Social Media Manifesto III: Facebook

I was a long-time diehard Facebook fan. I loved reconnecting with people with whom I'd fallen out of touch. I had my fan page and my personal page and networked my blog and everything. And I loved it.

But I didn't love the constantly changing privacy policies. And I didn't love realizing that I'd just spent the past hour and a half reading status updates when I could have been -- should have been -- writing.

For me, the last straw of Facebook came when my child's 1st grade teacher took pictures of the kids in her class and posted them on her page. Soon, people were tagging her with my name and links to my FB page.

Now, I don't put my child's picture online. Ever. To me, that just smacks of exploitation. And the paranoiac in me certainly doesn't want my kid's picture tagged with my name. I know there are a bazillion parents out there happily posting pics of every second of their kids' lives. Well, I'm not one of them.

So time-wasting and photo-tagging trumped (in my opinion) staying in touch with a few people, I got off FB. Went cold turkey. Never missed it, found lots of other ways to procrastinate on my writing, and never looked back...

I was happy being footloose and Facebook free until recently, when a client wanted me to administer their fan page. (Which, incidentally, I set up back in the day...). I fought it. I came up with every reason in the book not to. But the client always wins. Since, not surprisingly, one cannot administer a page without being a member, I was dragged kicking and screaming back to the FB fold.

Here, then, in a nutshell is my Facebook policy:

• I have a personal page, but rarely check in.

• My page is my name. If you'd like to say "hi," feel free. I'll probably respond.

• I only add as friends people I know.

• I have zero interest in anyone's virtual farm, mafia, or zoo. I mean it. Even if it's my own mother: I just don't care. I'm sorry if that comes across as harsh, but I doubt that I'm alone in this.

• I don't have an official "fan page." In my experience, it becomes just one more thing to manage. 

I use social media to stay informed and to stay in touch. I must constantly remember that it is a tool. It is not my reason for living. I was not put here on the planet to raise my Klout score or see if I can get the most Twitter followers, or blog readers, or Facebook fans. I love spending time online meeting and interacting with the wonderful people I meet there, but my life begins when I pull the plug and get down to the business of living.

White Eggs and Spam: The Tweeter's Lament

(With profuse apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Eggs hatch spam-bots. And dinosaurs.

I do not like white eggs and spam.
I do not like them, sir or ma'am.

I do not like them in HootSuite
TweetDeck, or Twitter.  Won't re-tweet
Them. Won't click on links.
I'm not an idiot. 
     (That's what you thinks,
Isn't it? Why else
Would you blast me with your URLs?)

From "Writers Wanted!" to Bieberfans and
#followback begging, I hates the spam!


I do not like white eggs and spam.
I block and report them as fast as I can.
I will not keep eggs in my feed.
They hatch spam-bots. I do not need,
Or want, or even tolerate
The time-line clutter spam-bots make.

It's true, not all spam comes from eggs.
If I see boobs or butts or legs
It's a fair bet spam is in the tweet --
Spam that licks a toilet seat.

I do not like white eggs and spam.
I do not like it, sir or ma'am.

I tweet to connect with other people:
Writers. Riders. Real live tweeple.
I like what they have to say -
Even if it's just what they ate today.
They make me laugh. They keep me #amwriting.
They're so interesting, I find myself fighting
To more productively manage my time
So I do not spend it all online.

That's why I don't like white eggs and spam.
They clutter up my feed and jam
It with unwanted ads.
I "block & report" & kick bots in the nads.
If I wanted spam ads everyplace I look,
I wouldn't be on Twitter.  I'd be on FaceBook.

The Winning Argument.

Hooks & Sinkers: The Writing Advice that Sparked a War of Words

Last week, I read an excellent post on Things to Avoid in Your Novel’s Opening Page from the Kill Zone bloggers. The post in question dealt with the hook – those critical 250 words that make or break a book. (It’s worth reading. Check it out. I’ll wait…)

The Inciting Incident: Book Hook No No’s

“Why is a hook so important?” you may ask.

Good question.

The short answer is: only about 250 words will fit on the first page of the average book. If they don’t grab your reader’s interest, then the reader won’t turn the page. If that happens, dear friends, then your book is dead in the water.

It won’t matter that you have a killer scene in chapter 3. It won’t matter if you have encapsulated all the angst in history in your protagonist. It won’t matter if you have written The. Funniest. Sidekick. Ever. If the hook doesn’t make the reader turn the page, no one will know.

The Kill Zone blog is the labor of love of 7 acclaimed thriller & mystery authors who use it to educate and inspire those of us who may not have ahem made it yet.

The "Opening Page" blog post referenced earlier is written by James Scott Bell, bestselling novelist, non-fiction author, and contributing fiction editor to Writer’s Digest Magazine. So, you know, he has some credibility.

Bell lists 5 specific no-no’s that can ruin a book hook. These include:

• Don’t have a character alone, thinking.
• Don’t do an exposition dump.
• Don’t start with a dream.

The Catalyst: A Facebook Fan Page Link

Because I’m always on the lookout for useful information, I posted a link to this piece on my Facebook Fan page. (Note the selfish plug. I’m shameless, really.)

A few people wrote to thank me for the useful information in the link. Others, however, took exception with how the advice was presented.

You see, J.S. Bell gave an example of What Not to Do and explained that it was a poor choice for a book’s hook because:

I don't care. I hate to be piggy about this, but I really don’t care... The mistake writers make is in thinking that readers will have immediate sympathy for a person who is upset. They won’t... We all got troubles. What else is new?

One reader of the piece appreciated Bell’s honesty and posted:

I just looked at my first page again. I reworked it with his advice, and it looks lots better. Thanks for the link.

However, the advice & rationale struck a nerve with another reader. She posted a mini-tirade against Bell, called his credentials into question, blasted the genre he wrote in, and defended beginning her book with One of The Forbidden Five.

As you can imagine, a lively discussion ensued. Tune in tomorrow for a look at why one person’s comments about the words we write can trigger a maelstrom of emotions usually reserved for people who make disparaging remarks about our children.

Has a person’s criticism, advice, or suggestions for changing something you’ve written ever sparked a firestorm or fury from you? Please comment below on your experience.

Applied Marketing

or, Short, Sweet, and "See What I've Done!"

I received the following update from a student in my current Writer's Workshop:

A funny thing happened after your social networking comments last night at class. I finally had time to review some of my writing today and remembered that I had submitted an article to a new website... I had forgotten all about it.

Anyway, I went to the site only to find that it had been published AND THAT I HAD 17 COMMENTS!! And, I am on their Facebook and Twitter pages, too! How funny!! Anyway, if you are interested, click Mamapedia on Facebook and on their first page of their fan site, my article can be found about halfway down called, "When Your Life Calling Changes." I was most excited about the favorable comments... See you next week!

I love getting these kinds of comments. I regularly encourage writers to post on blogs, social-networking sites, forums, and other online venues, as a way of getting their names and projects "out there."

Updates like these warm the cockles of my heart, and it's not just because a student took my advice and found a way to get herself published. No -- what really makes me smile is that I know she is internalizing some of the marketing techniques necessary for writers because she applies them in her note to me.

Not only does she tell me about her submission being published, but she told me the name of it, gave me a short positive review of it, and told me where to go to see it. This may seem like a small thing, but it's HUGE!

The more this writer gets used to applying these techniques as she works to network and build an awareness of her platform, the more it will become second nature to her. That way, when her book is accepted for publication she will be so accustomed to dropping her current work's title, kudos, and accessibility, that it will happen naturally.

Another student in my current Writer's Workshop is a surfer who has a small, self-published book about his surfing testimony. ("I gave my surfboard to God and he sent me to Hawaii for 27 years," is his short one-sentence About-My-Book pitch.) This past week, while he was surfing in Lake Michigan he got interviewed by Fox News.

Because of the Workshop's focus on marketing one's work, he gave the interviewer his book. To me, this seemed like an obvious thing to do. But he told me that he would have never even thought of it had it not been for my hammering home the importance of telling people about what you've written.

So -- again, for those of us who need the review -- Write. Create. Do your very best work. And then come up with a short, relevant way to let those interested in you or your subject know that your writing exists. Apply what you learn about marketing your work in the same manner that you apply what you learn about honing your craft. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: you owe it to your future fans to let them know that your work exists...

"Stupid is as Stupid Does"

or, Not As Incompetent As I Feared...

I thought the time was right to put a new wrinkle in my brain. With so many writing projects in the works, so many people contacting me with writing-related concerns, and so many writers asking questions about the protocol of using social networking to promote their writing, I felt that the only thing to do was develop a professional "Page" on FaceBook.

I reasoned that I would endure the learning curve and then use the FB Professional Page to communicate with those interested in writing and in my ongoing projects without annoying my personal "friends" with work-related updates.

So, I spent some time creating a barely-ready-for-people-to-see FaceBook Page. Since it was so easy to have this blog automatically import to my personal page, I figured it would be a proverbial piece of cake to do the same with my Pro Page...

But I couldn't figure out how to do it.

Techno-Geek that I am NOT, I wrestled with the problem. I tried every setting, clicked on every "help" button, fiddled with the templates for both the blog and for FB. I tried to remember how I'd gotten the personal page to do the import, and got increasingly upset with my stupidity. Reasoning that eventually even the blind pig finds an acorn, I kept picking away at it for the past TWO DAYS.

So it was with twin emotional waves of both vindication and utter incredulity that I discovered the following post on a FB Help Forum:

"I have a personal page - and then I have a page that I am an admin for - I want to import our blog posts into the notes of the page I am the admin for, but it seems my only option is my personal page?"

This was posted a month ago, with at least two others chiming in that they had the same problem. No answer has (as yet) been provided.



This all just goes to show that Winston Groom was right when he had Forrest Gump's mom tell him "Stupid is as stupid does."

Though I may have been initially elated to discover that I wasn't quite as incompetent as I had feared, the fact that I wasted significant portions of two days of my working life trying to figure out how to do something that those geekier than I cannot do doesn't say much about my relative IQ...

In Other News...

My co-writer Paul and I spent most of the day re-writing and polishing the Marathon Man script. Thanks to a community theater group's roundtable reading of the screenplay last weekend, we discovered that a major character could be whittled down to nearly nothing, and the story would thrive without him.

So, we pulled out all of his scenes, distilled the essence of what we wanted him to accomplish, and re-inserted him into the story -- a stronger character, though one with significantly reduced screen time.

Listening to the recording of the actors reading the script is an interesting exercise in humiliation. (Did I actually write that? What on earth was I thinking? No one would actually say those words out loud...) I now understand a little bit of why many actors don't like to watch their own performances. I have discovered that I REALLY don't like to hear a lot of my scenes read. They sound SO different than I "hear" them.

We have another roundtable reading scheduled with a different group of actors in Sonoma at the beginning of next month. All are completely unfamiliar with this project and will be reading it cold. With any luck, we'll have the lines polished to where they sound they same in real life as they do in my head...

A Beacon of Bungled Privacy and Boiled Frogs

How do you boil a frog?

According to the old object lesson, you do not get the water bubbling and then drop the unfortunate amphibian into the pot. He will react to the unfavorable conditions, jump out, and save his life.

If, however, you put Froggy into the pot and then gradually increase the temperature of the water, he'll adjust, stay put -- and eventually croak.

Today, the Washington Post ran an article about Facebook's Beacon which posts user's online activities for others to see, share, and enjoy.

Touted as a means of using word-of-mouth to give "personal recommendations" to purchases, services, and entertainment choices, Beacon allows participating advertisers detailed information into the buying choices and browsing habits of Facebook users -- without their explicit consent. Often, without their knowledge.

There have been several instances, for example, of people who did their Christmas shopping online, only to have all of their purchases (including markdowns in price) show up for their friends' and families' perusal.

One man bought his wife a diamond ring for Christmas only to have her ask him "who the ring was for!?"

Not wanting to spoil the surprise, he asked, "What ring?"

Ooooooo, he had some 'splainin' to do!

It's Christmas, for crying out loud. Who wants their gift purchases broadcast to the general public? It's ridiculous.

But not half as ridiculous as this comment on the whole bad-idea Beacon spotlight into the soft underbelly of users' lives:

“We know we don’t have a right to privacy...” says 25-year old Facebook user Tricia Bushnell. “Just because I belong to Facebook, do I now have to be careful about everything else I do on the Internet?”

I'm not sure what I find most unsettling -- the disturbing thought that a young person in America doesn't believe she has a right to privacy, or the unstated assumption that until this Beacon Bungle, Ms. Bushnell and others like her didn't think they had to be careful about what they did online.

Bushnell is quoted in a New York Times story on the matter . According to the article, in the past 10 days, over 50,000 people have signed a petition protesting the online tracking.

Facebook brushes aside the protests and complaints. "You hate it now," they say, "but in time, you'll learn to like it." They have no intention of doing away with Beacon. All they have to do is wait for the younger users to grow up with the idea of a Beacon shining in the private places of their lives.

-- Is it warm in here, or is it just me?