social media – Page 6 – Jeffe Kennedy Blog

Writers Meeting Readers – Making a Good First Impression

Jeffe Kennedy / August 13, 2013 / Blog

Here’s the cover for, the second episode (Act II) of Master of the Opera: Ghost Aria. I posted the one for Act I, Passionate Overture, last Friday. The next two will be revealed by Bookpushers on Thursday, August 15! I love how each cover is the same image, with a slight variation to reflect the theme of that Act. Here’s the blurb for this one:

In the second seductive installment of Jeffe Kennedy’s thrilling Master of the Opera, a young woman falls deeper under the spell of the man who haunts her dreams, fuels her desire, and demands her surrender. . .

With each passing day of her internship at the Sante Fe Opera House, Christine Davis discovers something new, something exciting–and something frightening. Hidden in the twisting labyrinths beneath the theater is a mysterious man in a mask who, Christy’s convinced, is as real as the rose he left on her desk–and as passionate as the kiss that burns on her lips. He tells her to call him “Master,” and Christy can’t deny him. But when her predecessor–a missing intern–is found dead, Christy wonders if she’s playing with fire. . .

If her phantom lover is actually a killer, how can she continue to submit to his dark, erotic games? And if he is innocent, how can she resist–or refuse–when he demands nothing less than her body and soul?

I love how they wrote these up – they sound ever so much better than what I would have written.

I also got this yesterday:

Nothing like a shiny award to perk a girl up! This award comes at a great time, too, because the sequel, Rogue’s Possession, comes out October 7! Which no longer seems forever in the future, huh? The other day, a couple of book bloggers who loved Pawn heard about the sequel’s release date and were squealing with excitement on Twitter, speculating about what might happen next. I may or may not have succumbed to teasing them a bit about it. 😀

Still, there’s really nothing better than having smart enthusiastic readers excited about the next book. My favorite kind of conversation ever. Having someone else love my characters and story as much – maybe more! – than I do is a kind of transcendent feeling. This is why, if for no other reason, writers should find ways to communicate with their readers. It closes that loop, the one that starts with daydreams and hours alone at the keyboard, in a way that nothing else does.

It’s difficult for many authors, I know, to figure out how to behave in public. This might sound silly, but many people who become writers succeed because they’re happy being away from society for the huge chunks of alone time needed. Musicians and others in the performing arts are necessarily more social. They have to learn to engage with their audience, at some level or another. Visual artists have a long history of being cantankerous, cranky or just plain crazy. In times past, lovers of art and books rarely met the creators. Except for publishing house horror stories about autocratic and terrifying authors, for the most part no one knew what the writers themselves were like.

Recently a book blogger asked people about meeting their favorite author and asked if they regretted it. Of course, this is like asking people about car wrecks or kitchen accidents – everyone trots out the most horrific story they know. But they told of authors ignoring them, blowing them off, acting snobbish, being downright mean, etc. If I remembered where I read it, I’d post the link because it really was instructive.

The thing is, I could kind of read into some of the stories and know where the author was coming from. Not in an excusing-them way, but in a sympathy way. Often what’s read as snobbishness or a blow-off is the author not knowing how to behave. If they’ve never worked in corporate culture, never learned to deal with a range of people, they can come off as frozen, when they’re really overwhelmed.

I read this article recently. No, I didn’t click on it just because it’s about Hugh Jackman. Okay, maybe I did, but then I *stayed* for the content! It’s a terrific contrast piece about meeting a CEO and meeting Hugh Jackman – and the first impression each made.

For me the key part of the article is this:

In three minutes, Hugh Jackman turned me into a fan for life–but he didn’t sell me. He didn’t glad-hand me. He just gave me his full attention. He just acted as if, for those three minutes, I was the most important person in the world–even though he didn’t know me and has certainly forgotten me.

There’s the way through that deer-in-the-headlights moment (or two-hour signing). The ubiquitous “they” often give the advice to ask people questions about themselves, when you’re in conversations that are stalling. It never hurts to focus on the other person and, as writers, we’re all naturally interested in character. Give that person your full attention, treat them as important and learn something about them.

After all, it’s only three minutes.

Less, in social media.

Social Media, Tragedy and Giving Each Other a Little Room to Be Good People

Jeffe Kennedy / April 16, 2013 / Blog

I love this kitty queue to keep a vigilant eye on a nest they can’t quite reach.

You all know I’m on the internet pretty much all the time. I work from home for my day job, so I have my personal laptop on Twitter while I work, in case something interesting happens. For a break, I’ll pop over to FaceBook to see what’s going on. I prefer to keep up with emails as they come in, so I keep an eye on my personal email In-Box along with my work one.

I’m lucky this way. I have unfettered access to my wireless network. If something funny occurs to me, I can tweet it right then. If someone posts an NSFW link (Not Safe For Work), I can click on it. No firewall stops me. No one looks over my shoulder. When people ask me how I have so much time for social media, this is why. Sometimes I turn off the internet if I need to concentrate and can’t afford distractions, but mostly I dabble throughout the day.

So, yesterday, within ten minutes of the bombs going off at the finish line at the Boston Marathon, I saw a tweet about it. I don’t always see stuff that fast, but someone I follow happened to post it and I happened to glance right then. The company I work for is based in Boston and I have a lot of connections there, so it caught my eye.

It’s interesting to watch things ramp up, as more and more people become aware. There’s a lot of very good trading of information. There’s also expressions of thoughts and prayers. Soon the tweetstream overruns with nothing else. With a few glaring exceptions.

The tweets NOT about the unfolding tragedy begin to stand out in stark relief. They can be jarring – someone’s book release, a tweet about a fascinating thing a speaker said, a picture of a statue at a museum.

There are two things going on here: 1) people schedule tweets to post during the day while they’re at work or school or whatever. 2) people are at conferences and museums, posting interesting stuff, but paying attention to what they’re doing, not what people are saying on Twitter.

But, in the heightened emotional sea of the people who are glued to what’s going on, they see these diversions as distracting, and worse, a sign of self-absorption.

Thus the castigating began. People were posting tweets like “anyone posting promo for their book at a time like this ought to be ashamed of themselves.” A prominent publishing figure on Twitter said “People, now is the time to pull your scheduled tweets,” one I saw RT’d over and over.

Well, it’s lovely for her that she thinks it’s so easy. She is another who is online all the time and has unfettered access to the internet. A whole lot of people out there simply do not. They are not allowed to access FaceBook from work. They are behind government or private firewalls that provide security but prevent them from signing into something like Twitter. Their choices are to be silent on social media all day or schedule posts. For people working hard to promote their new book, being silent isn’t an ideal choice.

The thing is, most of the time, these scheduled tweets are invisible in the stream. They look like the same thing everybody else is saying. Only when the mass voice of Twitter shifts to something like yesterday’s tragedy, do they stand out like proverbial sore thumbs. I saw one guy comment that he hates scheduled tweets and their inappropriateness at those times makes him hate them more. My bet is that he doesn’t know which ones are scheduled most of the time. I also bet he can access the internet whenever he wants.

So, as people were dog-piling on these “selfish” tweeters, I noticed two of my friends who were going to draw negative attention. One was at a tourism conference and she was tweeting all sorts of fascinating facts. The other was at a museum, posting interesting photos of things he was seeing. Very normal for both of them, but it looked insensitive. Both are lovely, empathetic people, so I knew they had no idea. I ended up texting both of them on their phones, so they could stop – and both were grateful for the heads up.

But, I think I shouldn’t have had to do this. I think there’s a lot of room for us to be tolerant of each other. It’s easy, especially when emotions are strong and there’s nowhere to channel them, to make assumptions about people’s motivations and abilities. It seems that, especially in the face of tragedy, we could maybe give people the benefit of the doubt. Pretty much nobody is so insensitive that they’ll be chattering about their book or a conference speaker while people are posting photos of the bomb scenes. It’s clear the person doesn’t know. If scheduled tweets are continuing, maybe we can figure that the person can’t sign in to pull them. It might be good to practice assuming the best of people, rather than the worst.

Yesterday, while people were expressing despair and horror, they were also passing around this quote ascribed to Mr. Rogers:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”

And people pointed out how many rescuers – police, medical folks, runners, civilians – immediately ran to help. There are a lot of good people out there. Most of us are good people. Most of us try to be better people.

Maybe we should assume that, first.

Why Writers Shouldn’t Pay Attention to Pet Peeves and Cranky Lists

Jeffe Kennedy / April 9, 2013 / Blog

The last week was so warm, everything is leafing out and the lilacs are budding. Today we’re wrestling with a storm that slid down from Alaska (gee, thanks, Alaska) and we’re to get a hard freeze tonight. Yeah, I’ll be out there this afternoon, making free with the blankets.

I feel like lately I’ve been seeing lots of pet peeves in social media. Editors and agents like to tweet their peeves, often with the hashtag #pubtip. Sometimes a literary agency will start a conversation on the topic – “Hey readers, what are your literary pet peeves?” Bloggers will make lists of cliches to avoid.

All of these are great conversation starters on social media. After all, people love to air their gripes with each other, especially in a humorous context. It’s even better if those gripes derive from your work – the things you deal with all day, every day, week after week. They make for great riffs and people one-up each other and add gifs. It can be terrific entertainment.

I’ve even heard it said that you should follow agents and editors you’d like to work with, so you know what their peeves are.

No, no, no.

Seriously. Don’t do it. Don’t pay attention to these gripes and lists.

Why? Because they’re not really real.

Let me give you an example. A few weeks back I saw an agent tweet something along these lines:

“Pet peeve: books that open on dialogue. Voices shouldn’t come before we know who the bodies are. #pubtip”

This struck me because I’ve done this with published works. More than once. I bet we can all think of books that have done this and done it really well. This agent is right to call it a pet peeve – it’s nothing more than something that personally irritates her. So, should you change your book opening to please her?

Let’s consider that. Maybe you’re saying, sure Jeffe, if I’m querying her, I want my best odds, so for her I’ll open on description instead. Okay, fine, but she’s one of hundreds of agents you might query, with no guarantee that, just because you avoided that particular gripe of hers, she’ll want to represent you. So do you change your opening for every agent you query? Do you scour the internet and make a spreadsheet of every complaint every agent or editor makes, maybe categorized by type – openings, endings, characters, plot devices – and then check them off to groom them for that person?

Please tell me you wouldn’t do this.

There’s a fable for this, which everyone should recall, about the man who tried to please everyone. This is kind of a cutesy version, but the message remains – when you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. Least of all yourself.

The thing to keep in mind is when these fine people – and I’ve seen my agent and editors, who I like and admire, do this – give advice, they’re seeing the world from their perspective. I know that seems self-evident, but stick with me. I think of this like the teacher with 30 students. They learn her name immediately. It takes her much longer to learn 30 names. An editor wants a manuscript that’s tailored to him. He’s not seeing the writer’s perspective of trying to assimilate the likes and dislikes of 30 editors. And really, it’s not his problem.

So, what’s the solution?

Three things: Be true to yourself, learn your craft and protect yourself from negativity.

Being true to yourself

See, even if you change your opening so cranky agent who doesn’t like disembodied dialogue openings will keep reading, she might also hate your second line. Or the fact that your main character is gay. Or that she isn’t gay. Reading is subjective. Either the agent will resonate with your work or she won’t. It’s tempting to try to control this, but you can’t. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be. And I’ll let you in on a little secret – even if she hates that you started on dialogue, if she loves the rest of the story, she’ll still take it. She might call, gush about your wonderful story, offer representation and then say “oh, but I think you should open with this line.”

The one thing that will surely kill a story, however, is if it’s been worked to death to please everyone but yourself. It’s like the old saw that no one will love you until you love yourself first. If you don’t love your story, how do you expect someone else will?

Do what’s right for the story, first and foremost.

Learn your craft

Most of the cranky lists – things like “cliches writers should avoid” or “10 signs of bad writing” – are responses to poor craft. I saw one yesterday, that both my agent and one of my editors were all over with glee, that listed cliches. They each listed which ones they particularly hate. The thing is, I figured I’d probably done all of those things. For example, one was don’t have your character describe themselves in a mirror. I use mirror a lot. I’m really interested in the idea of self-perception and that the mirror is an archetype of being able to see your true self. I know perfectly well if I pointed this out to my editor or agent, where in my books I’ve done this, they’d say “oh, but you avoided the cliche – you handled it differently.”

Thus, the answer is not truly to avoid cliches. That’s the simplistic approach. After all, cliches become cliches for a reason (also a cliche, right there). They get overused. The point is to use those memes or archetypes well enough that they transcend cliche instead of being a crutch.

That’s craft.

Protect yourself from negativity

To me, this is the hugest part. When I saw my agent and editor climb all over that list of cliches, my brain started churning and obsessing. How many of those have I done? Oh my god, isn’t that one in the story I just sent her? I started thinking about the story I’m writing now and wondering if I need to rework this or that. I worried. I felt like a Bad Writer. Even that one about not opening with disembodied dialogue niggled at me, even though the story I know I did it in has been used in workshops with that opening as a good example. That’s a lot of emotional impact on me, for something she likely Tweeted in a moment of irritation and promptly forgot.

See, when people post this stuff, they’re thinking about engagement. They’re enjoying sharing gripes with fellow professionals. They’re not thinking about the creator of the art who might be derailed by what is essentially, to them, cocktail party conversation. It’s not that its bad advice, necessarily, but they’re not thinking about how they’re saying it.

All of this is why I think writers shouldn’t pay attention to this kind of thing. I’m not saying don’t follow agents and editors you’re interested in. I absolutely think you should. But don’t treat everything they say as gospel. Who knows? By the next day they may have forgotten they even said it.

Now go write.

Jeffe’s Random Five Bits of Advice for Having a Personality on Twitter

Jeffe Kennedy / March 12, 2013March 13, 2013 / Blog

A break in the Tucson rains allowed a bit of sunset to glow on Pusch Ridge. I swear this lasted maybe three minutes. Just lovely.

Funny how a brief glimpse of light and color catches our attention more than seeing the ridge brilliantly sunlit all day. I often recall a story my stepfather, Leo Kennedy, used to tell. He and some other guys were at a strip club. (Yes, this is absolutely the kind of story he would tell in mixed company. Everything in life was interesting to him.) They were sitting around a table when the waitress delivered the drinks. She bent over to set the drinks on the table and every guy leaned forward to catch a glimpse of her cleavage where her blouse gaped open. Even though there were several naked women dancing ten feet away.

He said it was an example of the hidden having more allure than the fully exposed.

He was also a former Catholic priest, so he may have told this story to encourage me to dress more demurely. At any rate, I think there’s truth in this.

This morning, I saw one of those perennial articles about how writers should handle Twitter, the balance between promo and “other” and yadda yadda yadda. I say all of this with great irony because, although the information is oft-repeated along various themes, clearly I still click on and read the articles.

It’s something we all want to know and still don’t quite understand.

I tweeted about the article (of course!) and snarked about the advice to “have a personality” on Twitter. Terrible advice, right? Terrible as in Utterly Useless. This is like your mother telling you as you leave for a party to just be yourself. Like this is such an easy thing to figure out. Especially when most of us – raging egomaniacs may be excuse from this conversation – harbor the deep conviction that “just ourselves” isn’t very interesting at all. After all, just being myself usually entails things like not wearing a bra or makeup, ignoring everyone and indulging in various bad habits. You people have no idea the lengths I go to, cleaning up my act for you.

Joking aside, most of us are grownups now and have developed, if not personalities, at least socially acceptable personae. We might not go to parties and “just be ourselves,” but we can generally get by without being hated by everyone. (Again, raging egomaniacs? we have a roped-off section in the bar for you!) But just “having a personality” doesn’t mean we know how to show it on Twitter.

The perky @AmaraRoyce, sister Kensington author, replied with:

Okay, I get the “don’t just bombard with promo” but…dammit, I have a personality! How do I show that in 140 char? 😉

And this is always the question, right?

I think it’s all about the striptease.

Twitter is, by nature, suited to the small glimpse. 140 characters is the hint of the curve of a breast through the open blouse. It’s the flash of thigh revealed by the slit in a knee-length skirt.

So, here are Jeffe’s Random Five Bits of Advice for Having a Personality on Twitter:

Give fun and brief insights into your life

People like to be snarky that Twitter is all about what you ate for breakfast. It’s not, but the fun things you do – including the meals you enjoy – show who you are. And, like with sex, people are pretty much always interested in food, detractors notwithstanding. People like to hear about funny incidents or amazing sights. Think cocktail party conversation

Leave your health and assorted bodily functions out of it

Conversely, people are really not interested in your health problems. Even your friends, when they ask about how you’re doing with Your Horrible Disease, are asking out of concern for you and not because they really want to hear about your latest funky bowel movement. See? You flinched just reading that, right? No one wants to hear about it

Don’t show everything

A striptease is about tantalizing, about the hints and intriguing glimpses. Once people have seen everything you have to show, they lose interest. Besides, hanging it all out there is a bad idea. Twitter is not your confessional. People are not there to offer you therapy. A friend of mine somtimes comments that “such and so’s entrails are showing.” You know the image she’s thinking of – the poor wounded animal whose entrails are hanging out, and who the pack will soon turn on. Don’t rely on the kindness of strangers. If you’re wounded, go to your friends. Don’t let the others catch the scent of blood.

Don’t be a Debbie Downer

A little bit of complaining is okay. Heavens know Erma Bombeck made a career of it. A lot of comedians have. And that’s the key: comedy. If you can make your whine funny – especially if it’s a complaint you know a lot of people share – go for it. But be judicious. People want to be entertained by you, not depressed. It’s fine to tweet about a low moment – @AmandaPalmer did this recently and received an outpouring of support – but not non-stop. Amanda Palmer can get away with that because most of the time she’s upbeat, interesting and gives fascinating glimpses into the life of a rock star.

Share the things you like

The things in life that give us joy and rev us up are what make us most interesting. Don’t worry about if it’s deep or will have a lasting impact on the Human Condition. If you’re happy about a new pair of shoes, tweet about it! If you’re in love with a new band, share that. I really believe that, in the end, it’s what we love most that defines us.

And, if all else fails? Just be yourself!

😉

Trolling for Likes and Tags – Worth It or Not?

Jeffe Kennedy / October 5, 2012 / Blog

There’s this trope in the movies – especially a certain kind of teen movie – where someone pays/bribes/coerces one of the popular kids to pretend to like/love/date the nerdy kid, thereby conveying that special magic upon them and elevating the unpopular kid into the lofty ranks. You all have seen this movie, right? Inevitably it turns out that everyone loves the previously unpopular kid and the formerly golden kid has plummeted in the rankings because everyone now sees them for who they truly are, whatever that may be.

Of course, we understand from this that popularity is A) not a real thing, B) easily created and destroyed and C) a false goal that leads only to pain and suffering.

Popularity very often is a mysterious thing. Why does everyone think that one cheerleader is the prettiest? Or that one guy is the one everyone wants to hang with? It’s easy to put it down to money, the right clothes, personal charm, luck. In the end, nobody really knows the answers and, after a certain point, we all leave high school and we don’t worry about it so much anymore. It is what it is and popularity doesn’t really matter.

Unless you’re engaged in a field where you’re trying to get people’s attention.

Then you’re plunged right back into the social frenzy. Why does one book get passed around and talked about while another languishes? How come everyone seems to LOVE that author, that book blogger, the one agent who everybody knows is really kind of smarmy? But they do, we still don’t know the answers and now, unfortunately, it really DOES matter.

Recently on a number of the author loops I’m on, people have been engaging in “Like” and “Tagging” parties. People ask for “Likes” on their FB author pages. For example, here’s mine https://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy. You can see there’s a “Like” button (which is at least way better than the old “Fan” button). If you click, then you see my posts. And look! it’s a measurable indicator of popularity! There’s a similar deal on Amazon, which is arguably more important to the book’s success. For example, if you look at Rogue’s Pawn on Amazon, you can see the little thumbs-up symbol under the title, which is meant to show how many people liked the book. If you scroll ALLLLL the way down, below the reviews, you’ll see “Tags Customers Associate with this Product,” – again, meant to be a way for customers to rate and describe the product.

Well, there’s all sorts of mutterings and schemings about how a book needs 25 Likes to make it into Amazon’s recommendations. And that the tags are EVERYTHING if you want to sell books. Of course, a lot of this is trying to discern the system behind the curtain and make it play for us. So what are these authors on my loops doing?

They’re attempting to create the appearance of popularity. “I’ll like your book if you’ll like mine” is just the grown-up iteration of paying the popular kid to sit with you at lunch. And there’s a certain logic. Hopefully real readers – and by this I mean, people who’ve actually read and liked the book, as opposed to clicking to do you reciprocal favor – will see all those frisky likes and think “Hey, look at all the people who like this, it must be good! I want to be one of those people!”

But, in the end, though the number of Likes might look much better than it did before, it’s still not a real measure of anything. You’re kidding yourself. I suspect that at some point, like the kids in the teen movies, we realize that popularity cannot be bought, sold or traded. That it comes down to who we really are or, in the case of our books, what kind of reading experience we offer.

And it is what it is.

Thunder Moon

admin / July 15, 2011July 23, 2011 / Blog

I had to catch the full Thunder Moon at dawn this morning, since last night, appropriately enough, thunderclouds obscured the moonrise.

Love those thunderclouds. Rain all you like!

Yesterday, Angela James, Executive Editor of Carina Press and savvy social media maven, tweeted this:

@angelajames Angela James

Me to agent: “I’m going to pass on this author. She’s had occasion to be very rude to me & others in the past.” #pubtip : Be professional

14 Jul via TweetDeck

This is noteworthy because we’ve all suspected it’s possible for this to happen. The publishing community is quite small, often insular, occasionally incestuous (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Whether at conferences or online, we are in each other’s laps much of the time. There are no secrets. When questioned, Angela followed up with:

@angelajames Angela James

To clarify previous #pubtip, I’ve never met author, but she’s been VERY rude to me re: past rejection letters. & to readers online as well.

23 hours ago

and

@angelajames Angela James

@salys I didn’t look at her writing this time.I’m not interested in working w/someone who has no respect for anyone else, readers or editors

23 hours ago

and

@angelajames Angela James

@salys if I know up front that’s how she acts, and she’s already destroyed her online rep, her writing is irrelevant if she won’t sell

23 hours ago

and

@angelajames Angela James

@salys also, my stress level is high enough. I don’t need to purposely add something to work situation that would make it worse

23 hours ago

This is pretty much what I would have predicted. Angela is at the helm of a digital-first imprint of a major publisher. She knows that online interactions play a huge role in this world. The days – if they ever really existed – of a writer getting to play the diva and curse anyone who crosses them are well and truly over.

It reminds me of the small town thing.

When I moved to Wyoming for grad school, I went from living in Denver and St. Louis, to a town of 26,000 people. Functionally the population is half that if you only count the year-round population. Now, I was an *ahem* aggressive driver. Not rage-driver, but definitely big-city driver. Other cars were never about people to me – they were simply “traffic.” Nothing personal.

Imagine my surprise when people called me out for it.

“Hey, you cut me off this morning!”

“Geez, how fast were you going down Grand yesterday afternoon??”

“You tailgated me all the way to Safeway – what’s up with that?”

Oops.

Once I got over the fact that these people actually looked in my car and recognized me, I discovered I was now accountable for my driving behavior in a way I’d never been before. No longer anonymous, I had become part of a small community, for better or worse. I had to change my behavior.

I suppose you could argue this impinged on my freedom to be obnoxious. Small towns can be oppressive because they do limit freedom of thought and action. The social mores can be restrictive. But, there’s always the option to leave that community. If the reasons to stay are compelling enough, you’d better learn how to get along with your neighbors.

And if you want them to hire you or elect you to city council? Find a way to be congenial.

It can’t be said often enough: watch what you say in public. Imagine that everything will be heard and remembered, and absolutely held against you in the court of public opinion. People will forgive you the odd slip, but a pattern of continued bad behavior? No no no. My writing buddies and I have the Cone of Silence. All snarkiness must occur inside the Cone.

Make sure it’s really on, too.

What was most amazing to me about yesterday’s exchange was an author replied to Angela saying:

Oh, shit, I said I was *sorry* I called you “picky.”

and

I’m crying now. You’re such a b*#$ch.

I didn’t include her tweet info here, because I think she’s an idiot for posting those and I’ll save her this extra bit of self-induced humiliation. The tweets are still up, though, for anyone who cares to see… and to track that her data matches up to Angela’s author-in-question.

Perhaps it all comes down to learning to take criticism. Live and learn.

When you do get called out for something, like I did? It’s an opportunity for course-correction. Apologize and fix the problem. People will forgive. They’ll eventually forget.

But not if you keep behaving badly.

Antisocial or No?

admin / June 24, 2011July 23, 2011 / Blog

Here we are, at that place when we realize the 4th of July is next week and we feel like summer is already half over. It’s a false perception. We still have all of July and August. Really September, too, though emotionally that feels like fall, not summer.

Anne Lamott, a writer I’ve liked for some years, wrote an essay recently on finding time. I’m usually a huge proponent of making time for the important stuff and I often agree with Anne’s take on things. However this time I found myself disagreeing.

Oh, yeah – don’t watch the news. It just makes you sad. House-cleaning isn’t important in the grand scheme, sure. But she makes a basic assumption that meeting with a “close friend” for a couple of hours is more meaningful and nurturing than all the Twitter and social media “noise.”

Frankly, I’m getting tired of hearing this.

If you read this blog at all regularly – and I know many of you do, which means a great deal to me – then you know I greatly value my online community. I believe these online contacts are indeed real, actual friends who play meaningful and nurturing roles in my life.

And *now* I have data to back my opinions up!

I know – we should mark this date on the calendar.

A recent study of Facebook users shows that they “are more trusting, have more close friends, and are more politically-engaged.”

So there!

I absolutely see this. Social is social and the idea that one on one physically present interaction is the only “real” kind is just splitting hairs. Would it be nice to spend one or two hours a week with my close friends? Sure it would! But with KAK and Laura off in icky Ohio, Kerry and Tawna up in the Pacific Northwest with Marcella sailing around god knows where, that gets a little difficult. That only scratches the surface. I went to Memphis last weekend partly to see my friend Karen, who was my sorority sister in college and is one of my oldest friends. When I can’t do that, I talk to her on Twitter and Facebook. I talk to Kev, another lifetime friend, on IM.

I won’t even try to list all the people on Twitter I chat with day in and day out, whose insights and feedback form the watercooler of my days.

Please don’t tell me that’s not meaningful or nurturing, that communications with these people is noise to be eliminated. How poor and silent my life would be without them.

One of my college friends, Felicia, commented on Facebook that she doesn’t know how she would have coped for the last year, facing breast cancer, without her Facebook community. This is someone I would have long fallen out of touch with, if it wasn’t for the online interaction.

Yes, make time for what’s important, but make it wisely. One person’s noise is another person’s lifeline.

Social Huh?

admin / February 9, 2011July 23, 2011 / Blog

A while back, this publicist for one of the Big 6 contacted me.

Not about me, alas, but about her client, Ms Thing, a big name author who had an Exciting New Book coming out. I happened to be president of a special interest chapter of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) that is especially interested in the genre Exciting New Book was in. Publicist Gal asked if we’d just love to put up an ad on our website for Ms Thing and her Exciting New Book. In exchange, she’ll send us a copy of Exciting New Book, so we can read it and talk it up.

Now, RWA is a big writers organization. Upwards of 10,000 members last I checked. One of the rules for all RWA chapters is that, as a non-profit organization, we can’t be in the business of selling books. This is an IRS thing and no one messes with the IRS. So we can’t post book covers or ads for our own members on our chapter website, so as to avoid the appearance of being a mall or bookstore and thus competing with for-profit businesses. Ms Thing, incidentally, is not a member of our chapter.

This might be somewhat arcane, but I kind of thought a publicist wanting to use social media like a chapter website or blog hosted by an RWA chapter, and where RWA is pretty much synonymous with romance in publishing, would know this kind of thing.

Okay, no. So, I’m a nice person. (Oh, hush up. I try to be a polite person.) I explain this to her, but I make her an offer. Our chapter has hundreds and hundreds of members (somewhere between 500 and 1,000, last I checked), who read and write in this genre. I offer to host a special chat for her on our site. Ms Thing could hang for an hour, answer select questions, talk up her Exciting New Book and give a copy away. This would really be the idea way to expose her to a whole bunch of people at once, who would then buy and talk up her book.

This would be an effective use of social media, to my mind.

Alternatively, I offered that Ms Thing could put something up on our chapter blog, a short article or what have you.

Publicist Gal emails me back and informs me that Ms Thing is Far Too Busy to do either of these things. It was a fairly snippy thanks, but no thanks. She says maybe she’ll send me a copy. If she had, our blogmistress could have given it away there at some point.

But no.

I really wonder if Ms Thing ever even knew about this conversation. Was she really Far Too Busy to spend an hour chatting with a potential audience of hundreds online? People who, if won over, would likely talk it up to hundreds more? What struck me most was that this professional publicist was attempting to use social media in such a ham-handed way. I know it’s a rapidly changing world and it’s not easy to keep up, but Publicist Gal was clearly still thinking in terms of billboards and magazine ads.

Now, maybe Ms Thing is bigger than that. Maybe she didn’t need us, which would be lovely for her.

Still, I think the lesson is, even if you are lucky enough to be Mr or Ms Thing, and you have a Publicist, I would be looking pretty carefully at how they’re handling social media. Really, the whole idea of social media is personal contact, not interaction via your publicist. I realize not everyone is good at this, but having your publicist engage in personal contact on your behalf is, um, not really the point.

That’s it for today. I’m afraid I’m Far Too Busy for any more of this bloggity stuff.

Jumping Up and Down

admin / January 19, 2011July 23, 2011 / Blog

I’ve never been all that good at parties.

Oh, I sometimes have fun. And I like them, I really do. Love to host them.Hand me a glass of wine or champagne and a few snacks and I’m a happy kitty cat.

But I don’t do well with competing conversations. Part of it’s because I’m a Western girl. The pauses in East Coast conversations go by so fleetingly that, by the time, I’ve heard the opening, someone else has taken the reins and run with the topic. By the time I get a chance, the moment is gone and my comment no longer relevant. It’s like I’m forever running behind the big kids, jumping up and down, shouting wait for me!

It’s a funny thing, because I’m generally an assertive person. I think it’s more that I don’t like competition. I don’t like struggling for the conversational ball. If someone talks over me, I’ll back off rather than fight for it. I easily fall into my preferred writerly habit of listening and putting together the stories behind the people.

It only occurred to me the other day that I have a lifelong pattern of avoiding competition. David and I were talking about our childhoods and how we were both kind of sensitive kids who were shocked to hit the bigger world of school, where people yelled at each other and did mean things. We grew tougher hides over time, but I realized that my dislike of sports (please don’t yell at me because I ducked instead of catching the ball) all the way up to my avoiding the rest of the Pre-Med crowd in college (no, I really don’t want to tell you my grade on that exam) reflect that I don’t like competing.

I’m sure many would say this is a fear of failure.

But it feels more like I just don’t like being in the mosh pit.

I’ll hand you the conversational ball before I elbow you in the eye-socket to keep it.

Sometimes the social media world feels like this to me. It’s a great big cocktail party and I love the people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made. The support network is a fundamental part of my life. But sometimes the party gets really loud. Some people are trying to stand in the middle of the room and talk over everyone else. Others are gathering people around them, relentlessly counting how many there are, yanking them back when they try to wander off. Some spend the whole time trying to get people to go off to their private blog-party room. Have you been there yet? Lots of people like it. Go there and see!

I find myself standing on the edges of the room, retreating to the comfort of listening. My mother taught me how to make social conversation by asking people about themselves, but then I sometimes get trapped near the potted plant with the guy who wants to tell me how much money he’s made self-publishing.

I think the trick – as with all parties – is to mingle freely and find the people you want to talk to. I find myself avoiding the loud talkers, the big groups, the ones running around, flailing their hands in the air yelling Look at Me! Look at Meeee!!!! I want people to read my books because they enjoy them, not because I talked them into it. I don’t want my writing to be about competition, any more than I want the rest of my life to be about it.

Yeah, I know this means that the bigger boys, who throw the ball hard and sneer at my timidity will rule the game. This is why the James Frey’s of the world not only get away with their shit, they profit from it. Nice guys might not finish last, but they don’t necessarily finish first either.

Still, what it comes down to me is not that I have a fear of failure, but that I don’t think winning is all it’s cracked up to be. It certainly isn’t worth sacrificing happiness or what I believe to be a generous and loving way to treat other people.

If you want to find me, I’ll be over on the sofa in the corner, sipping my wine.