Early Adopters, and Other Animals

Tom Smith, who talked passionately at the Website event on Thursday (see below), has graciously taken it upon himself, further demonstrating the possibilities out there in blogland, to create an instant online community for the writers who attended. Converts have been emailing him the details of their new blogs, and he’s adding them to a links page, here: uncrushed diaries.

His email revealed that I was one of the first five to contact him, and he dubbed me an “early adopter”. I’d love that to be true, but I could have been here so much earlier. In 2004, I remember finding out about blogs for the first time. I was unsure of their worth then, but the idea tempted me.

My Day Job is in IT, and involves almost 100% web-based technologies; nevertheless, I’m a Luddite. This is not as unusual as you might think; many, many good and hard-working colleagues I’ve served with in technology jobs hate technology. I turned to one of these fellows on that day, and said “I’m trying to be a writer, maybe I should start a blog.” He looked at me a little sadly, and said “No – no one cares”. It did seem odd to write entry after entry about how I hadn’t got a gig yet, so that was the end of that for meek old me.

Now, years after I first started taking the screenwriting seriously – I’m certainly not an early adopter in this field (but wouldn’t it be nice to be an overnight success?!) – I’ve reached my first professional credit. In all that time, I’ve read the gurus and practitioners’ handbooks, done a lot of the courses, and joined various groups. I’ve even stopped being such a wallflower when it comes to networking. But just with a few clicks from the links page, I’ve found out there’s so much more to know. And I’ve found out more about some of the writers in attendance on Thursday than I possibly could have while chatting over the wine and nibbles provided.

And even if my ramblings here don’t prove useful, at least I can provide a route to any other interesting blogs and sites I find. And I can read about all those people trying for the same things I’m trying for, and going through the same things I’m going through. No one cares? Pah! Rubbish.