Virtually Sure Way To Meet Cool Readers, Writers, & Publishers

If you've been following this blog, you know I'm the Events Manager for Book Island in the virtual world, Second Life.

I spend about 40 hours a week on the Island and never fail having an informative and fun experience.

I also do 99.9% of my book promotion activities in Second Life.

So, yesterday, I was at one of our Happy Hours ( literary intoxication :-) and had just finished listening to a first draft of a story that was the result of applied NaNoWriMo frenzy (that's the National Novel Writing Month). It was an excellent first draft!

I saw that the Manager of the Island and our Library Specialist were at the library and excused myself ( before the same Happy Hour author began reading from her collection of recently published short humor stories :-(

I always love hearing the stories but I needed to catch up with my Manager and our Library Specialist (who, by the way, is a real life librarian at a prison in the state of Maryland).

We talked about the eleven new laptops we installed in the library. Mind you, this is a virtual world but these laptops can surf the Web…

There was another friend of mine there, DangerDave Writer—folks in Second Life often use very creative aliases :-)

Dave had shared a method for helping writers stop analyzing what they want to write and just get on with the writing.

I decided I had to share the technique here:

Inspiration via Travel Detour

Imagine yourself at an airport or train station

and your original trip has been cancelled.

You now must take an alternate route.

Form an image in your mind of a place you would like to visit on this alternate route.

You meet a fellow traveller who must also take this detour.

Now your story is about that traveller revealing his or her story.

Now your mind can begin forming an image of the face, skin color, clothing, luggage,

perhaps a bird in a cage,

or an ornate cane.

Anything exotic that hints of other travels.

Now, you are no longer responsible for writing the story. You are only required to uncover it.

Just one way to kick start the mind into creating without restrictions.

You remove the stress and pressure of creation and replace it with the thrill and excitement of discovery.

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I hope, if you're a writer, you found that helpful; and, if you're a reader, you found it at least interesting as a way to understand the challenges writers face as they create the stories we read…

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Tagged: Book Island, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Second Life, virtual world, writer, Writers Resources, Writing Technique