Authority abroad

I’ve always admired the rugged ability of certain adventurer-writers to appear masterful in the wider world.

True or not, it’s easy to envision legendary expatriate authors like Karen Blixen and Ernest Hemingway crushing it in their overseas exploits. Satisfying wanderlust. Surviving exotic illness. Operating transnational businesses. Donning local garb or exploration gear. Pictured alone on the landscape, or comfortably surrounded by teeming locals. Iconic.

Then they write personally relevant opuses Out of Africa and The Old Man and the Sea.

Larger-than-life expat writer personalities seem in tune with far-flung surroundings, able to produce their best work from foreign atmospheres.

These two predecessors were clearly troubled. Alcoholism. Venereal disease. Financial ruin. Divorce. Suicide. However, aspiring to their ultimate of travel feats — achieving a personal and professional high point — remains an urge for writers abroad like me.

I explore my own brush with the weight of expat image expectation at a colleague’s blog this week by delving into the photos that correspond with a highlight and a lowlight of my expat experience. Despite previous and future international depths, it only takes one flashbulb moment to remind us we too can outdo ourselves abroad. And that memory can empower us and our expat life for a long time. Take a peek at Unrecognizable vs. Iconic.

Which expat icons do you admire — and when have you found authority overseas?

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Psychic location independence

Recently LocationIndependentProfessionals.com asked why we want to be location independent. “Whatever you’re looking for you can find where you are.” It’s simply not true.

We can get what we want and need where we are — but not with a local solution. Try a psychic one.

Take this week’s short and balmy trip to Manhattan. I acted as a technology mule, bringing iPads to poor, under-served early adopters here in Istanbul, and reconnected with friends doing work I admire on scales and with methods I aspire to. My peers.

• Popped in for dinner at Babbo, one of America’s best restaurants, where a pal worked his way up to general manager.
• Barbecued (veggie burgers, of course) with a television personality looking to demystify America’s health through an East-West approach, and a longtime colleague whose fifth appearance on the New York Times bestseller list comes with her solo effort on the importance of strong relationships.
• Cocktailed with a fellow Berkeleyan and writing buddy who just sold her haunted-by-a-Beat-writer THE GHOST OF GREENWICH VILLAGE.
• Strolled the hipster hoods of Brooklyn with international designers energized by new iPhone and iPad apps.
• Lunched with a former roomie now French radio producer at the United Nations who’s branching into multimedia, like her video with my favorite Beninese singer and human rights activist Angelique Kidjo to demand rape be prosecuted as a war crime.

Right up my alley. But I may never live there again. Most of us cannot (always) go somewhere on the ground where all our people and our perfect lifestyle exist. We must find that psychically — our “global niche“.

The meaning and purpose of location independence and digital nomadism is to live and work autonomously. Although it evokes mobility, it’s especially crucial for long term living situations: to find a way to get what you want and need despite the limitations of your location.  Much like the cross-national quandary posed at expat+HAREM — “are you a global citizen by choice, or necessity?” —  out of necessity to live and work to my abilities I aim to be independent of my specific location.

Are you location independent by choice, or necessity? Where and why?

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Creatives surviving & thriving abroad

This week I’m thrilled 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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