Creatives surviving & thriving abroad: lowering barriers and raising your game

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By ANASTASIA ASHMAN

I’m thrilled and honored to be featured in Chantal Panozzo’s WriterAbroad Interview series.

I join fellow expat and global nomad authors like the Petite Anglaise blogger-turned-novelist Catherine Sanderson in France, veteran Expat Expert publisher Robin Pascoe, Maya “The New Global Student” Frost in Argentina, and Alan Paul, the Wall Street Journal’s “The Expat Life” columnist based in China.

Chantal — an American in Switzerland whose work appears in the dysfunctional family Chicken Soup anthology with mine, and guest posted last week at expat+HAREM — asks how to connect with a reading audience back home.

People abroad have often turned to writing when other options for work and expression were limited. It tends to be a location-independent profession and pasttime.

Technology and the times now challenge writers abroad to do even more. Because we can — and must.

We can make a bigger impact with less resources. Plus, even if we wanted to, we can no longer depend solely on high-barrier traditional routes.  We writers are now producers, and directors, and engineers of content.

Revisiting all my entertainment projects in development in this new light: how to tell the story of my ‘forensic memoir of friendship’ using 25-years worth of multimedia? Can two screenplays be converted to enhanced ebooks for iPhone or iPad — incorporating images, sound, text — or even made into a graphic novel?

What recent technology or industry shift both lowers a traditional barrier for you and raises your game?
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Anastasia Ashman is a California-born writer/producer of neoculture entertainment based in Istanbul. This series covers what’s crossing the mind and desk of expat+HAREM’s founder.
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Related posts:

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  3. Publishing and the digital world citizen
  4. She said, she said: quotables of expat+HAREM’s founder
  5. Identity messages: about expat+HAREM’s founder

Tagged as: Alan Paul, All in the Family, Argentina, author, career, Catherine Sanderson, Chantal Panozzo, Chicken Soup for the Soul, China, citizen of the world, content engineer, creative, creativity, digital citizen, digital nomad, director, e-book, ebook, enhanced e-book, enhanced ebook, entertainment, Expat Expert, expat+HAREM, expat+HAREM founder, expat+HAREM founder series, global nomad, graphic novel, interactive media, iPad, iPhone, location-independence, location-independent, Maya Frost, multimedia, novelist, Petite Anglaise, producer, producing, publishing, Robin Pascoe, screenplay, script, social media, success strategy, Switzerland, The Expat Life, The New Global Student, traditional barrier, Wall Street Journal, writer, Writer Abroad, writing

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/tara.agacayak Tara

    I just finished reading the interview – what a great resource for writers and location-independent professionals. I think it also applies to creative entrepreneurs doing what they love.

    As for your question: What recent technology or industry shift both lowers a traditional barrier for you and raises your game?

    I think as an expat, my circumstances have required me to rely even more on available technology and advances in it to continue my personal and professional development. I don’t know what I would do without broadband, WIFI, VOIP, DSL or social software.

    And it’s not the technology itself, but the connections it allows me to perpetuate and form. In a non-globalized world, I would have stayed at home, lived near my family and have no need for long-distance connectivity. But in my bi-cultural marriage and life in a very small town in Turkey, my circumstances have necessitated my reliance on technology to keep my family and friendships together as well as to develop my creative career.

    • Anastasia M. Ashman

      Thanks Tara, appreciate it. You’re right, creative entrepreneurs of all kinds can take a similar route, especially since we’re now more empowered to run our careers and businesses the way we’d like to.

      How would you say that your use of those technologies is raising your game?

      • http://www.google.com/profiles/tara.agacayak Tara

        How is it raising my game …

        It makes things possible that were either impossible before, or highly unlikely. Social media (+ the Internet infrastructure) connects me with my audience and also puts me in the classroom. In the tiny town where I live, these are invaluable and without the connectivity I couldn’t advance either my work or my knowledge base.

    • Anastasia M. Ashman

      Oh yes…without these tools and platforms there’d be no game at all for many of us. Or, we could opt to join this horrible expression: “the only game in town”.

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/tara.agacayak Tara

    I just finished reading the interview – what a great resource for writers and location-independent professionals. I think it also applies to creative entrepreneurs doing what they love.

    As for your question: What recent technology or industry shift both lowers a traditional barrier for you and raises your game?

    I think as an expat, my circumstances have required me to rely even more on available technology and advances in it to continue my personal and professional development. I don’t know what I would do without broadband, WIFI, VOIP, DSL or social software.

    And it’s not the technology itself, but the connections it allows me to perpetuate and form. In a non-globalized world, I would have stayed at home, lived near my family and have no need for long-distance connectivity. But in my bi-cultural marriage and life in a very small town in Turkey, my circumstances have necessitated my reliance on technology to keep my family and friendships together as well as to develop my creative career.

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      Thanks Tara, appreciate it. You’re right, creative entrepreneurs of all kinds can take a similar route, especially since we’re now more empowered to run our careers and businesses the way we’d like to.

      How would you say that your use of those technologies is raising your game?

      • http://www.google.com/profiles/tara.agacayak Tara

        How is it raising my game …

        It makes things possible that were either impossible before, or highly unlikely. Social media (+ the Internet infrastructure) connects me with my audience and also puts me in the classroom. In the tiny town where I live, these are invaluable and without the connectivity I couldn’t advance either my work or my knowledge base.

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      Oh yes…without these tools and platforms there’d be no game at all for many of us. Or, we could opt to join this horrible expression: “the only game in town”.

  • http://www.dutchessabroad.com Judith van Praag

    Anastasia, Your post and the interview Chantal conducts with you on her blog Writer Abroad resonates with me.
    Multimedia theater/art/word productions I dreamed up in the ’80s and ’90s now have a chance to come into existence outside my notebooks, on a scale I longed for but couldn’t quite see fit to produce without the now available New Media and new technologies. These are exciting times and there’s more to come.
    I love your positive can-do attitude, looking beyond the fear that lives at the moment in the minds of so many conventionally trained journalists.
    Observing you and your endeavors, it’s clear that an uprooted situation can work out for the best when approached with a positive attitude (lots of lemonade ; )

    • Anastasia M. Ashman

      Yes Judith! Absolutely we have a chance now to make things with a small team (or by ourselves) on a much smaller scale but accessible to an even wider audience whereas before it seemed our only options were big$$, huge crew of people, large space, lots of time. Plus, needing a green-light from someone else.

      I hear a lot of moaning that without gatekeepers the quality suffers — yet unproduced quality exists too! Those are the treasures we have to look forward to.

      P.S. Want to hear more about the resurrection of your theatre productions.

      (P.P.S. I hope you will share these or similar thoughts at Chantal’s blog too for the benefit of WriterAbroad readers…)

  • Anonymous

    Anastasia, Your post and the interview Chantal conducts with you on her blog Writer Abroad resonates with me.
    Multimedia theater/art/word productions I dreamed up in the ’80s and ’90s now have a chance to come into existence outside my notebooks, on a scale I longed for but couldn’t quite see fit to produce without the now available New Media and new technologies. These are exciting times and there’s more to come.
    I love your positive can-do attitude, looking beyond the fear that lives at the moment in the minds of so many conventionally trained journalists.
    Observing you and your endeavors, it’s clear that an uprooted situation can work out for the best when approached with a positive attitude (lots of lemonade ; )

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      Yes Judith! Absolutely we have a chance now to make things with a small team (or by ourselves) on a much smaller scale but accessible to an even wider audience whereas before it seemed our only options were big$$, huge crew of people, large space, lots of time. Plus, needing a green-light from someone else.

      I hear a lot of moaning that without gatekeepers the quality suffers — yet unproduced quality exists too! Those are the treasures we have to look forward to.

      P.S. Want to hear more about the resurrection of your theatre productions.

      (P.P.S. I hope you will share these or similar thoughts at Chantal’s blog too for the benefit of WriterAbroad readers…)

  • http://www.writerabroad.com Chantal

    Thanks for the great interview. It’s fantastic to have you on the site.

    Blogging has definitely helped my career as a writer as I’ve gotten jobs and offers directly from my blogs and also been able to connect with others around the world. I think social media is making it possible to live anywhere and not be so isolated.

    • Anastasia M. Ashman

      Thank *you* Chantal, really enjoyed the interview — and it’s the first time I’ve talked publicly about some of my upcoming projects and how I’ve switched gears in developing them.

      I’d agree that blogging and other social media has lit a fire under my writing career in terms of self-drection, and general exposure as well as in multiple niches — and the kinds of offers I am getting now are so much more attuned to what I am interested in, rather than simply what I’ve been paid to do in the past.

  • http://www.writerabroad.com Chantal

    Thanks for the great interview. It’s fantastic to have you on the site.

    Blogging has definitely helped my career as a writer as I’ve gotten jobs and offers directly from my blogs and also been able to connect with others around the world. I think social media is making it possible to live anywhere and not be so isolated.

    • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

      Thank *you* Chantal, really enjoyed the interview — and it’s the first time I’ve talked publicly about some of my upcoming projects and how I’ve switched gears in developing them.

      I’d agree that blogging and other social media has lit a fire under my writing career in terms of self-drection, and general exposure as well as in multiple niches — and the kinds of offers I am getting now are so much more attuned to what I am interested in, rather than simply what I’ve been paid to do in the past.

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