Code, Camera, Action

Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer who handled the auction for Mr. McCarthy, told The New York Times earlier this week: “When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss Army knife.

Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives.

And I'm giving it a try -- just for the spontaneous stupidity. Behind on my wordcount, though!

How does 100% authorship change your business?

• In philanthropy, might it reduce the cult of the expert? Contests and competitions give rise to their own results-based expertise. Scaling, as always, becomes an issue, and people with scaling expertise even more valuable.

• Fundraising comes to look like what Kiva’s Matt Flannery calls “the larger trend toward more connected experiences.” At home, we are all walkathoning (or growing mustaches) and asking our friends to help.

• In journalism and publishing, it looks like the rise of the individual reputation and the individual voice. Blogs over mainstream publications. Aggregators will still be important, be they search engines, social networks, or perhaps mainstream web properties.

• The shift to short, quick, forms like Twitter reduces the influence of professional copywriters. Amateurs have the time to write influential micro posts. Sharing among friends becomes the measure of influence.

• This changes the search engines’ power as the reference source. Right now Google is struggling to keep up with real time publishing. Here’s Jeremiah Owyang on what the search engines’ shift to realtime means for reaching people:

  Search marketers must understand that blasting marketing information through Facebook or Twitter won’t be effective, as search engines will filter out irrelevant messages that nobody listens to.

It comes down to content that’s useful, that other people can share. In a future where everybody writes, will anybody notice if your organization doesn’t?

My post for the Case Foundation blog this week looks the explosion of authorship (with blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) -- and what that means for nonprofits. Click through to the original post on casefoundation.org, or listen to the audio above ipodding pleasure.

We found that the number of published authors per year increased nearly tenfold every century for six centuries. By 2000, there were 1 million book authors per year. One million authors is a lot, but they are only a tiny fraction, 0.01 percent, of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth. Since 1400, book authorship has grown nearly tenfold in each century. Currently, authorship, including books and new media, is growing nearly tenfold each year. That’s 100 times faster. Authors, once a select minority, will soon be a majority.

What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.

It’s no secret that when you focus this intensely on the needs of your audience, they will become your committed, lifelong customers and fiercely loyal advocates for you.

It’s a core underpinning of the Third Tribe concept — if you earn loyalty, you’ll receive loyalty.

Dave Navarro writes about blogging -- how to escape writers' block by focusing on your audience. But it applies to nonprofit appeals & startups, too.

Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent has a terrific summary of the reasons newspapers are finding it so difficult to make the transition from print to online. In short, it's tough for businesses begun as monopolies to become agile.

There is something unique however that happens with coverage on blogs that doesn't happen as much or as regularly with coverage in online news media properties - engagement. Because of the relationships bloggers have with their readers, the content at their sites may have a stronger effect - the stickiness built in the relationships - and more likely it will be passed along to the right readers who may be inclined to take action or notice.

[I]t turns out that online coverage may not be about number of clippings or mentions as a focus. One single post, well timed, might do the rest. This is a kind of influence news organizations relinquished and resisted by never fully embracing the online medium. Gate keeping is not going to bring that influence back. It was the advertisers who paid for the news - readers never did.

My first job was on the sports desk, but I didn’t want to write about sporting events. I wanted to write about people. I wrote about a losing boxer, a horse trainer, and the guy in the boxing ring who rang the bell between rounds. I was interested in fiction. I wanted to write like Fitzgerald. I collected his work—his short stories and journals. “Winter Dreams” is my favorite story of all time. The good nonfiction writers were writing about famous people, or topical people, or public people. No one was writing about unknown people. I knew I did not want to be on the front page. On the front page you’re stuck with the news. The news dominates you. I wanted to dominate the story. I wanted to pick subjects that were not the ordinary assignment editor’s idea of a story. My idea was to use some of the techniques of a fiction writer: scene setting, dialogue, and even interior monologue, if you knew your people well enough.

INTERVIEWER: Might it be said… that writing is a sort of self-annihilation?

MAILER: It uses you profoundly. There’s simply less of you after you finish a book… Yet if you’re writing a good novel then you’re being an explorer—you’re getting into something where you don’t know the end, where the end is not given. There’s a mixture of dread and excitement that keeps you going. To my mind, it’s not worth writing a novel unless you’re tackling something where your chances of success are open. You can fail. You’re gambling with your psychic reserves.

— Norman Mailer The Art of Fiction No. 193 The Paris Review