A Blogger by Any Other Name

There is no doubt that social media is a powerful tool. Complain all you like about the kind of people who upload their every passing thought to Facebook, or those who insist on documenting every bite they eat to Instagram, but when you break past the nonsense social media is an amazing way of connecting to people from all over the world, which is a huge deal for an entrepreneur (writer).

But it doesn’t help the entrepreneur in the slightest if their only followers are family members and people they already knew from school or work. The entrepreneur needs to spread their social network, create a spiderweb of connections and interconnections.

Image via thecricketcontrast.com

In Kristen Lamb‘s Rise of the Machines she talks about the three different types of social media friends you want to know – the three different types of people who will help your platform grow.

The Connector brings more people into the fold. The Connector seems to know everyone, and through them the entrepreneur meets many new people as well.

The Maven is a treasure trove of useful information. They always seem to know where you should go or what you should do. They help the entrepreneur become a better entrepreneur.

The Salesman is the person that everyone listens to. If the Salesmen hypes up the entrepreneur’s work (book), you can be damn sure that people will buy it.

As I was reading about these three types of people, I began thinking about whether I knew any of them yet. It took a bit of thinking but I realized that, yes, I do know a few of each, though I’m not sure I know any Salesmen that know me well enough to do what they do best for me.

Then I got to thinking…do I fall into any of these categories?

I’m definitely not a Connector. At this juncture in my life I can definitely say that I know a lot of people, but that’s not exactly the same thing. I have a large family, so I know them, and some of their friends by extension. I know the people I went through school with, though I barely connect with them anymore. I met a ton of people out West while I was working there, and I even have a ton of them added to Facebook and LinkedIN, but again, I connect with very few of them. The fact is that I am actually quite shy, even after all I’ve done and at the ripe old age of 29. I’m not a Connector because I don’t like to connect. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite fond of most of the people I’ve come to meet over the years, but I’m also the kind of person who sits in a corner at a party until she’s drunk enough to force herself to speak to someone.

I really wouldn’t call myself a Maven either. I do retain information from time to time and have been known to help people out with some well-timed advice, but this is not the norm. I neither retain every bit of information I come across, nor do I make it my mission to share this information with others. In fact, if I come across a good piece of info that I think will help me in the future, I have to record it some manner (blog, notes on my iPhone, etc) or else I will totally forget about it. No, I’m definitely not a Maven.

Salesman? No, this one is even worse than the first two. I can’t be a Salesman. For one thing, even though I blog and Tweet and update my status on Facebook, I am actually still quite shy and have trouble with this concept of trying to convince others to buy something (this is going to become a huge issue later on when I do get a book published and need to market it). For another thing, I’m not the kind of person of whom people automatically trust the opinion. I like such a wide variety of things, that it makes people wary. Someone might not take my suggestion to watch a particular horror movie, for example, because I also recommended this god-awful b-horror-movie that I happened to love. You see what I’m getting at here?

So if I’m not a Connector, not a Maven, and not a Salesman…what am I? Am I just some weirdo hanging out on all the social media outlets, not contributing anything at all to the spiderweb?

No. I contribute, just not in the ways discussed.

I’m a writer. I write about life as a writer, life as a mother, life as a wife. I write zombie horrors and supernatural romances, fantasies and fan-fictions. I write novels and short-stories. I write blog posts.

And because I am a writer I also read. I read blogs, Twitter updates, and Facebook statuses. I read fiction novels and craft books and bits of writing that fellow writers share on the internet.

Through this identity of writer-and-reader I contribute a little bit in every way. I may not be a Connector, but I will occasionally send a writer friend along to a writing group or introduce a blogger to another blog I think they’ll like. I may not be a Maven but I’ll sometimes critique a writer’s work by using the tips and tricks I managed to glean from the last craft book I read. I may not be a Salesman, but I will absolutely promote what I feel requires promoting, especially if it’s something I absolutely loved myself.

So I guess you could say that I’m a protege. I have tiny bits of all three types of people in me, fighting to be something helpful, and that’s okay. We can’t all be precisely labeled by the exact function we serve in society, but we can still contribute in a real and meaningful way.

Hi, my name is Tracey. I’m a Social Media Writer-Reader.

The Golden Internet Rule

Yesterday on her blog Kristen Lamb spoke about the “three NEVERs” of social media. Without going into too much detail (you can check out her post if you really want to know…it’s a good one!), what the “three NEVERs” basically break down to are “don’t be a jerk to people on the internet because it could come back to bite you in the ass”.

It’s a good point, one that I thought could bear repeating, because so many people are so very, very bad for this. A lot of times it’s unintentional – people say terrible things in the heat of the moment, and social media makes it possible to express those terrible things immediately and to millions of people – but many and more times it’s just people being flat-out jackasses.

The anonymity of the internet gives people a false sense of security in being able to act like a jerk without consequences, but what most people fail to realize is that the internet isn’t as anonymous as it appears. If people really want to, they will track you down, and most of the time we make it very, very easy. How many of us have Facebook accounts, linked to Twitter accounts, linked to personal websites, linked to forum usernames, and so on and so on? And once something is on the internet, it’s pretty much there to stay. Just ask the plethora of celebrities that have tried to have unflattering images cleansed from the world wide web, only to have a billion and one more copies pop up in the blink of an eye.

As kids (I’m looking at you, know-it-all-teens) we can be forgiven a bit of stupidity…we think we know better, and later on we find out we’re wrong and (hopefully) smarten up a bit. But as adults, and professionals, this kind of bad behavior is unforgivable and just plain idiotic.

Recently an old schoolmate of mine posted a status update on Facebook. She’d done an interview on a prospective new hire for her employer, and afterwards went on Facebook to look up the interviewee, as many companies are wont to do these days. What she found was a scathing remark about how the prospective hire had apparently had to dumb down everything he said so the “moron” doing his interview could understand him. What do you think…did she hire him?

It’s a sad truth that people simply don’t think when posting their every thought and whim on the internet. They don’t take two seconds to think about the possible consequences of what they’re about to say. Everyone is guilty of this, even me, but some offenses are much worse than others.

I’ll give a personal example. Though I haven’t been the victim of many trolls or cruel internet japes in my day, I did come across one particular individual during the time I spent at the Critique Circle. This individual seemed to take a deep pleasure in writing scathing critiques of everything he came across. Nothing he read was good enough for him; everything was drivel, pretentious, blatent wish-fulfillment, and so on and so on. Nothing he said was constructive, he simply enjoyed telling everybody he came across how absolutely terrible their writing was in every way. The result? Very simple: no one would critique any of his work. On a site where the entire point is to upload your work and have people beta-read it, he’d ostrasized himself so that no one would touch anything he wrote with a (digital) fifty foot pole.

It all boils down to this: when you’re about to write a Facebook status update, Tweet something, or make a comment on someone’s blog or website, consider for a moment the impression you’re creating and the possible consequences you might incur. You wouldn’t tell an interviewer to their face that you think they’re a drooling moron, so why would you say it online where that same person could easily find it? You wouldn’t tell your editor or publisher that you think everything they do is crap, so why would you say the same thing to people who are supposed to be helping you become a better writer for free?

I’ve heard it said a million times, but rarely do most people seem to listen. None-the-less, I’ll say it again because it needs to be said:

If there’s someone you wouldn’t want reading it, don’t post it on the internet.

Have you ever said or done anything stupid on the internet that you later regretted? Have you ever been in a position to “reward” someone for being stupid on the internet? What are your thoughts on this lovely digital trend of ours? Please share!

Like a bra, unsupportive people are useless.

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

87. Dealing with people who are unsupportive.

I feel for people with this problem, I really do. Personally, I’ve been lucky enough that it hasn’t been much of an issue for me. I’ve had people in my life who perhaps were disinterested or indifferent about my writing, but rarely have I had to deal with someone who was outright unsupportive. The most important people in my life have always been perfectly supportive of anything that I chose to do (for the most part) with my life, and most people I’ve known have reacted to my writing with polite interest and the occasional, “Good for you!” The most unsupportive people I’ve really had to deal with were the occasional reviewers who critiqued my work based on personal opinion and tastes, which is something that any writer is bound to have to deal with in spades.

Despite the luck I’ve had, however, I’m not naive… I know that there are plenty of writers out there whose families/friends/spouses/etc are monstrously unsupportive. I’ve read blog posts from writers whose significant others scoff at them for “wasting time” on writing. I’ve spoken to fellow NaNo novelists whose families and friends laugh at them for bothering with something so “stupid and pointless”. I’ve heard about school kids whose parents and even teachers have scolded them for bothering to waste their efforts on “useless stories”.

And it’s sad. Writing, like other arts, has a stigma attached to it that basically boils down to, “you ain’t gonna make any money off that, so why bother?” That’s depressing for two reasons. One, that attitude in and of itself is the epitome of being unsupportive because you don’t know if you can make a living off of something until you try – that’s true of anything, not just the arts. Two, even if you’re not interested in making money, the bad attitude suggests that writing is pointless even if it’s just a hobby. Consider that for a moment. If someone works hard all day and then goes golfing during their down time, well that’s their prerogative – it’s their time to do with as they choose. But if someone else works just as hard and then uses their spare time to write, it’s all “what a waste of time” and “why don’t you do something productive?” and “what’s the point of that if you’re not going to make any money off it?”

This is a generalization of course, but it’s something that plenty of writers put on with on a regular basis.

Without any personal experience there isn’t a whole lot I can say about dealing with unsupportive people. My instinct is to say, “cut ’em loose” because people who can’t be supportive of your decisions don’t deserve to be in your life. That becomes sketchy, however, when the unsupportive person is the spouse you love very much, or a parent when you’re a minor under their roof. So I guess the best advice I can give is to understand that there are people out there who are going to be unsupportive of your goals and dreams, and that sometimes you’ll have to put up with them for a while, but you don’t have to listen to them. Stay strong, believe in yourself, and when you become hugely successful you can turn around and laugh in their stupid, unsupportive faces.

Caution: Avoid At All Costs

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

43. Mistakes to avoid in manuscripts

My three answers to this prompt are based on personal experience with what I’ve seen people do when submitting excerpts to be critiqued on Critique Circle. If you’re a writer and you’re reading this, feel free to add suggestions of your own in the comments.

– One major thing I notice is that tons of people (at least when they’re looking for critiques) pass along pieces of their work that are drowning in spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors. This is a huge turnoff for anyone who is reading the piece, whether it be for critique, editing, or publishing purposes. I know that no one is perfect, definitely not myself, and that mistakes will be made, but when you’re reading a piece and you find ten spelling errors in the first half a dozen sentences, you begin to wonder if the piece was submitted to you by a five-year-old. Additionally, I’m sorry, but if you don’t have a half-decent grasp on grammar and punctuation, you might have to reconsider your field. Again, I know no one is perfect – I myself often feel that I’m putting in way too many commas while also feeling that every single one is justified – but if the person reading your piece is finding at least one mistake in every single sentence, you are absolutely not going to be taken seriously.

– Word abuse is a complaint I’ve come across many times, and I can definitely understand why. Have you ever read a book in which the author seemed obsessed with a few particular words or phrases and used them constantly to the point that it was both noticeable and annoying? I definitely have. It’s not something that any writer does on purpose (at least I don’t believe so), but sometimes there is just a word you enjoy and so it weasels its way into your work over and over again. I myself have a tendency to overuse the word “incredulous”. I don’t know why, but it seems to come up constantly and makes editing a nightmare as I struggle for different words to use to break up the bad habit.

– The dreaded Mary-Sue Effect, or more recently known as the Bella Swan Conundrum. If you’ve never heard of a Mary Sue, it’s a name given to characters who are unnaturally perfect, with no discernible flaws to speak of. These characters are written to be the ideal person, loved by everyone, someone who never makes mistakes and is naturally perfect at everything that matters. These types of characters have existed for a long time, but one of the new pop-culture-reference examples is Bella Swan from the Twilight Saga. Bella is not special in any way, other than for the fact that the psychic vampire Edward Cullen cannot read her mind. And yet, despite her decidedly common nature, she is portrayed as (to put it bluntly) the Center of the Universe. All the male characters love her, except for the ones who think her important enough to want to kill. She is constantly surrounded by danger, drama, and conflict, and she always comes out of it completely unscathed. She succeeds in everything she tries. This is not how a main character should be. Some readers love this kind of character because they like to imagine that they are that character…this is called wish fulfillment, and while it can serve it’s purpose, it is not good literature. Good characters should have flaws. They should make stupid mistakes and suffer for them. They should have to struggle for their successes, and they should have to deal with all the same issues that life throws at all of us. If you want to make a good character, make them real, not ideal.

Will you be my (critique) friend?

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

26. How to find a critique group or partner

This can be harder than it sounds. The problem, I think, is that lots of writers want someone to read and critique their work, but they don’t want to have to do anything in return. It’s not that we’re selfish people by nature or anything, it’s just that we’re very, very busy. How can we concentrate on our own manuscripts when we have to critique this story our crit-partner sent us? And lord forbid we have multiple crit-partners and have to deal with multiple story-swaps. Yikes!

So what seems to happen is that we’ll hunt someone down, we’ll think we’ve established a partnership, but then one or the other will start to slack off. Weeks or months will go by without a critique being passed along so that only one person is benefiting from the relationship, or even worse, both people slack off and no one is benefiting.

This is the reason I joined Critique Circle. It’s an online critique group with a bit of a twist. See, the way they keep everyone honest is that you need points in order to submit some of your own work, and the only way to get points is by critiquing someone’s work. You get 1 point for each critique you write, with additional points if the piece you critique is a particularly long one, and you need 3 points to submit something of your own. Submissions go up in week-long stints and if you want to submit more than one piece in a given week it will cost you 6 points for the additional submission. It actually works quite well. I believe I submitted 3 or 4 chapters of Nowhere to Hide before I took a break to actually, you know…finish the novel, and each of my submissions got 5 or more critiques, most of them very helpful. There will, of course, always be people who write quick and dirty critiques just to get the points, but that is why the site also has a rating system. You can rate and comment on critiques you are given. I’m not entirely clear on what happens with those ratings as I’ve never had to deal with it myself, but overall it’s a very good system that works well. So if you’re looking for a critique partner, you should definitely head on over!

The Trick is to Learn From Them

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

22. List the biggest mistakes you made in your first manuscript

For the purpose of this post, I am going to use Nowhere to Hide, my zombie apocalypse novel, because it is the only (non-fan-fiction) manuscript I’ve ever finished (minus the editing part, which is happening now). So, without further ado:

– I didn’t plan anything. While I’ve mentioned before that I’m not the planning type and that I tend to prefer just writing, I suspect that having a general layout (at the very least) would have significantly decreased the length of time it took me to finish this story.

– I wrote a prologue. I personally don’t see this as a ‘mistake’, exactly, but after having a number of people on Critique Circle tell me that the prologue was pointless and detracted from the story, I guess it was maybe a mistake.

– I started a “shout-out” naming convention, giving my characters last names of famous horror-guru authors/directors/etc, and then promptly forgot about following through with it once I hit the fourth character.

– Looking back at certain sections of the story, I see that I rushed through things that I didn’t find as interesting, but are actually fairly important parts of the overall narrative.

– I didn’t establish character stories. I’m sure this isn’t a necessity for everyone, but if there’s one aspect of the planning process that I, personally, should be doing, it’s creating character backgrounds ahead of time. I tend to just go with the flow, and more often than not I find myself writing my main character’s feelings or actions to reflect how I think I would feel or act, but that’s not really a smart way of doing things. Not all of my characters can have my exact personal thoughts and beliefs. That’s just foolish. What I really need to start doing is establishing my character’s lives and personalities before I presume to write about them.

I’m sure there’s more, but I don’t really have to bash myself all night long, do I? 🙂

Critique Coping

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

20. How to cope with a substantial critique or edit

Reading critiques or edit suggestions must be the worst part of being a writer. I don’t care who you are, no one enjoys being told that there’s something wrong with the thing they’ve spent so much of their time and effort creating. Your initial reaction is always going to be one of defense: “This idiot doesn’t know what they’re talking about! I’m right and they’re wrong, end of discussion!” Even if you’re mature and composed enough to realize that the person giving you the critique has a very good point, part of you will still want to argue, to fight and say that there’s nothing wrong with the way you wrote it.

For myself, the way to deal with a critique is by taking a deep breath, reading it through a couple of times, and trying to see what the reader didn’t say. That is, I put a lot of effort into trying to decide whether the reader is being harsh because they really want to help, or if they’re just being intentionally cruel; whether their ideas have merit, or if they’re letting personal opinions get in the way of sense; whether they genuinely want to help you make the story better, or if they’re just shooting out some generic nonsense to mask the fact that they barely read the story.

The sad fact is that while you can’t have the knee-jerk defensive reaction to critiques, you also can’t accept them as gospel. One thing I learned while hanging out at Critique Circle is that, yes, some readers are knowledgeable people who truly want to help you make your story be the best that it can be, while other people are just going to force their opinions on you under the guise of giving you “advice”. That’s why it’s a good idea to have multiple proof-readers. For example, there is a scene near the beginning of the action in “Nowhere to Hide” in which the main character strips off her pajama top and wraps it around her fist so that she doesn’t hurt herself while breaking a window. When I posted this scene for critique, one reader told me that the whole scene was pointless and “smacked of fetish”. I was hurt and confused when I read that because I didn’t feel that way at all, and I thought the scene made a lot of sense given the situation. I was just beginning to wonder if maybe I was being a little sensitive when half a dozen other critiques came in and almost all of them mentioned how much they loved that particular scene. If I hadn’t gotten those other critiques I may have changed the scene based on one person’s opinion, which would have been foolish.

So in conclusion, take critiques seriously, but not always to heart.

Simplicity

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

12. What novelists can learn from screenplays

I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever written a screenplay. I’ve once or twice considered participating in Script Frenzy, which is run by the same people who do NaNoWriMo and is basically a challenge to write a screenplay in one month, but I’ve never gotten around to it. I prefer prose, so my motivation to actually take part in this challenge is low. But I have actually read a couple of screenplays, mostly because my best friend gave me a Buffy the Vampire Slayer screenplay book that she needed for one of her courses in college. So I’m going to base my meager response on that book…bear with me.

I think one major thing that novelists can learn from screenplays is simplicity. Screenplays are mostly dialogue with a bit of description thrown in as a general idea of what’s happening nearby. Many novels are the exact opposite. I’m as guilty as any other author for over-describing things, or so I’ve been told by critique-readers. As the creator of an entire world, writers tend to want to describe everything down to the tiniest detail, so that the reader can see it exactly as they’re imagining it. The problem with that is that half the fun is in the imagination part. Sometimes the reader wants to be able to figure it out themselves, instead of having a million-and-one details shoved down their throat. George R.R. Martin is famous for this. He creates an amazingly expansive world with characters upon characters upon characters, but his descriptive style leaves the reader constantly struggling to hold torrents of information in their brain, only to eventually realize that 99% of that information was completely irrelevant to the plot.

So, yeah. Simplicity. Learn how to use it.

Strike one entry off the bucket list

Today is a very special day for me. June 7th, 2012, approximately 1:00 pm. Mark that date and time down.

What’s so special about this date? It’s not a holiday, nor is it someone’s birthday, or a special occasion like an anniversary. In fact, it’s a pretty normal, even boring day. I’m sitting on the loveseat in my living room, my husband is on his computer up in the bedroom, and the baby is out cold on her pile of pillows on the living room floor. When we three got up this morning we had breakfast (grapes and a granola bar for the baby, coffee for the parents), and we went to playgroup for a couple of hours. It’s windy and chilly outside and looks like it can’t decide whether or not it wants to rain.

So again, what is so special about this date?

I mentioned before, more than once I believe, that I’d never finished any story I ever set out to write, with the exception of one short fanfiction. Today, as of approximately 1 o’clock this afternoon, I can no longer make that claim. Today, I wrote the final words, an epilogue, to my zombie novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Don’t get me wrong…the manuscript is not complete. There is editing to be done, some discontinuities that need to be addressed, some scenes may be omitted completely, and new ones could very well be added. But for all intents and purposes, I have a finished novel. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has lots of (I hope) interesting characters, and plenty of conflict, suspense, and emotion. It may have some errors and some scenes that don’t stand up to critique, but it is a complete story that, if read, will make sense. It concludes.

I cannot express the level of excitement this fills me with. Let me repeat this point once more: this is the first fully original story I have ever written, beginning to end. How freakin’ awesome is that? I know for a lot of people editing is the worst part of writing, but right now it seems like a happy daydream because I have a completed story to edit!

Look out, world! This novel is one major step closer to being published, and this writer is one immense step closer to earning the title of ‘author’.

I’m just saying…

I have a pet peeve concerning wannabe writers.

I’m not the type to purposely discourage someone from following a dream. In fact, I’m more the type of person to grit my teeth and encourage someone while wracking my brain to figure out how to gently let them know what they’re doing wrong. Unfortunately that’s not always as easy as it sounds. How do you, for example, tell someone that they have an awful voice when it’s their one and only dream to become a singer? If you have any level of empathy in your body, you don’t, because how would you feel if someone did the same thing to you?

That said, I’ve been spending a lot of time on a particular website where writers of every skill level can post pieces of their work and have them critiqued. It’s a great place to learn about your own writing style, what things you can improve upon, and what people like about your piece in general. The site is filled with people who’ve published works, and people who are trying out writing for the very first time.

It’s the latter that bother me.

Don’t get me wrong; not all the beginners make me cringe. Some of them are quite good and just need a little refining. And for goodness sake, don’t take me for someone who thinks that her own work is infallible…I know damn well that I’ve got improvements to make. My real problem, my pet peeve as it were, is with the first-time writers and wannabe writers who have absolutely no grasp on the English language.

I’m not a Grammar Nazi, I’m really not. If someone makes one little mistake I don’t go jumping down their throat as though they just murdered language itself. However, I beg wannabe writers to consider the following:

– If you don’t know the difference between words such as there, their, and they’re;
– If you have no idea what a colon is used for;
– If you don’t realize that there is a difference between quotation marks and apostrophes;
– If you constantly and consistently use improper slang words because you genuinely don’t know the real word you should be using;
and/or
– You have such poor spelling that your entire word processor file is underlined in red;

If any or all of these apply, please, please, please, work on your English skills before attempting to become a writer. As one of the people critiquing your works, it’s particularly difficult to concentrate on whether or not your story has merit when I’m fixing half a dozen grammatical errors per sentence. Again, I’m not saying I never make mistakes…to this day I still screw up its and it’s…but if you can’t write one or two sentences without having misspellings and punctuation missing/in the wrong spots, then you need to rethink whether you currently have the skills that you are going to require to become an author.