Announcing the launch of The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living

Woohoo!

For a few years I’ve been working with the Australian Literature Board on their Story of the Future project. The project (a big hat tip to Josie Emery for creating the program) involved touring Australia running sessions on how digital technologies can be utilised for storytelling, for marketing your stories and running your writing business. The project has now ended, but the project manager, the always-a-delight Therese Fingleton, didn’t want it to end without sharing some of the things we’ve been doing. So, The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living was born. Myself and the fantastic Jennifer Wilson were commissioned to co-write the guide, which has a lot of (hopefully) interesting stuff in there for writers. It is aimed at writers at various stages of their career, who work in a variety of artforms (screenwriting, game writing, poets, novelists, ewriters), and addresses writers worldwide, whilst also featuring some great Australian talent.

I wrote the sections on the craft of new writing forms, professional development, concept development, marketing and distribution. But on top of the Guide, which is available online and in PDF form, I’ve also created (with the wonderful design of the Lycette Bros.) a chart of the New Writing Universe to give a glimpse at the vast range of emerging writing forms out there (there is much more than writing a shooter game!). Enough of me, as a start, check out the very tongue-in-cheek promotional video we’ve created (mainly the work of the wonderful Lycette Bros. and Therese Fingleton):

Check it out at: www.australiacouncil.gov.au/writersguide

Enjoy! Let me know what you think!

My keynote & workshop at Power to the Pixel, London Film Festival

Last month I was lucky to be invited to present at the Power to the Pixel event, which is part of the London Film Festival.

POWER TO THE PIXEL is a not-for-profit company that provides the independent film community with the latest in depth information and knowledge about new opportunities available in the transforming digital media landscape.

I did the opening talk on the conference day, ran a workshop on the workshop day and participated in the Think Tank they ran. It was an amazing event in which I got to finally meet many people for the first time, people I have watched, conversed with online, and even worked with remotely. Liz did a fantastic job with the event. The sessions were webcast on the main site and at Screen International. They had over 10,000 people watch the webcasts, which is very cool. Well, now the videos are slowly being released online. All the conference day talks are now on the video page on the main site, but not the workshops. They are available elsewhere at Blip.tv or YouTube. There are LOTS of interesting talks there about distribution, branding, crowdsourcing and finance there. But for here I’ve embeded the videos and ppts of my talk and workshop on ‘Films in the Age of Cross-Media Production’ and my workshop on ‘Writing Across Media’ respectively. Enjoy!
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The [6] Wonders of the Imaginative World (?)

In today’s post I thought I’d share so real life places I’d like to do/have enjoyed. These real places are related to the immersive entertainment and marketing area many of us are in. They are experiences that, unlike many of the online works that many people refer to all the time, you actually have to go to! While there are many wonderful museums, wonders of architecture and of course wonders of nature, I thought I’d highlight an unusual mix of places and events related to the wacky area of immersive entertainment and marketing. Here are some to get the list going. I’d love to hear of places or events you love.

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