Rule F: writing has to come First

Linda’s Rules of Writing

Sometimes social media feels like a tug of war with other priorities.  But I made my priorities by writing 75% of these posts over several months.

We’re onto the letter F in Linda’s Rules of Writing of the A to Z Challenge, and on making sure writing gets done First.

There are so many things now that are in a tug of war for our attention: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Pintrest, you name it.  Writers have been told they need to build their audience, even before they’ve finished the first book.

I took the We Are Not Alone blog course with Kristen Lamb.  One of the striking things was that all these writers got online and started blogging three times a week.  I immediately stopped the recommendation to find link lists and videos because, frankly, it took too much time, and I wanted to hold onto my writing time.  It’s hard enough working around the job.

About 6 months later, I started seeing my fellow WANAs posting that they had to take time off blogging so they could get back to writing.

Writing the book has to come first.  Without the book, all the social media in the world isn’t going to matter.

How have you taken back your time from social media?

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Writerly Adventuring

I wrote on this same topic for Vision: A Resource for Writers.  Check out my article Balancing Writing and Blogging in issue 69.

 

Not Shooting Yourself in the Foot With Your Online Image

I have a confession: I’ve been going to science fiction conventions since 1976.  My goal for many of those cons were to see actors.  Some of them were nice people and others I wouldn’t want to know.  One I became friends with.  He was always a gentleman and very aware of his image he presented to the world.  At one con, he did an interview for a horror magazine.  So when it first came out at Borders, a friend and I snatched up copies right away.   I called my friend, a little worried because the interview was laced with f-bombs.  We’d both read all his interviews in the past, more than 20 years worth, and he’d always kept it very clean.  We debated about it and wondered if the writer had added the words for that magazine.

Nope.  The actor had gotten to drinking during the interview and said the words himself.  When he saw the interview, he was livid because he’d gotten the writer to promise not to use the profanity.  But the true problem was that he’d said them in the interview in the first place.

There’s been a lot of that online lately from writers.  It’s like people have forgotten … Read the rest on Unleaded: Fuel for Writers.

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My short story “A Soldier’s Magic” appears in the anthology The Darkness Within, available from Indigo Mosaic Publishing.  It features two women soldiers who have to make a tough decision to save a lot of people.

 

Attack of the Twitter Zombies

Can I give a tweet a one brain review?

The Twitter Zombies out there — they stalk mindlessly through Twitter.  “Twwweeeetttts.  Must send tweet.  Must promote book.  Must promote self.”  And then we, the recipients of these brains tweets, end up with spam (not the kind you eat).

For the last few months, I’ve been overwhelmed by writer spam.  If you put writer in your bio, writers flock to you, and then they send link spam: Writing links; “My book got five stars”; and retweets of other writers’ spam.  It is insane!  How can people think this sells books?

I have bought books based on tweets, but it’s been when someone else other than the author mentions the book — and it’s a real recommendation, not the cheer leading squad of RTers.  But because Joe Writer sends out multiple tweets about his books — no, no, and NO.  I like my brains very much, thank you.

BRRRAAAIIINNNNSSSS

However, all my frustration with writer spam made me think about what I was doing.  That plus a class on social media I took.  The class was focused on the business side, but had the unique aspect of being by people who are still trying to figure it out rather than an expert.

So I looked at my Twitter timeline.  I was surprised as how unfocused the tweets were.  I’m a jack of all trades.  I like a lot of things.  When I was in college, it was, “You mean I have to pick a major?”  I ended up with 94 credit hours and an AA in General Education.  If I went back today, I’d still have trouble picking a major!  Platform may be a challenge for me because of this, so the first thing I did was narrow my focus a lot.  I took it down to three topics:

1. Science Fiction and Fantasy
2. Fiction/Reading
3. Women in the Media

“Retweets! Give me retweets!”

Then I cut the number of linked tweets I send out to 4.  Social media experts say you have to do at least 10 to stay visible, which is probably why so many writers are sending link spam.  Ten was hard to keep up with, so I originally cut mine to 7 — which was still hard to keep up with.  My intent was to find conversations, but that was difficult because one of the hashtags I was on was overloaded with writer spam (the hashtag owners started reporting them as spammers.  We’re now down to about 5 spammers, 3 of which are one person, and the other 2 are RTing her.  Like I said, Twitter Zombies).

But it’s the other thing I did that seems to have made a huge difference in the responses I’m getting with fewer Tweets.  Most people will send out the name of the page or post title as the Tweet, maybe with a short comment.  I used to do that.  But to help keep me from going off in the latest shiny direction, I delete the title and write my own comment about the link.  It has to stand up on its own.  With that requirement, a lot of links haven’t made it to Twitter, but the quality of what I’m sending out is much better.  The links are coming from major blogs I subscribe to and TrendSpottr (that’s from the social media class).  The rest of the Tweets are conversations.

MMMM.  BRAINS ARE GOOD

And the results have surprised me.  Before, with 7-10 link tweets using the post title, I would get maybe one Tweet clicked on, often by one person.  With fewer links much more personalized, I’m regularly getting 5-7 clicks per tweet.  My Klout score’s also jumped up (it had  been declining).

Maybe things are changing.  Sending out so many links might have worked early on, before so many writers got online and starting repeating where early successes were.  Have you reassessed your role in social media?  What things are you trying?

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Images are from http://www.clipart.com

 

Top 10 Blog Posts for May

In case you missed any, here are the top 10 posts for May.

1. Moleskine Hacks for Fiction Writers:  I never go anywhere without my Moleskine to take notes.

2. Is There a Strong Woman Character or Are We Being Fooled?:  We have tons of books with women protagonists.  But do we have strong women characters?

3. Engaging Readers with Social Media:  Check out the discussion in the comments on whether writers should do writer blogs.

4. 5 Lessons I Learned on Finding Time to Write:  ”How do you find time to write?” is one of the most common things writers ask.  Find out what I do.

5. 5 Links on Time Management for Writers:  Check out what other writers are doing to manage their time.  There are some great links in here.

6. Writing with the Jellyfish:  On my journey to embracing being a pantser and working with my unique writing process.

7. Technology Hacks for Dealing with Twitter Spammers:  Check out some of the great tools that are available to keep spam out of your Twitter feed.

8. Should You Write with a Cowriter?  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:  It sounds like a great idea, but is it?  Check out what I did wrong.

9. Triberr Review: Useful Tool or Shiny Toy:   The Triberr owner dropped in for a few comments, so check it out what he says!

10. Balancing Writing and Social Media [UNLEADED]: It’s easy to get locked into “promote, promote, promote” and forget to write the book.

For you:  What subjects would you like to see?  Post in the comments below.

 

Technology Hacks for Dealing with Twitter Spammers

Have you noticed lately that there seems to be a lot of link spamming on Twitter?  It’s hard to have a conversation when I have to wade through all the links.

So I get to fight technology with, well, technology with two handy tools:

TwitBlock: Sometimes I find it hard to tell if a Tweep is a spammer or not.  This program uses a rating based common things spammers do.  It gives you a breakdown so you can decide if you want to block someone or not.  Mostly, it’s caught p**n sites, and occasionally, someone will end up on it accidentally because they display spammer characteristics.

Twit Cleaner:  This is probably the handiest Twitter tool I’ve run across.  It analyzes the tweets of your followers and recommends people who should be unfollowed.  It includes people who excessively RT, those who send too many links, and even those who never interact with anyone.  All you have to do is select the ones you want to unfollow, and Twit Cleaner will take care of it.  To give you an idea of how bad this problem is, about two weeks ago, I unfollowed about 100 people for the three above reasons.  I went back in today and reran the report, and I’d accumulated more people who were doing the same thing.

For you:  What kind of hacks have you been using to deal with the spammers?  Any links that weren’t mentioned above?  Post your comments below.

 

Engaging Readers with Social Media

Margaret Miller and Reetta Raitanen asked me to write a post on the “Microblogging and Macroblogging” workshop from Ravencon. Microblogging is Twitter, and Macroblogging is a blog like this.  With indie publishing exploding and forcing change on the publishing industry, writers of all flavors are having to learn how to do social media to sell their books.  The old marketing methods like “repeat the message” not only don’t work with social media but can instead disengage readers.   Who wants to receive a constant stream of “buy my book”?  I’ve found it a frustrating process because there’s a lot of information on what not to do, but what to do to be successful is a little vague.

These were the ‘don’ts’ discussed by the panel:

• Don’t send “Buy My Book” tweets.
• Don’t blog about your writing.

The latter of those strikes me as a curious tip.  I think the first thing every writer gravitates straight to is doing a blog of how-to tips.  Obviously, those are going to appeal only to other writers, and not to future potential readers.  Austin S. Comacho noted that we’re writers, so we have a wide variety of interests that we can talk about.  But a little later, he also said he hadn’t had much success with blogs and was participating in reading groups on Facebook.  And he is also blogging about — guess what?  Writing!

It all keeps coming back to writing.  Even ones who are well known like Bob Mayer, Kristen Lamb, and M.J. Rose have all gravitated to blogging about writing in some form or another.  We do write every day, and some write all day, so it’s hard to ignore talking about it entirely since it’s so much a part of our lives.  Maybe it’s not discussing how-tos, which tend to have an “article” flavor and only draw writers, but maybe something that would fit in with the writing but that readers would enjoy.

I’d like say there was some enlightening point in the workshop, but the above was the most exciting part.  They wandered off on a tangent about Live Journal, and there were two writers who only used Twitter to send blog links to.  No one answered what to tweet about or what to blog about, and it makes me think that maybe no one really totally knows.  I was glad I wasn’t the only one who was clueless!

But it prompted a question:  Are there writing topics that would appeal to both readers and writers?  The how-tos are obviously very writer-focused, and reviews are time consuming because reading the book is involved.  Post your opinion in the comments.

Meanwhile, here’s an info graphic from Copy Blogger on coming up with topics.  Since this is being linked from another site, I’ve included a screen reader version below.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

For screen readers:

The infographic contains 22 tips:

1. Curation: Compile a list of 10 favorite blog posts from other blogs
2. Group brainstorming: Ask some friends for ideas
3. Ask your readers: Get some help from your readers by asking what they would like to read about
4. Interview someone: Writing a few questions for someone else to answer is easier than turning out a whole post
5. Let a guest write: Guest posts add content effortlessly to your blog.
6. Best case studies – company, product or website to do a best case study on
7. Worst case studies – company, product or website that you don’t like
8. Review something: Pick a product or service and write what you like and dislike about it
9. Share your success: Show people step by step how you got there.
10. Share your failures: Write about your biggest challenges
11. Relive the memories: Pick some of your most useful older posts and share them for new readers

Use name recognition: This method requires mashing two unrelated subjects into one post i.e., what Batman can teach you about blogging

1. Movies: Popular movies are a great place to get ideas
2. Television: Chose television shows your audience would be likely to watch
3. Books: Use the author’s name or book title, but aim for fiction or poetry for more impact.
4. Comics: Superheroes make great blog post themes.
5. Top trends: Click Google trends to see what’s hot now.
6. Celebrities: Any celebrity will do.

Find your muse.  Sometimes it takes a little jump start to get your creativity flowing again.

1. Take a walk: Breaking up the routine can help restart your brain.
2. Watch a play: The atmosphere of a theatre can be very stimulating.
3. Expand your cultural horizons: Visit an ethnic restaurant.
4. Get personal.  Tell a personal story on your blog.
5. Recycle

 

N is for Now Can I Hide?

I admit this subject has nothing to do with N.  I’m coming back from a convention (actually writing this in the hotel on a break), and I have to produce blogs for the entire week for the A to Z Challenge.  Blogging is a huge challenge for me.  I can produce the words, but they’re not always effective posts.  I spent three years posting regularly and getting almost no comments.

Kristian Lamb said my posts lacked emotion.   My first reaction was that I didn’t think I could do it.  I’m still not sure how I’m that successful at it.  It’s hard for me because I see other writers writing blogs on exactly the same subject, even containing the same topics, and they get forty comments, and mine goes flat — and I can’t tell what I’m doing differently!

It’s kind of like socializing at a party.  I’m horrible at that.  I’m supposed to come up with actual interesting conversation?

With strangers?!

It’s even a problem at a party where I know the people.  The dynamics and rules change, and I always feel like I’m the person everyone forgot to tell the rules to.   The result is that I spend most parties uncomfortable, and sit alone at a table until an acceptable amount of time has passed.  Then I can escape, and I’m relieved that I can.

Blogging is different though, because even writers who are seeking professional publication, have to do promotion to attract readers.  I can’t be, as Tamara Pierce described in one of her Lady Knight books of Lord Raoul, a “lump in the curtains.”  The A to Z Challenge has been particularly a challenge because I’ve come up with a lot of topics — but they’ve felt very superficial.  The party version of talking about the weather.

What’s been your experience with blogging?  What kind of challenges have you faced?

 

How to Keep Me Away From Your Blog

I’ve been to two Blogger sites in the last week where the owner had enabled Capchas.  If the name isn’t familiar, it’s those weird letter things that pop up to help screen out spammers.  The text is often extremely distorted, because computers used for spamming can’t read it.

I’ve found it’s hard for me to read it, too.  Especially when letters like m and n run together.  I have to go through at least three or four rounds of capchas to post a comment.  That’s enough to make me go away and not bother, which means fewer comments for the blogger.  Lately, after a capcha rejection, I’ve been adding the following to my comment: “Is the spam that bad that these capchas are required?”  It is that annoying!

What annoys you about common things bloggers do?

 

The Power of First Impressions

All my life I’ve had problems with my feet — Adams feet.  The whole family has a history of bad feet.  Mostly, the doctors either said “There’s nothing we can do,” or “You need shoe inserts” — at $300.  No one ever told me what was wrong with my feet or how I might find shoes that worked better for them.  And it was always challenging buying them.  Most simply didn’t fit, and others were built in such a way that my feet would roll or hurt.

In the last week, I discovered that I have high arches (thanks to Dr. Scholls!).  So I looked online for information that would tell me how to buy shoes.  And found actual shoes.  That led me to a local shoe store.  It was run by one man, who was more interested in making sure I got shoes that fit right, than simply selling me whatever he could.  Afterwards, he asked, “What else can I do for you?”  He also answered my questions about shoe wear (these shoes are higher on the outside, so the wear will show up there) and shoe care.  I’m definitely going back — not only because they have the shoes, but because of the customer service.

First impressions are important.  As writers, we have all kinds of options available to us via the internet.  Twitter, blogs, Facebook.  Just the other day, a writer posted a profanity laced diatribe against people who were self-publishing (link goes to a blog discussing it, rather than to the site).  Part of the social networking side of book marketing is selling the Brand Writer.  A bad first impression like cussing at other people may create controversy, but it’s probably not going to sell books.

Several years ago, a lawsuit involving a plagiarism case was settled in favor the writer who was sued.  I posted a link to the news story on my blog and noted that it had been settled.  Apparently, the writer who had sued was watching for any posts about the case and posted a canned comment on my blog.  It was a heaping of sour grapes, but I did go look at his website.  The site was worse.  I got why he was bitter — his publishing company had gone bankrupt, so he had a book on shelves that he was never going to get paid for.  But that didn’t make up for the really bad first impression he gave me.   What the he didn’t know when he commented on my blog that I had picked up his book from the library because of the lawsuit, and because it was an action novel.  If I’d liked it, I would have bought others.  Instead, I stopped reading less than 50 pages in.  Haven’t touched any of his books sense.

What’s an example where a first impression either sold you on something or turned you completely off?

These are the shoes I got:

Walking Shoes – Very comfortable!  I got the white version.

Work Shoes – Has a curved sole, with a rolling motion.  A little strange at first, but is supposed to help me walk better.

Winter Boots – The last ones I had really hurt my feet, but something was necessary because when it snows, I often have to walk through it.

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I hope for Veteran’s Day you’ll check out my article “Grateful for a Gift to “Any Soldier” on The Washington Post.