Dear New Baby Huneycutt and Others Born in
2012:
If you can possibly arrange it, become a writer.
You are the ones who can save our race from prejudice, poorly
written tech manuals, screenplays that bore and play to the lowest common
denominator, and about anything else that plagues mankind
today.
Moreover, the world is spiraling so fast around the sun and
traveling so quickly as the universe moves toward its eventual demise, that dark
matter, wormholes, and other scary entities will have been conquered. I
visualize a publishing world devoid of the problems we have today. That means
writing will be full of the same joys (maybe others, too!) as those we have
in 2012, but it will have few, if any, of the problems. These are my
predictions:
Writers, publishers, agents—even educators—will have moved beyond petty bigotries like judging books by their covers or the presses (or lack of them) that books are published on.
E-readers of all kinds will have put aside petty competitive differences and begun to operate on one system. That means what you publish—whatever it is—need only be published once with one format. Your choice. Easily chosen with a click. Maybe not a click, but a nod of your head or merely a wish.
Hackers will have disappeared. They will have come to understand that a cooperative world is a better one. Instead they will put their skills to work helping those who can't afford their talents.
That disease that plagues writers called "block" will have disappeared because everyone will have read Chapter One in The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) that includes ideas to defeat worries about plagiarism, swiping others' work, being sued, worries about success, rejection, or the idea that you, young
writer, are not enough. Oh, yes. You'll also overcome the fear of marketing. See
the next bullet.
Young people will have been raised and educated to have the
confidence necessary to market their own work without fear of ridicule for doing
so. Words like "shameless" will never be seen paired with "promotion" or
"marketing" because there will be no reason to do so. They'll see that selling
is not a dirty word but the process of matching those who will benefit from what
we do to the product we offer.
The Web (or something else!) will be so viral that we writers will
easily be able to reach all those who will benefit from our books, including
that delightful benefit—entertainment. Again. One click. Or merely a
wish.
Illiteracy will have been overcome. Instead of reading less, people
will read more. Our education processes will be so perfected that no one will
consider it desirable to pretend they don't understand or appreciate anything
from poetry to philosophy to quantum mechanics.
Our computers (or other writing tools) will have perfected methods
for spelling, grammar, and formatting. Tools that always work. Having said that,
no writer will lack the knowledge necessary to spot a mistake on the rare
occasion the computers make a booboo.
And writers (well, OK, maybe others, too!) will live an additional
generation to allow us time to fully develop skills in at least three genres.
That way we can explore, perfect, and draw from each to apply to the
next.
Oh, the passion. Oh, the joy!
~Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a multi award-winning fiction writer and
poet. She also is the author of the bestselling series of HowToDoItFrugally
series of books for writers, http://howtodoitfrugally.com.
~This
blog is part of a celebration of the birth of a new baby and the existence of a
book fair that is but a beginning of all the possibilities for the future of
publishing. Visit other celebration messages today, September 8, at www.bookemnc.blogspot.com and
follow the links to contributing authors' blogs (the more the merrier!). Leave
comments on others' blogs with bits of advice or words of wisdom for the new
parents of Little Baby Huneycutt or the next generations of writers.
Afterward, p. m.
terrell will put all the blogs and comments into a book for Katie, her husband
James, and their new baby to enjoy for years to come. (Katie is one of the
powers behind the Book 'Em Writers Conference in North Carolina.)
If you have any
questions, contact Trish Terrell at patricia@pmterrell.com.
Thank you for
helping celebrate the first Book 'Em Baby!
-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the multi award-winning author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for authors and retailers. She was named Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by members of the California Legislature and is an instructor of UCLA Extension's renowned Writers' Program.
