I have a wonderful former student who actually still wants to hang out with me.  Silly man.  But we have writing, and baking, and so many other common interests. We spent a great day last Saturday baking scones together. Yum! He shared with me his frustration in getting a job in what he is passionate about – writing. I believe he is particularly interested in screenwriting. I have read some of his work and it is amazing. Thoughtful writing, worthy of reading slowly so as to savor it even more than his delicious scones. He mentioned the need to network. He also referred to networking as “that dreaded word”. I have been thinking about what he said for a week now. I just sent him the following message:

I have been thinking about what you called the “dreaded word” – networking. I am wondering if perhaps you might get a start at this by starting a blog or a webpage. It is a great place to get your work out there.You could post some of your writings or just your rambling thoughts now and again. It is a great medium for organizing your work into categories. Worried about putting stuff out there for free? You have options. You could put out just a “teaser” – an opening paragraph perhaps. You can also post a whole piece of writing and protect it with a password. You would then have the option of giving the password to someone who might be interested in publishing your writing. Or you could simply put a large part of your writing – but not the whole thing – and password protect that.

Here is another word of the day – Serendipity. Let me share with you several ways that serendipity and blogs worked out to get me “published”.

First incident:
I was talking to our high school principal back in 2000 about how the internet had increased the chances of plagiarism, intentional or accidental. He asked me to do a workshop for teachers. So – I read a professional book on the topic: “Student Cheating & Plagiarism In the Internet Era: A Wake-Up Call” by Ann Lathrop & Kathleen E. Foss. I created a webpage as a resource for teachers at Internet Research: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

Well – I had used the page for about two years or so,  and then one day it happened. I got a phone call at school. It was Anne Lathrop, one of the authors. My first thought was – OH GOD. I AM GOING TO BE SUED FOR PLAGIARISM. Ohh…The IRONY of it all! But no – she was so pleased with the website that she wanted me to write a chapter for her next book. So – I got paid about $500 as I recall to write up an extremely boring chapter on using cell phones to cheat on exams. Not my dream topic – but there you go. It was an exciting project for me, nonetheless.

Second incident:
I don’t think this incident happened because of my blog or website. I think I was blabbing about Wikipedia on an online forum for librarians. I was quite negative about it at the time – though I have changed my tune somewhat since then. Anyway – a phone call came into the library. I picked it up and the person on the other end of the line said: “Hello, my name is Laura Sydell from NPR. We are doing a piece on Wikipedia as a research tool for our Sunday Weekend Edition. Would you be interested in being interviewed on your opinions about Wikipedia?” So – within a few days, WXXI came to our library and set up their equipment in our workroom. Laura called me, and we chatted about my opinions. This all came about because I had written opinions and thoughts on an online forum/discussion board. Maybe there are similar resources for authors out there. Here is the link to my interview: Wikipedia’s Growth Comes With Concerns.

Third incident:
I wrote a blog post about the value of serendipity in education and life in general. I spoke mostly about how my husband approaches his photography, allowing serendipity to play a part in what he chooses to photograph. Here is the blog post:
Making Room For Serendipity

A year or more after I wrote the post, I got an email from an author named Thor Muller. He was working on a book called Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business

He was very interested in my husbands use of serendipity in his photographs and wanted to include the details in his book. We gave him our phone number and he interviewed Bob at least three times. As I result, Bob appears in the book from p 161-169.

Conclusion?

If you haven’t done so already…GET OUT THERE AND NETWORK ON THE BIGGEST NETWORK OF ALL – THE INTERNET!!

Love and best wishes,

Jacquie

P.S. I am going to post this email on my blog. You shall remain nameless. But – if anybody contacts me about it – I will share the info with you! Nobody reads my blog anymore now that I am retired, and my interests have changed. But I DO want to start updating it with random thoughts now and again!

P.P.S. Whenever you want – we can get together again and bake ourselves sick!