Being creative while writing is a must but it is also beneficial to the marketing and even publishing process. There is so much you can do these days that is outside the box, especially with the leaps and bounds being made on the Internet. I am going to focus on one inventive way to both see your work published and/or build your platform–Second Life.
Second Life is called a game by most people but in truth it is more of a Virtual World. There are no points or any kind of goal–though you can collect the local currency (Linden Dollars $L) and trade it in for real USD. So what is it?
At this point I like to break out the Barbie metaphor. In Second Life you have a little “Avatar” which represents you and is kind of like a little Barbie doll on your computer screen–though the Avatar can be a Ken doll or a pony or a kitty or a big blob or even a solar system( yeah I really did see a solar system avatar once). You can buy hair, clothes, shoes, mansions etc for your Avatar. Pretty much anything you can imagine and more is possible in the world of Second Life.
And, you guessed it, there are books! With a little elbow grease and a few dollars you can publish, market and sell your writing in book or magazine form in this virtual world, with potential customers from around the world. At any given time in Second Life there are 50,000-70,000 people logged in and over the course of 2 months over a million different Avatars will log in. You could sell a lot of your writing with that kind of market.
The best part is there is a large artist community in Second Life. Mostly there are musicians and designers but there are writers as well. Second Life is a community that loves to support the arts.
Second Life “books” are by no means as convenient and catchy as all these new Nooks and Kindles so its never going to replace Real Life ePublishing, but it can certainly be a nice supplement and a great promotion tool. All it takes is for you to log in (Second Life is free by the way) and start putting your creativity to use.