Findings From A Lightning Round Of Masterminds

Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). She asks, "Now that Round Two has ended, please let us know:  how you liked it (what worked, what didn't) and what has changed for you (something you implemented, a transformed thought or behavior...)." Here are my thoughts on the second round, which was a weekly affair.

I liked the swifter pace because I think the longer things are stretched out the more disrupted they have the potential to become. So, the mastermind experience felt more cohesive, and potent to me. The swifter pace also meant it was my turn before I was ready.

I'd call that a bad thing -- except for the fact that it required me to just spit out what would otherwise have been revolving around inside my head for weeks longer, and maybe I would have chosen a different subject matter if I'd had more time to think about it.

Spitting out the first problem you can think of -- because it's 'easiest' -- is a useful first step. Doing the easiest thing first has a way of pointing to the next easiest step.

So, the faster paced mastermind got me to bring up the Global Niche plan that I meant to work on more slowly (and in a different order), and that led me to make it the focus of the Turkish WIN talk this month, and that precipitated the making of an extended slideshow to support the talk, both of which are now public videos (and on expat+HAREM and SlideShare and Scribd and Vimeo and my Amazon author page and my Facebook pages). And this also precipitated the creation of a Global Niche twitter account, a Global Niche facebook page, a Global Niche logo...see, just got me 'off the pot'.

What I like most about this turn of events (and the FAB discussion of the second round masterminds -- *thank you everyone*!) is that it's forced me to iterate early and often on a big project that now I can let seep into a larger consciousness, while the next step percolates.

Masterminding An Expat's Reluctant Entrepreneurism

Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). Each participant presents her case study and we brainstorm next steps.

Here are some of my thoughts on an expatriate writer's mention that if she weren't an expat and forced to find ways to make a living outside the norm, she wouldn't be an entrepreneur.

It reminds me of the Dialogue2010 conversations at expat+HAREM, and how our hybrid lives have *forced* us to be flexible about a lot of things most people (especially those in our 'previous lives' if we're living outside an original territory, including who we might have been if we'd stayed) never have to deal with. Our careers are one of those things.

The beauty of being a creative entrepreneur is that it's about making your work type and situation *work* for you, for the type of person you are, and the situation you face. That doesn't mean it's the easy choice, just that it has the potential to deliver much more than you'd get from being a cog in someone else's wheel.

Was also reading something the other day about how we don't have to make money from everything we produce (or even try to sell it), but if we're professionals (or hope to be, that is, we're not hobbyists) earning money for the work we do has to be part of the larger plan.

Writing ONLY for money is different type of job than writing what you want to write and receiving money for it (at some point on the journey, and maybe not directly from the writing).

If your interest in writing dries up at the prospect of selling it, or using it as a form of content marketing for something else you are selling, then maybe writing is not an element of the paid work you want to do. Maybe you want to keep it as a hobby, a special form of personal entertainment. That's totally cool.

But, if you harbor dreams of yourself as a professional writer, not only sharing your work widely but receiving compensation for it, then writing *is* an element of your livelihood. If you have the luxury of already knowing what you want to write, and already writing what you want to write (some people are on a different carousel, where they write for hire and dream of writing from the heart and soul and it's hard to get off that carousel for the very reason that it's scary and hard) then all you have to add to your picture is a strategy to get paid for what you are already doing.

Will you have to make changes in your plans, will you have to improve to be competitive, will you have to be sensitive to your readership? Will you have to be aware of the market and how it works and what the shifts are in publishing? Will you see clearly whether you have achieved your professional writing goals or not? Yes.

In fact, writing might suddenly seem like a different kind of work if all that stuff I just mentioned has previously been kept separate from your writing life. I think this might be the key for you. Integrating in small steps your writing as professional, and with a market purpose.

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Another participant of the group points out this post by creativity coach Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action that if Shakespeare had continued to work for a patron, we may never have heard of him.

Insights From Last Season's Mastermind Sessions

My fellow admin in the Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group at LinkedIn prompted us for insights from last season's private mastermind sessions. "List one thing you applied using the feedback you received and the results you witnessed after putting it into practice," writes Tara Agacayak. "If you did not have the opportunity to present your case study, you are welcome to list one thing you applied that you learned in the process of this mastermind that has brought you results."

My response:

My mastermind question was about monetizing expat+HAREM (and I got tons of great suggestions and debate from you all!). The most impactful thing that emerged was that regardless of what my people will tell me they want (when I send out the survey!), my success will hinge on the idea of partnering with people who have related yet different businesses and have high-quality, appropriate products and services to offer.

I may know something is valuable in my arena when I see it -- but that doesn't mean I have the time or energy to create it from scratch myself. I can be a conduit for that product or service, and in partnering with others I can co-brand the thing. And over time, I can grow my community based on those offerings rather than the free ones -- "a small band of givers rather than a lot of takers".

An example of where you see that impact today is in the "Build Your Global Niche" program I am creating with Tara, the mastermind demo we did this month for the International Pro Women of Istanbul and the tutorial mailing list we started. They are early steps to a larger plan for eH, which is about preparing expat+HAREM readers to be a cohesive, actualized community putting a creative entrepreneur web platform to use in their location (and monoculture?) independent lives. To solve their problems with the very tools that are solving ours. To give them access to the people who ring our bells...and in turn to give those bell-ringers access to an appropriate community for their offerings. Win-win.

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Among the other enlightening, and empowering results reported:

"I have integrated the main social media tools with my website and I have added posterous to the main tools to work with."  (To this I say: that's some integration that not only makes you more visible but also saves you energy in the syndication of content!)

"I re-organized my twitter, creating more strategic and useful lists. I started tweeting other things besides news." (To this I say: I felt your presence on Twitter so much more recently. Kudos for finding a Twitter third party service that lets you do things your way.)

"With your suggestions and guidance I simplified my offerings into two categories - Free and Premium."

"By creating a website for purely professional purposes I ended up getting a great deal more interest in my services on eLance. By redoing the header on my site I find that people spend more time on the website than they had been doing." (To this I say: great you're able to point to those concrete, quantifiable results from the advances you've made (email responses, view time on site).)

"I had a fairly fixed idea of how I wanted my site to be before the session. Afterwards I was questioning every single aspect of it! It really helped to have other people's input, to see where they thought I should head and how to arrange the site. That's the beauty of this group, positive criticism that can change how you approach things." (To this I say: can't wait to see how your site turns out with those added dimensions in the process of creating it!)

"My biggest win has been creating a cohesive visual hub. From that unity, I've been able to start weaving a very colorful picture in images, not just words. Using fun tools like Picasa/Picnik, Animoto (my new fav way to tell stories, which you'll be seeing with my Kickstarter relaunch this month) and taking new photos of our product on Etsy as well as new portraits of our main product - us! - have changed the site dramatically and increased Etsy sales. So, pulling together the visuals our brand projects to the world has been key, thanks to all of you!"

Woman-Of-The-World Producer Newsletter

I'm starting a *completely irregular* newsletter about my cultural entertainment productions and all the wild places they're taking us plus my thoughts on the ever-changing media/entertainment world.

This mailing will be a personal take on a professional life. A behind-the-scenes look at a far-flung entertainment bizwoman.

In a variety of formats, I'm developing five hybrid projects about identity, culture, relationships. Art historic soap operas of imperial proportion. Funny truths of family culture clash. Personal epic of friendship and healing.

Along the way you can select which of those five you want to hear more of, which project you'd like to follow more closely, what kind of notifications you want. Like: "Just tell me when I can download your Ottoman Princess 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding-meets-Meet the Parents' ebook comedy to the iPad!"

* You may not yet be familiar with my wider body of work, but you probably guessed my beat of women, culture, and history, with an emphasis on personal dynamics, from one family to entire hemispheres.

The Accidental Anthologist: Creating A Literary Harem

Turkey often makes the news for suppressing its authors. Ironically, as an American expatriate in Istanbul I found my voice -- by creating a literary harem of my expat peers. My third month in Istanbul I found my way to an American women's social club. Milling among the crowd at the consul general's residence, I introduced myself by describing my writing project.

"At 40? You're too young to write a memoir," snorted a white haired librarian as she arranged second-hand books on a card table.

"Istanbul's such chaos, I'd be surprised if you can concentrate," thought a freckled socialite in tasseled loafers.

My memoir was going to happen. It had to. It was the cornerstone of my survival plan.

MY BRILLIANT CAREER WAS PORTABLE. I moved to Istanbul in 2003 so my Turkish husband could take a job in mobile telecommunications. Even though I lacked a formal proposal for my high-concept travel memoir charting the peaks and valleys of what I was calling “an adventurous life,” I already had a literary agent waiting to champion it. I was thrilled my spouse would be developing the kind of advanced cell phone software that excites him and that emerging economies demand. Yet my international move required a defense strategy.

"I'm not going to waste a minute sitting in language classes, diminishing my facility with English," I informed him.

"Whatever makes you happy," he replied.

In my mind I'd be on an extended writer's retreat, free from the daily distractions of our “real life” in New York City, where we had met.

I'd be an asocial expatriate writer who would one day emerge at the border clutching my passport and a masterpiece.

This exotic vision had been percolating since I'd last been an expat—in Malaysia. I’d spent five years rotting away in the tropics like a less-prolific—and more sober—Somerset Maugham.

Foremost to decay in the equatorial heat was my personality—the core of my writing voice.

In steamy Southeast Asia, my first long-term stint overseas, language and cultural barriers prevented me from expressing even the simplest aspects of my identity. When I told people I was a writer they'd reply, "Horses?"

I WAS DECOMPOSING at time-lapse speed. Vintage handbags and L.A. sandals sprouted green fungus overnight, while silvery bugs infested my college texts and a decade of diaries. I was also mistaken for a very different kind of Western woman in Asia, like when a crew of Indonesian laborers working at my house wondered when I was going to drink a beer and take off my shirt.

Three years later, in cosmopolitan Istanbul, I was a resurrected ambitious American prepared for my future. I imagined a successful literary life abroad—supported by a defensive version of expatriatism. "This move won't turn my world upside down," I cockily assured worried friends and relatives, who recalled my anguished Kuala Lumpur days.

Now I was all about the work. My plan to avoid alienation in Turkey was foolproof.

Istanbul, a hilly metropolis of 12 million, made Kuala Lumpur look like the sleepy river town it is. I couldn't envision navigating a car on its traffic-logged streets or squeezing into public minibuses or straying too far alone without a translator. I couldn't wait to hole up at home with my computer, DSL connection and a view of the Bosphorus.

Upon my arrival I joined an expat social club for some English speaking company. There I met the scolding librarian and the socialite. I also ran into an upbeat Michigan writer named Jennifer Gökmen, a 10-year émigré also married to a Turk. She had no doubt I would write my memoir. We both needed some writing support so we created a workshop with a handful of other American women.

Within weeks, the memoir stalled as I struggled to map my entire existence... dear god, what's the arc of my life? Maybe that caustic librarian was right! My resistance to Turkey started to wear down.

Jennifer and I began playing with a proposal of our own: an anthology incorporating essays about our Turkish lives.

I was bursting with that kind of material. The cultural gauntlet I faced on my first trip to meet the family. My glitzy Istanbul wedding. Inspired by the original harem of the 15th century Ottoman sultans, where foreign-born women shared their cultural wisdoms, new arrivals comparing notes with old hands, we figured we formed a modern version: the Expat Harem.

And that’s when the harem walls closed in.

SILENCED BY WHOOPING COUGH: I contracted a mysterious and ancient ailment of the pharynx. Local doctors unfamiliar with the diagnosis prescribed medications for asthma and antibiotics to treat a lung infection, neither of which I had. I passed the cough to Jennifer. For the next six months we were both homebound, hacking to the point of incontinence, succumbing to every little flu. I avoided anything that might incite a new round of spasms, like conversation and laughter, the coal smoke emanating from rural shanties, chills from the ancient city's stone walls, gusts of autumn blowing down from the Black Sea. The only thing Jennifer and I were suited for was speechlessly working, and we only wanted to think about the anthology.

"Embedded here, we're destined to be alien."

I brainstormed in an email to Jennifer, pointing out the dilemma of life abroad—even for those who want to blend in to local culture, it’s near impossible. Our cultural instincts will forever lead us to different choices— from simple aesthetics like lipstick color to complicated interpersonal communications.

"The Expat Harem is a place of female power," she shot back, linking us to an Eastern feminist continuum little known in the Western world.

Harem communities offered women the possibility of power—in the imperial harem, they offered the greatest power available to women in this region. These women had the sultan's ear, they were the mothers of sultans. Several harem women shadow-ran the Ottoman empire, while others co-ruled.

Giddy with our anachronistic metaphor, I replied.

"Ethnocentric prison or refuge of peers—sometimes it's hard to tell which way the door is swinging!"

Like a secret password, news spread as we called for submissions from writers, travelers and Turkophiles. Fascinating women from fourteen nations poured their stories into our in-boxes. They shared how their lives had been transformed by this Mediterranean country in the past 50 years, moments that challenged their values and their destinies as nurses and scientists, Peace Corps volunteers and artists.

These women's tales were not universally known.

Many had never before been published and all were minority voices in a Muslim country with a reputation for censorship.

ALTERNATE REALITIES flooded over me: eerie Sufi pilgrimages to Konya, the intimacies of anthropological fieldwork on the Black Sea, glimpses of '70s civic unrest in Ankara, a wistful gardener's search for the perfect Ottoman rose in Afyon. Many represented a depth of involvement with the country I couldn't imagine: harvesting dusty hazelnuts on a brambly hillside, trying to follow the 9/8 rhythms of a clapping Gypsy, sharing space on a city bus with a dancing bear in the Technicolor 1950s.

I whispered to Jennifer, "Compared to these women, I'm a cultural wimp!"

Their struggles to assimilate nudged me to forgive my own resistance, and inspired me to discover the country, the culture and the Turkish people.

Now I could use the editing skills I had been suppressing since I was an infuriating child who returned people's letters corrected with red pen. From the comfort of my home office-with-a-foreign-zipcode, I was able to shape other writers’ stories. The anthology rewarded me for postponing the memoir, by laying the foundations for a more insightful next book. The joys of collaborating with writers from my home office clarified confusing aspects of my character—like how I am a prickly introvert who nevertheless craves connection with people.

One late winter day Jennifer and I stopped coughing and sold Tales from the Expat Harem to Doğan Kitap, a prominent Turkish publisher.

"That's more like it," snapped the librarian when I next saw her at a club meeting, my reputation somewhat rehabilitated in her eyes.

Four decades’ worth of expatriate self-discoveries earned its shelf space, more than my own 40-year life story would have.

"It's a love-letter to the country. I put it on my house guests' pillows!" shared the smiling socialite.

The anthology became a #1 English-language bestseller in Turkey and was recommended as a social and cultural guide by National Geographic Traveler and Lonely Planet.

My literary career and conflicted mindset about life abroad now had a promising new cultural context in the expat harem.

I FOUND MY THEORETICAL HOME. I arrived an insular writer afraid of losing my voice. In a temporary silence, Turkey suggested an empowering metaphor. It seems the country not only connected me to a worldwide band of my global nomad and expat writing peers, it provided a place to flourish out of restriction -- and raised my voice in the cultural conversation.

[This essay first appeared in JANERA: The Voice of Global Nomads, January 2008]

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What surprise context has your location provided you?

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[18 months, 2 expat writers, one feminist travel anthology with three editions. Our first book! A bestseller. How'd we do it? Read the story of making Tales from the Expat Harem]

Three Word Goals for 2009, a la Chris Brogan: Project. Realize. Live.

Chris Brogan asks what our three word goals are for the year ahead. Mine: PROJECT - project myself into my communities, raise awareness for the work I do, foster meaningful connection to others

REALIZE - a combination of 'execute' and 'achieve excellent results', materialize dreams

LIVE - breathe deeply, take chances, do new things I might love and old things I still love, get rid of stuff that slows me down or doesn't reflect who I want to be, embrace my health and opportunities

From The Mailbag: Filmmaker Finds Expat Harem Cinematic

"I've enjoyed your book tremendously and thought that some of the stories in the book were very cinematic and could make an interesting movie."

Co-Hosting Istanbul's First Global Nomad Salon

I'll be coproducing a Global Nomad Salon this June at Istanbul's Four Seasons Sultanahmet along with the Salon founder Dutch-Curacaoan banker Janera Soerel. Introduced by various international friends in 2007, Janera and I quickly found common ground: our shallow roots in many different communities and the urge to find the larger meaning in local issues. Working together long-distance, we are co-producing this cultural entertainment. It's a guided dinner for 20-30 educated, intellectual, opinionated people to discuss concerns of global culture and economics.

The Economist magazine calls the scene at this worldwide series of intellectual dinner parties "jetsetters with a conscience." Pluralism, individualism, universalism are Global Nomad values.

Experts who guide the conversation at their ends of the table will include Serif Kaynar (country managing director of Korn/Ferry) and Nese Gundogan (secretary general of the Turkish Olympic Committee).

Along with an online magazine and members-only social network (Janera.com), founder Janera Soerel, a Dutch Curacaoan banker who lives in Manhattan, launched the Global Nomad Salon series October 2007 in Washington DC, then Rome, the Caribbean and New York City. With local co-hosts, Janera’s events are now spreading across the globe. This summer and fall they will take place in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Dubai, Tuscany and London. The goal is to rouse the Global Nomad community worldwide and strengthen the network of its members, eventually with a GNSalon occurring twice yearly in various countries, events populated by Global Nomads both local and from afar.

My Forgotten Footnote To The Haghia Sophia

The Byzantine world claimed another devotee when I discovered the architectural gauntlet thrown down by a scorned princess.

My Near Eastern archaeology baccalaureate program ended with Constantine founding New Rome at Byzantium.  I left the Byzantine world undiscovered when I forgot my college diploma in a rental car and professionally drifted toward pop-culture...tv, music, film. Later when I married a Turk and moved to Istanbul it was natural to neglect Constantinople’s first millennium since Ottoman civilization felt much closer to home.  Then in the summer of 2007 near the aqueduct of Valens, I stumbled over a patch of lumpy turf and found a forgotten footnote to the world’s most famous Byzantine landmark.

Opposite the glass Istanbul Municipality building, a triangular plot of land on Atatürk Bulvarı was inexplicably not developed. Perhaps I could use it.  I needed another attraction to round out the Süleymaniye-area walking tour I was creating for National Geographic Traveler. Travel historian Saffet Emre Tonguç confirmed the overgrown archaeological site above the Haşim Işcan underpass was indeed notable if not much to look at. The sixth century remains of Anicia Juliana’s palace church, Haghios Polyeuktos. I needed more detail. Not for me of course, for National Geographic.

A sensational, gossipy twist:

My friend Edda Renker Weissenbacher, author of books on the Chora church and Iznik tiles, added that the massive ruin, mostly unexcavated, represented a social grudge of royal proportion. A little research showed that the obscure-sounding princess Juliana of the Anicii (462-529) was the wealthiest and most aristocratic resident of Constantinople. She could trace her roots to Constantine the Great and counted other Western and Eastern Roman emperors in her lineage. But the glory was coming to an unbearable end. Offered the throne when a revolt seemed likely her husband, a general, ran off in fear. Her only son had married into the ruling emperor’s family yet the commoners Justin and his nephew Justinian ascended to the throne instead.

Juliana struck back with the most patrician of socio-political weapons: faith-based art and architecture patronage.  By 527 she had enlarged her ancestral church, making it the capital city’s vastest and richest. Carved with pomegranate flowers, cherubim, palmette -- and peacocks, the symbol of empresses –  in pointed ways it proclaimed her fitness for the throne.  At the 2006 Byzantine Studies Congress art historian Matthew Canepa described Juliana’s use of Oriental motifs as the kind of “cross-cultural political savvy” that could only spring from an imperial background, someone familiar with diplomatic gifts and spoils of war from the East.

The project also conveniently sunk her fortune into her own legacy. New peasant dynasts planned to expand the empire but they wouldn’t be doing it on her dime! Kateryna Kovalchuk, a Byzantine doctoral student in Belgium I stalked online, directed me to a 6^th century story told by Gregory of Tours which describes Juliana receiving the young Justinian on a fund-raising mission. The princess pointed upwards.  Her gold was pounded into tiles and affixed to the church roof.

Recalling that the adjective ‘byzantine’ characterizes elaborate scheming to gain political power, I checked the date of Juliana’s architectural ultimatum. Polyeuktos, described by scholars as perhaps the most decorated building in history, predated the world-changing Haghia Sophia by ten years. Justinian’s response, and response it was indeed, had a much sparer design and was fifty percent bigger. Other irresistible facts: The emperor’s wife and co-ruler Theodora was the daughter of a bearkeeper and a scandalous carny if ancient historian Procopius was to be believed. He sniped in his Secret History that she raised her skirts “to show off her feminine secrets”.  My scorned princess -- yes Juliana was now mine -- built a pious hot-seat for a low-born ruler and his checkered-past queen!

Why hadn’t the pivotal Juliana and her provocative church lived on in the general imagination? A special-permission visit to the library at verdant Robert College in Arnavutköy showed it wasn’t for lack of trying.

I was now officially losing money on the National Geographic assignment as I pored over dig reports in A Temple for Byzantium by Martin Harrison, head of Harvard University’s Center for Byzantine Studies.  Mysterious relics are often uncovered in Istanbul but when foundations were dug at the civic center in 1960 the marble arches found were unusually explicit. Greek inscriptions identified a ruin known through literature to historians since at least the 10^th century. (The grandiose verses, from the Palatine Anthology’s collection of classical and Byzantine poetry, recounted the construction and dynasty of its patroness.)

Houseguests came to town.

I spirited them to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, whose Turkish archaeologists also took part in six seasons of excavations at the site. The small H. Polyeuktos section was crowded by a marble column inlaid with amethyst and green and gold glass that once held a canopy over the altar, as well as epigrammed arches decorated with acanthus vines and feathery tails of peacocks. Preeminent Byzantine historian Steven Runciman detected immense meaning in these few Juliana commissions. He thought they display the elusive origin of Byzantine style: the first combination of Roman craftsmanship, Greek balance and Oriental ornamentation, for the purpose of Christian ritual.

If the technique of Polyeuktos was mid-6^th century zeitgeist, Juliana upped the ante with its decidedly nostalgic form. Laid out in the Biblical measurement of royal cubit, the floor plan matched a Holy Writ account of King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem – a legendary structure intended to house the Ark of the Covenant and itself modeled after Moses’s moveable Tabernacle. A supremely tough act to follow, even for an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  It’s no wonder when Justinian dedicated his Haghia Sophia he exclaimed ‘Solomon, I have surpassed you!’  He meant to best the Queen of Kings down the road.

Anicia Juliana has never really been lost to history, or to us.

Along with the throngs, I’ve unwittingly admired her pioneering handiwork scattered in the gardens of the Haghia Sophia and the Topkapı Palace, as well as in the Piazza San Marco in Venice.  Three deeply carved basket weave capitals from the Polyeuktos adorn the western façade of the Venetian basilica, while a majestic duo of pomegranate-flowered piers guard its south door across from the Doges Palace – all plundered during the Fourth Crusade.  Those knights failed to reach Jerusalem to wrest the Temple of Solomon from the Muslims, but returning with Juliana’s inspired replicas I imagine them rationalizing a mission complete.

My own mission has just begun. Juliana awaits underfoot.  Who wants to sign my petition to have the municipality building relocated to a new site?

See my Byzantine princess board at Pinterest, and my Ottoman & Byzantine board.

My Byzantine Princess Project

An art historical soap opera of imperial proportion. (See my Pinterest board of  images related to this particular story here.) I've been developing this story since, while creating an Istanbul walking tour for National Geographic Traveler, I literally tripped over the foundations of a social grudge between my superlative-but-forgotten 6th century princess and Justinian -- which prompted the Holy Roman Emperor to build his world-beating Haghia Sophia Church a mile down the road. The man needed to best Anicia Juliana. See my Pinterest board of Byzantine popular culture trends.

Multiple story delivery methods in development.

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Launching Writer's Desk: A Web Tool To Organize The Writing Life

My software developer husband and I designed and built a new web-based writing tool. It was inspired by my experience as a freelance nonfiction writer. This online service provides a basic foundation for writers to get organized by recording revisions, tracking submissions, compiling market information and registering rights and income. For the past six months my husband and I have been designing and building a new web-based writer's tool. In this season of resolutions, we're happy to announce the launch of Writer's Desk, an online workspace to improve the way writers spend their time. We'd be honored if you pass the opportunity to colleagues and friends -- writers of all kinds -- who may have resolved to get organized this year.

SITUATION

Being a writer often sneaks up on a person.  Not many train for the vocation nor start with all the equipment, contacts, long view.  It's no wonder that eventually the snowball of success or dogged enthusiasm becomes an avalanche of produce - or expectation. Then buried writers inch along using outdated, poorly conceived systems to track work; repeatedly resolve to better keep writing in circulation; dream of one day expanding to new markets. SOLUTION

My computer scientist husband watched me -- a New York-based freelance writer -- function in this typical writerly way.  But unlike sympathetic others in the writing trade, he found observing me in action unbearable. So we pooled my professional nightmare with his software developing expertise to construct a website that has revolutionized the way I work and is too useful not to share with the wider writing community.

If you can operate a web browser anywhere in the world you can use this online service to simplify the logistics of being an active writer. Subscription is less than USD20 per year and while the site is optimized for the U.S. market, feedback from international users will help make it a global service.

FREE SUBSCRIPTION

Register for a thirty day free trial at www.writers-desk.com to judge if Writer's Desk improves your current method to:

• Track writing objectives and submissions
• Compile editorial guidelines and publishing contacts
• Register rights granted, income earned
• Trace the development and history of work - and more!

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We just opened it to the public as a subscription service.  You can find the creative and business workspace at  www.writers-desk.com

Writers use tools to *write* and tools to *sell the work*.  Writer's Desk is a bit of a cross between the two since it helps a writer envision her portfolio, both published and unpublished; encourages hierarchical thinking about projects and other writing ideas in order to more deeply develop material; offers a place to consolidate market contact information and notes; and helps track submissions, rights and income.

I can upload documents to the web service for retrieval on the fly -- and open and update my account from any computer with Internet access. So for me, logging on to Writer's Desk every day affords a quick overview of what I've done, what I must do today, what I plan to do and what I hope to do.

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A superb and versatile tool to manage song submissions and grant applications.

-- songwriter, Seattle, WA

Smart use of web technology. Finally I'm not tethered to my laptop.

-- journalist, New York, NY

Perfect for disorganized writers. Especially helps follow up with editors and agents!

-- novelist, Lawrence, KS

Portfolio overview is priceless. Great to develop new ideas, exploit material.

-- essayist, Des Moines, IA

Suits my purposes: developing scripts, tracking festival submissions.

-- screenwriter and director, San Francisco, CA

What Killed The Dinosaurs

(Adapted from a permanent multimedia exhibit I wrote and produced for the Malaysian Ministry of Science's National Planetarium in Kuala Lumpur, under the supervision of  astrophysicist Dr. Mazlan Othman who now heads the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna.) For millions of years, gigantic reptiles ruled the third planet from the Sun -– our home, the Earth. With each stride, the ground shook beneath their feet. The swampy air was filled with their monstrous trumpeting and reptilian cries. And then suddenly, mysteriously, the Age of Reptiles ended. Why? In search of an answer, the story of the dinosaurs will take us on a journey deep within the crust of the Earth and far, far into outer space.

Dinosaurs appeared 225 million years ago. It was during the Triassic period, when all the continents were joined together in a supercontinent called Pangaea. The climate was hot and swampy, just the way the dinosaurs liked it. Being cold-blooded creatures, they needed high temperatures to warm their blood. They flourished through the Jurassic period and on in to the Cretaceous, evolving from turkey-sized Thecodonts to the largest animals ever to live on land. And then, around 65 million years ago, they disappeared from the face of the Earth. Why did they all vanish at the very same time?

Extinction is an integral part of nature, making way for more viable life forms. Several mass extinctions have occurred over the ages, but even so, scientists can only guess at their causes. Perhaps the dinosaurs were affected by a climate change, when the continents began to break apart and drift toward the North and South Poles. Cooler temperatures would have made them sluggish and less able to hunt for food. A new climate would have changed the whole ecology of the Earth, like bringing new plants which might have been poisonous to the dinosaurs. Plankton, the simple sea organism which use the Sun’s energy to produce oxygen, are known to have become extinct at the beginning of the Cretaceous period. Maybe the dinosaurs had trouble breathing in this new environment.

Or, perhaps the answer is not on land or sea. Perhaps it is not even here on Earth. Since the beginning of mankind, we have gazed at the heavens, looking for answers. Prehistoric man noticed that certain celestial bodies move in orderly and predictable paths, and astronomy (the study of the stars) was born. Although an ancient science, it continues to yield new discoveries.

One astronomic explanation is that a star in a nearby constellation exploded, creating a supernova. This would have bathed the Earth in deadly cosmic rays.

Another theory is that the impact of a giant meteor striking the Earth could have caused the sudden extinction. Meteorites, which are space rocks, orbit millions of kilometers from Earth. A planet’s gravitational force might alter their usual path. Enormous craters are proof that meteors have struck the Earth in the distant past, sending dust and debris into the atmosphere. This would have blotted out the Sun’s rays, dropping temperatures and killing plants and animals alike. Or, asteroids, minor planets, could similarly strike the Earth when knocked out of the asteroid belt that orbits the Sun.

It could have been a comet. Mostly dust and ice with a sprinkling of rocky and metallic materials, comets orbit outside the solar system in the Oort Cloud. When a comet comes close to the Sun, the ice evaporates and forms a tail containing ash and gases. Some tails are up to 150 million kilometers long. The Dutch astronomer who gave his name to the Oort Cloud, Jan Oort, thought a comet was responsible for the dinosaur extinction. Oort thought comets entered the inner solar system when disturbed the gravitational force of a nearby star.

What star could disturb the comets? One is Nemesis, the Death Star. A faint red star, it is believed to be the Sun’s companion star even though it exists outside our solar system. Moving in an elliptical orbit, when it approaches the Sun it passes through the Oort Cloud, hurling comets toward Earth. If Nemesis orbits every 26 million years, then perhaps it is the cause of the regular mass extinctions on Earth.

Or maybe the cause is Planet X. Planet X is a tenth planet that may exist on the outer reaches of the Milky Way. When the Sun orbits the galaxy every 33 million years, it oscillates up and down. This may cause far off Planet X to disturb the Oort Cloud with each oscillation, heightening the probability of cometary disaster here on Earth.

So far the strongest proof that the dinosaur extinction was caused by something from outer space lies deep in the Earth’s crust. Geology, the study of Earth’s history, may offer an answer. Every layer of the Earth represents a period of time, and holds clues to the events of that age. American geologist Walter Alvarez noticed that there was an unexpected presence of iridium in the same layer, all over the world. The rare metal, from the Latin word meaning “rainbow”, appeared in the layer that represented a time 65 million years ago. That was when the dinosaurs became extinct.

Walter’s father was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist named Luis Alvarez. Walter told his father about the iridium, and the physicist theorized that it came from outer space, since space rocks are full of the metal and earth rocks are not. An explosion would have cast the iridium into the stratosphere, allowing it to settle on Earth in the consistent layer Walter Alvarez discovered. It might have been a meteor, or the collision of a comet, which is more common. Finally, we have solid evidence that the extinction of the dinosaurs has an astronomic cause.