changes. I hope you find it worth sharing.

Do one thing every day to make the world better .   –John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman

The 10th San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / February 14-17, 2013 / www.sfwriters.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com /

Keynoters: Bella Andre, Anne Perry, and R. L. Stine

http://sfwriters.info/blog /@SFWC/ www.facebook.com/SanFranciscoWritersConference

San Francisco Writers University / Where Writers Meet and You Learn

Laurie McLean, Dean/free classes/www.sfwritersu.com/sfwritersu@gmail.com/@SFWritersU

415-673-0939 / 1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, 94109

The 5th San Francisco Writing for Change Conference / Changing the World One Book at a Time

September 2013 / Unitarian Universalist Center / Geary and Franklin

www.sfwritingforchange.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Reading, San Francisco Writers Conference, Writing Fiction, Writing for Change, Writing Nonfiction Tagged With: , , , ,

Wribrid or Toast—Which are You?

April 13, 2010 By 3 Comments

There’s a New Yorker cartoon showing an editor sitting across a desk from a man who looks like Charles Dickens, and the editor is saying: “Make up your mind, Mr. Dickens. Was it the best of times or the worst? It could scarely have been both.”

As I wrote in my first post, now’s the best time ever to be a writer. But if you’re a new writer who wants a major commitment from a large publisher, it’s the most challenging time ever. One way to make yourself attractive to big houses is to reinvent yourself as a wribrid.

Wribrid rhymes with hybrid and sounds like it should be sliced and wrapped in cellophane. But it’s really the new model for writers. We live in the age of hybrids, the transition between gas and other forms of energy, between analog and digital, between the world and the Web.

Put writer and hybrid together and you have wribrid. Author Lee Foster rightly predicted that “This will be the golden age of the content creator.” But to succeed, you have to be a wribrid. You have to strike the right balance between

* Being online and off

* Writing for free and fees

* Writing short work and books

* Developing your ability to write for and promote in as many media as you can

* Writing, selling, test-marketing and promoting your work

* Doing work that generates income and building your visibility and communities to help you

* Receiving help and reciprocating

* Making a living and making a life

* Being a writer and, if you can get paid to speak, a speaker

I’m looking for someone to write a book about finding the best balance in life between form and content. Content is what you love to do; form is what you have to do. The goal: maximize content, minimize form.

If you love to write, your goal is to spend as great a percentage of your time writing as you can, and as small a percentage as possible doing everything else. There’s a tension between maximizing your writing time and all the other things you have to do to build your career. So you to keep fine-tuning the most productive ways to use your time to achieve your short- and long-term goals.

If this was easy, everyone would be doing it. You have what it takes but no time to waste. So if you don’t have comments or questions, resume your quest now.

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Filed Under: Book Publishing, Getting a Book Published, Literary Agents, Publishing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,