Came across this neat little web app called “Scribble Live” featured, apparently, at the Toronto Mesh web design conference last week. Its tagline “Fast/Easy/Live Blogging” certainly says it all. It may be neat, but is it useful? Is this just a re-packaged online IM system?

I remember hooking up with friends through IRC chat rooms about 10 or 15 years ago. Someone would open a room, we’d all meet there and chat. It was great for hockey pools!

Now, 15 years later, the technology is different but the result seems to be the same. Mind you it is a bit easier to log in (though you do need a Hotmail or Facebook account to create your live blog).

Blog This Conference

In Scribble Live’s product description, they illustrate some of the uses, including “blogging” at a conference that someone is attending so that everyone back at the office gets a play-by-play of what is going on. In fact, some delegates did a live blog of the Mesh conference. However if conference blogging really did break, then wouldn’t the “best delegate” be the one with the fastest fingers? And how much could you actually participate if you are acting as its stenographer?

I think the greatest value of Scribble Live is to show how far Web 2.0 is progressing — and how it’s pushing against its own limitations. I don’t think “live blogging” will catch on in a huge way (though Anne at the Golden Pencil may have found a use for it last Thursday…!)

Next Killer Google App?

But as a group chat app, it might be one of the easier ones out there, especially considering that you can share images, YouTube videos, etc. It might foreshadow what is to come for real-time, cyber meeting rooms. Sort of an easier “Go To Meeting” but without the go-to cost. Wouldn’t be surprised if Google swooped in and snapped this up for their ever-growing library of online applications (and maybe that’s the point.)

At any rate, I know what I’ll be using for next year’s hockey pool…

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think: Scribble Live

~Graham

or “Zen and the Art of Social Media”

At the beginning of “Contact” (the movie, not the book) there is a brilliant sequence where the camera pulls out from Mother Earth and all the TV and radio waves aurally pull out with it. You hear snippets from the soaps, ’60s shows to finally the first radio recordings. The further from Earth you get, the less chatter there is until finally silence.

Besides the great way it sets up the movie to follow, I really have an affinity for that scene.

There’s a lot of talk on the blogosphere right now about time-sucking things on the Internet like blog reading, Twitter, and the like. (Funny, no one’s mentioned Bejeweled yet…) Social media is showing its downside. Yes, it is great to connect, but have you ever tried to write in the middle of a convention or a cocktail party? Not conducive to great work.

Yesterday I tried an experiment. I shut down my email and my IM and focused on a couple of projects I needed to work on. I did cheat — I opened my email a couple of times in the day and I did answer the phone. But even in the semi-silence, I found I was a lot more focused.

I must admit it was also eerie in a way. Part of the draw of all these techno-gadgets is that we don’t feel like we are working in a void. It’s like we all have these little cubicles that Coupland so derided in “Generation X”, except that instead of listening to the chatter in the same room, our cubicles are thousands of miles apart. I’ve never worked in a cubicle, but I would imagine that if I did and suddenly everyone left, it would be a bit unnerving, despite the opportunity to really get down to work.

Ultimately, I think we need to balance connection and me-time, social media and work time, being readily available and putting out the “Quiet — writer at work” sign.

How about you? Have you tried cutting out the noise? And how did that work for you?

Any tips you have to creating a zen-like balance between the two, let me know!

~Graham

Like many freelance writers (I suspect), one of the big draws for me to this game is the fact that I can write about several different topics — it never gets boring. But sometimes it is difficult to get motivated about a certain topic. That client’s widget you need to write about just doesn’t turn your crank.

Unfortunately, you need to find a way for it to move you. If you’re not invested in your client’s product or service, your copy will usually have a hollow, insincere tone to it. You need to get into the skin of the target audience, find out why they need, and then show why your widget is the best.

Yes, your widget. Own it — sell it like it is your livelihood that depends on convincing your target audience that this is the widget of their dreams.

Because in a round about way, it does.

It can be difficult, but here are three ways to get invested in your client’s business.

Research

This is the easiest way, and a step that you will likely have to take anyway before you start writing. Find out what your client has done before, visit competitor websites, read trade articles.

In this Web 2.0 world, there are a lot of extra nooks and crannies around the ‘Net to find this information too. Do a search on YouTube and Flickr, uncover some industry blogs, find out if there is a Facebook group for a similar product.

Most writers have a natural curiosity, and it is likely that simply reading up on the subject will help you get the juices flowing.

Imagine

Put yourself in the shoes of the target audience. I’m reminded of Mel Gibson in “What Women Want” where he waxes his legs, puts on the make-up, jumps into nylons. He was baffled every moment and cursed throughout most of experience, but the important thing is that he tried to imagine how he would react to these products if he was a woman.

After all your research, try to imagine how your client’s product or service would help you. If, as with Mel Gibson’s character, you definitely are not the target audience, then pretend you are.

Believe

This step is kind of like a debating club in your own mind. You may find some competitors’ products that you actually like better than your own client’s. This is natural, even good in a way.

You need to convince yourself that your client’s widget is the best there is. For example, your client’s widget might be slow and powerful, but you prefer one competitor’s fast and sleek widget. Are there times when a powerful widget would be more advantageous? Most certainly! Jot down why in your notes, and stress that when you write the copy.

In the end, you must believe in the product or service you are selling. As illustrated above, it might not be a product you use personally, but you have to believe that it will be a product that the target audience can’t live without.

When All Else Fails…

If you can’t just convince yourself that your client’s widget has any merit, you might want to consider excusing yourself from the project. Obviously, it is much better to address any misgivings you have before you accept the contract — this is where doing some background research comes in handy, especially when you are entering unknown territory. But ultimately you do yourself and your client a disfavour by writing about a widget that in your heart of hearts you just can’t believe in.

That’s my experience anyway. Anyone out there have their own tricks for getting invested? Let us know!

According to Doris Lessing, writers are in a lose/lose situation. Lindesay Irvine’s blog in The Guardian describes how most (presumably fiction) writers are doomed to struggle. And those few that do manage to succeed must contend with drugs, divorce, and depression, she quotes Joseph Heller as saying. (How apt from the author of Catch-22…)

And Doris Lessing? Apparently she does not write any more, but simply spends her time giving interviews and sitting for photos.

Quite a depressing view, if it wasn’t so funny. I mean, this whole article embodies the two main fears writers have: fear of failure, and fear of success. Reading this is like making an arachnophobe watch some goofy stuffed spider bouncing in the corner of a dollar store — ridiculous, yet oddly unsettling.

Take a read yourself and let us know what you think. Can writers ever win? And is getting your picture taken “losing”?

~Graham

There are seemingly millions of gadgets out there to make our lives easier. Surprisingly, some actually work.

One that came in handy for me the other day is actually a web service called YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com). Now I have no shares in the company, and in fact I have never actually sent anything with it. But I have received files from clients with it, including my most recent one — 468 MB of photos for an article I’m writing. Beats sending a CD by express mail!

Best of all, they have a Lite Account that is free up to 100 MB per file, and 1 GB per month. Paid services offer bigger file sizes and other features.

So what’s your favourite gadget or web service? Let us know!

I’m a very deadline-oriented person. And like many writers, I suspect, I work better under other people’s deadlines. Too often I have put a new project on my to-do list, but because it there is no deadline attached, it usually gets pushed back another day…

If a new or long-time client sends you a project without a return date, always email them to get a firm deadline. The reason I say email and not phone is because sometimes one or both parties get their dates confused. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is good to document all important details of a project including the deadline for future reference.

It is certainly okay to decide on your own deadline, especially if you are the project manager and in charge of creating timelines. But still, tell your clients when you will have the content back to them– that will relieve the (totally natural) temptation to let the project slide…

~Graham

“So during all this time there were many adventures that happened in the great city, and, of these, several — or perhaps one — are here set down.”

My favourite writer of all-time is F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Great Gatsby still represents the closest thing to “a perfect novel” as I have ever read.

But I think he was much stronger as a short story writer than a novelist. His short stories can be broken down into two general categories: his “literary” stories and his money-making stories. Fitzgerald once complained that these adventures sold to the general public took only a week to write but were his most popular ones, while the stories he laboured over for three weeks or more were largely ignored. Although I can see where he was coming from, making $3,000 per story (in 1920’s dollars) I imagine softened the blow a little bit…

One of his great literary stories is May Day. As the name suggests, it takes place on May 1, just after the end of WWI. It actually follows the lives of several different people throughout the day, giving a great “slice of life” of New York, 1919.

This story may also be the origin of the term “morally bankrupt” (if anyone can confirm or deny this, please let me know!), though the meaning now is a little more defined than the way Fitzgerald uses it.

Since this story was published before 1923 US copyright laws took effect, the story is in the public domain and can be legally viewed online. If it’s been a while, take some time today to re-read this classic. And if you have never read it, treat yourself to one of the greatest stories that Fitzgerald ever wrote. I’ll be reading it a some point today:

http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/mayday/mayday.html

Happy Reading!

~Graham