{"id":3893,"date":"2012-03-01T11:40:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T17:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=3893"},"modified":"2012-03-06T12:44:33","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T18:44:33","slug":"the-crystal-ball-is-a-big-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2012\/03\/01\/the-crystal-ball-is-a-big-maybe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crystal Ball (Is a Big Maybe)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Crystal ball.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/images\/crystalball.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"376\" \/>During my <a title=\"The Juggling Writer entries about the 101-Day Social Media Break.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/category\/50-day-social-media-break\/\">101-day social media break<\/a>, I cut back on the number of blogs in my blog reader. But one category always seems to grow, despite my best intentions of taming it: my &#8220;Writing\/Publishing&#8221; category.<\/p>\n<p>On any given day, all kinds of information comes through &#8212; much of it about the future of publishing.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;E-books will destroy all books!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Print books will prevail in the end!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Something we can&#8217;t even <em>imagine today <\/em>will devour the book and e-book tomorrow!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;All publishers will perish!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Agents will soon be obsolete!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;We will use the DNA of <em>all <\/em>dead classic writers and create a vat-grown <em>uber writer<\/em> who will WRITE ALL STORIES!!!&#8221; (And destroy cities, because they will also be a giant!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>The Future<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Each week on many blogs, predictions are made &#8212; some saying this will happen&#8230;others saying it won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>It <em>is <\/em>important to think about what may come; it&#8217;s how we come up with new ideas. But a funny thing about the future: it&#8217;s often not what we imagine.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have the flying car of old predictions, but I <em>do <\/em>live in a world where I can connect to the world while on the go with my smart phone.<\/p>\n<p>The future is not revealed in a crystal ball &#8212; it&#8217;s all guesswork.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Nostradamus&#8217;s Daily Quatrain Blog-O-Rama<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Nostradamus predicted a lot of stuff&#8230;that is, if you believe in that kind of thing. (It&#8217;s probably pretty clear that I don&#8217;t.)<\/p>\n<p>He thought about things that had happened, things that were happening, and things that <em>might <\/em>happen down the line.<\/p>\n<p>Were he alive today, he&#8217;d probably have his very own <em>&#8220;Nostra&#8217;s Daily Quatrain Blog&#8221;<\/em>&#8230;and it would be buried in a flood of other blogs, unless he was also good at marketing himself. But back in the day, he was like <a title=\"Ze Frank.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zefrank.com\/\">Ze Frank<\/a> when he started out &#8212; just doing his thing.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the day, though, he didn&#8217;t have as much competition. Nostradamus wrote thousands of cryptic quatrains, giving people today a lot to look at and say, &#8220;See? He was right!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Write enough about the future of publishing and you too can one day say, &#8220;See, I was right!&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Just Write&#8230;a Lot!<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s fun to think about the future of publishing &#8212; I&#8217;ve done it myself.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s even more fun when your predictions come true. If predicting things is your thrill, be like Nostradamus and write&#8230;a lot! Say this, and say that. Do it enough and eventually you&#8217;ll be able to point to something and say, &#8220;Yep, I called that!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Or&#8230;you can accept that there are some probabilities about the future that are more likely than others and focus on bigger things.<\/p>\n<p>My big prediction about the future of publishing: no matter how they are delivered, people will always like stories.<\/p>\n<p>So write stories&#8230;a lot. Do it enough and you might just luck into some of them rising above others, much like Nostradamus&#8217;s better known quatrains.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During my 101-day social media break, I cut back on the number of blogs in my blog reader. But one category always seems to grow, despite my best intentions of taming it: my &#8220;Writing\/Publishing&#8221; category. On any given day, all kinds of information comes through &#8212; much of it about the future of publishing. &#8220;E-books [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3893"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}