Imagination to the power of...

Do you think NaNoWriMo is craziness squared, 50,000 words in 30 days, OK, shift the perspective and walk another path. Imagine this; you are the guide at a historic building somewhere. A place where history and the personal stories of people ooze from the walls.
The mission, should you accept it, is to tell those stories and unfold that history in a lively entertaining way, to draw the visitors in and hold their imagination with your words. There is no rehearsal, you go live with one chance, this will be your first and only draft. It is a different group of people every time you open the door.
Your talk will last at least an hour, perhaps an hour and a half, at between ninety and a hundred and ten words a minute.
No notes, just the prompts from the things around you. You are passionate about it and once you start the words flow freely. Work an average, 100 words a minute for 75 minutes, 7500 words. That's a little less than one seventh of NaNoWriMo in an hour and fifteen minutes.
The challenge is fifty thousand words in thirty days.
Now tell me that my first draft should be anything less than my best.
Write your first draft as though it was your last.

Imagine that

The Angst of Acceptance, a recent post by Chris James at Indies unlimited taps into the discussion about who is worthy to sit at the literary table and pick over the spoils, he begins with a humorous story about a "Traditional" published writer being embarrassed to admit his status in the company of self-published authors.

A scenario that is pretty unlikely to happen today. The long road to acceptance for many self-published writers has been dogged by the stigma which has attached itself to the title for so many years but strip away the pretentious snobbery, and let's be honest isn't that where some of this comes from; didn't it all start with independent writers publishing their own works who gradually grew into the publishing companies of the past and then conglomerated into the bigger companies dominating the present day market?

I posted a comment at the foot of Chris's post and part of it reads

 Indies have always been part of the literary scene, but regarded as the eccentric relatives which maintained their status as curios and their output as a trickle. Today the trickle is a flood and the criticism of the Indie almost always falls against a technical criteria – proofreading, editing, or whatever, elements the traditionally published writer hands over to someone else to do!
Nobody ever said we are bad at storytelling,

I am an Indie Author, I have never made any secret of the fact, nip across to the writing page at www.cheekyseagull.co.uk  and there's a little note about my feelings on the matter. Chris has an excellent piece and links in the article itself and the comments provided by readers below expand on the discussion, including how a number of well established and respected literary groups are discussing their future relationships with the constantly growing self-publishing community and people firmly embedded in the "Traditional" publishing world are effectively being forced to shift their views on the new generation of self-publishing.

My comment touched on something that has niggled at me for a long time, the sub text that when it comes to checking the details of the finished work (proofreading, editing) somehow I can't do it! I wrote the book, and I can't spot my own mistakes? Paying someone to do the donkey work is fine, employing a professional is good, but being professional is not just about being paid. Being truly professional has nothing to do with being paid and everything to do with your state of mind.

Self-publishing is not the road of the damned and the desperate, not any more, and the names of established writers who are stepping out on to the road with the myriad of unknowns, hopefuls, dreamers and professionals are saying it loudly with each step they take along that road. People attack what they fear, they run down the things they feel threatened by, it's natural, but the writer, you, whoever you are out there, you are extraordinary. You have an independent mind, an independent spirit, enjoy them.

Whatever form of publishing route you take remember this, without the writer there would be nothing to publish. Our words, thoughts, ideas, the stories that catch the quintessence of humanity are served up for the reader to enjoy. We have a feast in our hands so bring what you have and share it.

Is there anybody there?

Blogging can feel like shouting in the dark, hurling your words into the void and wondering if anyone is listening, or reading. The page view stats; are they real people or search engine bots crawling through the pathways of the Internet, devouring fragments of code as they go?
I suppose they must be a combination of both, and what and who am I?
We all carry tags and labels, a name for this and a description for that, simpler than lumping everything as a thingummy or a whatsit.
My tag cloud, the labels attached to this blog, the metadata for my website, all say something about the medium being used and reasonably would say it about me, so who, what am I.
I write, therefore I am a writer - there, I said it, wrote it;  I AM A WRITER! (Are capitals loud enough or is that the internet equivalent of screaming?)
I tell stories, so I am a storyteller, I like the sound of that too, and I live in Yorkshire, which is in England and part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so I am also English, and British. That gives a choice of options for the tag cloud, my writing is fiction, but not entirely, I enjoy a good bit of factual research but the freedom of fiction is more immediate and fun. Novelist, my books are novels, or at least variations on a theme (Source Material, posted 23.03.13)
I self publish, via Smashwords, who are my distributors, which makes me an independent author, or an Indie Author to see the tag on Diesel ebooks, and the constant chatter about traditional, hybrid, legacy,vanity, indie, self published, privately published or whatever I personally find quite fascinating, confusing and irritating.
I like being independent, I gives me the freedom to explore what works, and what doesn't; that's where the exploration begins the personal trek to boldly go, or tentatively dip a toe to check the temperature.
Seriously, it is an adventure in whatever guise you step out on to the road, and it may be long and arduous, but it will be worth it.
So who am I, what's my tag cloud today?
Martyn Taylor, Writer, Indie Author, British Writer, Yorkshire, England, Self-published, distributed by Smashwords, storyteller, independent, novelist