Twitter Reboot
I don’t fail at Twitter like I fail at message boards. (See my last post.) I have however recently concluded that I need to overhaul my Twitter experience a bit.
Let me say right up front that I am simply never going to be able to do with Twitter what a lot of “success coaches” or “networking wizards” say I can do. I’m not going to be able to make lots of money by landing all kinds of clients, ingratiate myself into the elite, or obtain a fantastic mentor through use of Twitter. Those are things that I struggle with as a person and have always done. Twitter won’t help me do those things to a great degree.
Yes, I know there are many uber-success stories about how Twitter turned careers around or landed someone their dream job. I know some of them personally. I’d love to be able to do what they do, but I’ve tried and I cannot make it happen. So there’s that.
That being said, over the weekend I did come to realize that I had let my Twitter experience grow a bit flabby. Jump the tracks a bit as it were. Too many people saying too many things that didn’t mean anything to me. “Unfollow them” you will say, and in many cases I did. But it’s not just a matter of unfollowing a few people and being on my way.
From the start, my goals with Twitter (in no particular order) were to:
-Discover content I had not previously discovered related to my various subjects of interest.
-Have an alternate news source.
-Meet interesting people from all over the world.
-Connect specifically with like-minded people from my area.
-Establish some career leads.
-Gain a bit of influence.
-Get the occasional attention of “important” people.
-Eventually establish the constantly talked about “platform” that writers seem to need.
I have succeeded a little bit in most of these goals. Some I have achieved more in, and others I have achieved, quite honestly, nothing in at all. i realize some of it is me. That I am not a particularly charismatic person. That’s been the story of my life on and off line. I’m not happy about it, but I get sort of used to it. But when you take my personality out of the mix and accept that I will never be a power broker with thousands of followers, it becomes clear that my use of Twitter needed some work.
To begin with, I need to be looser with using lists. For most of my time I have only used one list; “Writing/Writers”. It’s purpose is self explanatory. I’ve shied away from lists in the past because I tend to get too meticulous when it comes to categorizing things. “Writers” becomes split into “fiction” and “non-fiction”. Then both fiction and non-fiction become split into “famous” and “not famous”. And so on, like a fractal. I thought the best way to avoid that mess was to limit categories. But lately I think I was wrong.
Now I can’t go ape shit with all of the sub-categories and sub-sub-categories. I will just have to live with broader lists than my mind would conceive. (I created “Arts Assorted” this weekend and populated same.) But if I am ever to have a chance to home in on tweets about a specific subject, I need to set them aside. Even with Tweetdeck, I can’t filter through everything that comes in by subject. I happen to catch something once in a while, but I decided I needed to cordon off some tweets to read specifically at a later time.
I also decided that I needed a better system for who to follow and unfollow. I don’t exactly follow people indiscriminately. If I find they tweet a few things I like within the #amwriting hashtag or something like that, I will follow them. Sometimes they continue to tweet things that I like. Just as often they don’t, but I continue to catch their avatar or profile picture out of the corner of my eyes as I read other tweets…for years. I get accustomed to their face, as it were, but hardly register what they are saying anymore. So I’m trying to establish a means by which to determine if someone is interesting enough to follow. Perhaps a list of people I may want to follow, but haven’t yet. Give them a month to be interesting, and if not, gone.
It’s a little more difficult when they have followed me back already to just unfollow them. But I also got to thinking…they may be following me, but do we interact? Early on, when I retweeted them, or asked them a question or two, or just shared my thoughts on something they posted, did they ever reply? If the answer is “no”, or “hardly ever”, I’m more prone to unfollow now than I used to be. Unless you are famous or post unusually astute or useful things, I’m tired of following people that don’t engage me. Half the point was to engage people, and if you follow me but don’t talk to me, goodbye.
This does lead to one thing that sort of pissed me off during my streamlining, though. Several people that I have actually worked with stopped following me, even though I was still following them. I realize a person is free to unfollow anyone they wish, (I am in the process of it myself after all), but if you have heretofore had a decent exchange of ideas or shared projects for a while and then just up and not follow me one day…that’s a bit of an insult. If I’m not a random internet entity anymore, I think I deserve to be treated with some degree of dignity. I won’t be, because people are rude, but that doesn’t change my mind any on the matter.
Now, what about my own end of Twitter? I can only say I try to post what I find interesting, funny, useful. Like anybody I will tweet the occasional, “I’m eating breakfast” type of thing, but by and large I try to share articles I read, small pieces of advice, quips on current events or pop culture. I’m passionate about my views sometimes, yes. But generally I think I’ve used Twitter in the proper way. As in offline life, I can’t account for why what interests or amuses me doesn’t seem to interest or amuse a lot of other people. Ergo, I’m not sure what exactly I should change about my own Tweeting in order to enhance my experience. I’ll think on it, but on that end I feel right now I am doing the best I can do with that by and large.
Again, I am never going to be able to do as many of my more successful friends do, and take to Twitter and land five job offers in a day. But nor am I using it to simply post pictures of my pets either. I have been on if nearly four year now and learned a lot, but it’s time I start making it work more for me. These steps are the first in that journey.
If you have any other thoughts, feel free to share them here.
Why Do I Fail at Message Boards?
I fail at message boards.
My password notebooks over the years have been filled with the sign-in information for dozens of them. Sports, introversion, writing, acting you name it. I have joined and perused message boards on just about all of my interests. (Even a few things in which I had only a passing interest.) I do so in an attempt not to just learn more about a subject, but to meet other people. The social aspect of message boards. I guess you could call it networking if you must, but really it’s a desire to meet other people with similar situations and/or interests.
I’ll post a few things over the first few months. I will find threads other people started and offer my opinion on the topic. I will private message a few individual people that I thought made excellent points.
And then…nothing. Silence. Cyber-weeds tumble across my internet landscape as I partake in the vacuum of my own perceptions on the subject. I start to visit once a month or so, and see if there is anything new going on. Then less often. Finally I drop off, and basically never go to the message board again, having never made any of the solid connections, (at least online) that I was seeking in the first place. Also without much new knowledge.
You’d think as an introvert, and in general somebody who doesn’t like messing around with networking and meetings in real life, a message board would be the answer. I know for many people it is. I have heard of marriages that got their start when the two people began communicating on a message board. But for me it seems I am just as unlikely to make a connection with relevant people on a message board as I am in real life when I try to network and meet new people.
Message boards of course have their own sets of problems. Trolls. Ridiculous amounts of politics. (And I don’t mean boards about politics; I mean the politics among those who use the board.) Depending on the subject a tendency to repeat the same topics over and over. (If you even suggest a question or observation that has EVER been brought up on a message board, someone will promptly respond to your post with a link to a thread that’s been abandoned for four years which touches on your point.) And of course many boards have only one active thread..the “off topic” forum. The actual on topic stuff hasn’t been updated in months or years.
In short, message boards can be as big a pain in the ass as any other form of communication.
Still, there are people in every message board that seem to illicit thousands of replies. Not just looks, but replies. Those with either enough personal charisma or an intriguing enough presence that people lie awake in the middle of the night thinking about what they’ve posted. Then there is me.
Maybe my posts are that boring. Maybe people don’t like new people. Maybe I just don’t have the strength to invest in building a presence on a message board if it requires me to ask questions to which I already know the answer, or posting a extraneous response to a post in which I have minimal interest.
Or something else. I only know that what should be a haven for people like me to find expertise, a sympathetic ear, or camaraderie (I get almost none of that from most of the real people in my local life) is in fact just another place full of sound and fury. But without the sound.
Any thoughts on making connection on messages boards about your favorite topics?
Novel 2: Good News
Just a quick, later at night than usual post to let you know that maybe, just maybe I have found a route to recovery for Novel 2.
It’s difficult to describe the nature of my progress without giving away plot elements, and I am not ready to do that publicly yet. Add to that the fact that I’m not even revising yet because the rough draft isn’t finished. I merely concluded a few months ago that what i had of the first draft was so off base that it wasn’t “finishable” as it was.
So I wracked my brain off and on for a few months, writing down thoughts and potential patches. Ideas. Alternate approached. Mini-outlines. All of it served to make me feel better on the day, but none of it seemed to put my mind at ease in the long run, because the problems I had were not being addressed to my satisfaction.
About two weeks ago I said “screw it” and just wrote out several alternate plots for the piece. I didn’t limit myself at all. I gave myself permission to basically reboot the entire concept. And out of those mutated plot ideas came, what I think, is a workable new approach so far.
That is to say, a new approach that will hopefully allow me to keep the majority of the first half of the rough draft..which at best is what I had written before everything went all pear-shaped anyway.
The last few days I have been rewriting and shifting existing text to make this happen. I hadn’t planned on getting back into writing the text yet, but I was striking while the iron was hot the last few days, and planting these new seeds where I thought they needed to be. I have a lot of alternate track left to lay, but unlike most of the summer I think I can see the end of at least this first tunnel. I have a road to follow again. Bumpy, but leading somewhere.
So I will keep rewriting a little bit each day to redo the rough draft. I even have someone who said they would look at what I have so far..and I am actually considering it. Normally nobody gets to read a rough draft but me, but with all of the surgery and shifting I have done with what I have so far, it’s almost like a second draft of the first half of the story, so I guess it’s okay. Even though the second half of the rough draft does not, as of yet, exist.
Long way to go, but I think I’ve breathed some new life into it.
Blockbuster Fatigue
Guess what?
My first novel, Flowers for Dionysus will not, in all likelihood, blow your mind into the next galaxy.
Why would I say this? Have I not learned in all of my research that saying something like that could kill my chances of ever getting the novel published traditionally? After all, what agent in their right mind would Google my name, (which it seems they all do) and want to take a chance on my book, if I, the author, come right out and say on my own website that the novel is not going to blow your mind? If I don’t believe in it, why would anybody else?
That’s just it, though. I do believe in my novel. It speaks to me, and I feel that it will speak to the right kind of readers as well. I’ve taken pride in its construction, gone through several revisions, and seriously considered the advice of those who have read it for me. At best I have two more revisions left after four years of work before I begin the publishing process. The novel means something to me. It came to me in several moments of inspiration.
But it will not blow your mind because it was not written to blow your mind. And there’s the situation.
I set out to write a warm, human story with memorable character that’s a little off beat, but still realistic for the most part. Normal people in some extraordinary circumstances. I hope to touch readers. But I would be lying if I said I set out to profoundly alter the course of their entire lives by writing this novel. I would by lying if I said I wrote it with the intention of blowing their minds, or shocking them, or ripping their hearts out for the sake of doing so. What I did, as I said, was write a story.
Matthias Blackwell is a disillusioned amateur actor who has stepped away from the theatre, only to return at the behest of a good friend that needs his help. During the troubled production, he and his cast mates experience certain unexplained events, and end up changed by them (and by one another) in both subtle and not so subtle ways.
Yet much of the advice out there, particularly for those seeking an agent and eventually “traditional” publishing credits seems to lean in the opposite direction. Entire books are written on how to impress a busy agent with a query letter that contains just one sentence about your novel. In one sentence, you are to bowl over an agent, and make them feel that it would be a disservice to the literary world if your work were to not be represented and published as soon as possible.
Now would I be disappointed if my novel was never read? Yes. Very. But can I even pretend to assert that I believe, for the good of society, my book must be published? No, I cannot. But new writers these days are inundated with commandments to do that exact thing; they are told to write blockbusters.
If you are not already famous, you can do this several ways. You can write a book that’s suspenseful enough to make readers chew their finger nails. Or perhaps you can write something so poignant and tragic that a box of tissues should be kept on hand. Of course you could go the socially-relevant route, and expose something of profound importance to the continued health of Western Civilization. Or you can be “brave” or “brazen” as a writer and explore taboos just for the sake of doing so. You can say “kiss my ass” to social norms and dare people to bitch about what you have written. Have the audacity to piss people off.
Yeah. I’ve written a warm, human story that’s a little off beat…
Could stories like mine sell? Is there room for me in a world of fiction that has become oriented towards the bestseller just waiting to become a movie? Or is there no hope for a book such as Flowers for Dionysus, which seeks merely to tell a good story about people you will relate to? The answer seems to be “no”, if you go by much of the advice and demands of the industry today. But then again I pick up published books all of the time that not only fail to be as important or explosive as this, but fail to illicit any belief in me that any agent thought they ever could be.
Fictions needs structure. It needs to be clear, well written, expertly edited. An author must be willing to revise many times, and put the work into getting the manuscript finished. It is not easy to write a good story that people will enjoy reading. A lot of fiction fails to catch on. So why do we make it harder on ourselves by insisting we write something that will change the course of history? Because that’s what’s selling? Like I said, look again and some of the stuff that gets published, and ask yourself if you really ought to feel pressured to be profound or explosive, or heart wrenching in order to get where you want to go. (Anybody reading The Night Circus should instantly understand the hype-over-substance reality I’m exploring here.)
I feel that if more agents and publishers took chances on good, solid stories as often as they took chances on what they think is merely a template for the next Johnny Depp movie, the market would respond positively. But that isn’t happening any time soon, so it seems to me you are faced with a choice. Either torture yourself to find out how to cater to blockbuster lust among those in the industry, or you can write the stories that come to you in the best way you are capable, and convince the right people that what you’ve done is worth their time to read.
You don’t have to blow people’s mind. You only have to work damn hard and be true to the story inside of you, even if you don’t think it’s purpose is to blow anyone’s mind.
Motivation As Opposed to Inspiration
It’s no secret that reading books, watching movies, conversation, and just good old-fashioned people watching can help writers spark ideas for their work. One never knows when that argument you hear in line at Starbuck’s will give birth to a central scene in your next novel. Sitting at the county fair will spark inspiration for more than one potential character for your short story, I have little doubt. Which is why you should of course always carry a notebook or something with you at all times to write down such inspirations.
Yet I find that sometimes what a writer needs is a more general stimulus. A motivation rather than an inspiration. Not the sort of motivation where you visualize your goals as a writer, but motivation to get down to writing something new in the near future. (Such motivation is not always easy to come by, for me, let me tell you.)
Specific inspiration can of course spark motivation. Once you see that old man in the Metallica t-shirt, you can’t wait to get home to write a story about him. (Or of course, someone like him, not actually him.) Other times, however, I encourage you to release the need or even the desire to be inspired by something specifically, and let a general stimulus to create enter your bloodstream. This can be done in any number of ways, but I find that experiencing life, particularly in the presence of others doing the same thing, is one of the most efficient examples.
This weekend I went to the local race track and casino. I’ve mentioned this place before as surprisingly compatible to the introvert experience, and as you can imagine it is a fantastic place to people watch. All walks of life, all races, colors, creeds will find themselves at the track. Even children who come to see horses run and nothing more. If you’re already thinking such a place is fertile ground for story fodder, you’re absolutely correct, and it’s worth a trip to such a place for that alone. But remember, I’m not talking about specific inspiration today. I’m talking about general motivation.
The place is generally motivating for an artist in the sense that it is humanity everywhere. It bustles with activity. Whatever you may think of gambling, a track, especially on a warm and clear Saturday night is bursting with life being lived. Exposure to the broader notion of life being alive, or sensory experience being pursued warmed up my desire to create busy worlds and interesting characters myself. i didn’t find one specific story or character at the track this weekend, so my notebook remained in my pocket. But I did find a human electricity that should help throw the switch for anyone in the arts. Humanity, in your face.
It doesn’t have to be a track, of course. It could be a carnival, or a shopping mall. It could be just about anywhere and anything that involves collections of people engaged. Visit these places, and do things like this. Just take it in. If a specific idea presents itself, than of course write it down. Hold on to it. But if you think you can, just bathe in the personality of being for at least a few minutes without bein on the look out for ideas.
Just get living, get feeling, and let that kick you in the ass to go write something that is also infused with living and feeling, even if it has nothing at all to do with something you saw, heard or smelled while you were there. That feeling alone can provide it’s own inspiration long after the actual people watching is over.
Ty Unglebower 