June 2009 Newsletter
06/03/2009
Dear Writing Friends:
About a year ago I attended the annual Agents and Editors Conference, sponsored by the Writer’s League of Texas, as a volunteer. I went to support my writing buddies who were looking for agents and to be part of the annual influx of energy to our city. While I spent most of the day behind the information desk giving pep talks to nervous writers and directing people to the restrooms, I managed to break out for a few sessions. I attended a particularly good course on freelance journalism by Chuck Sambuchino, editor of the annual Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents, but missed what I understood to be an excellent session on Web 2.0 for writers, led by Deltina Hay of Dalton Publishing. Fortunately, my friend Sonya, who happens to be in my writing group, attended Deltina’s session and came back with a mission to get us all started immediately in social networking.
For about six months our writing group met at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, where we discussed the state of our writing lives over salsa and salad. At our first meeting after the conference, Sonya gave us a pep talk about social networking. As we sat stuffing chips into our mouths, she described Deltina’s presentation, and gave us a list of networks we needed join. Let’s just say that two of us were a tiny bit resistant, mostly because we were overwhelmed, and that our enthusiasm for Web 2.0 seemed to vary according to age—and I was not on the side of youth. But we did leave the meeting in agreement that we would all join one of the book sharing sites that Deltina had recommended. That seemed simple enough and something that we could all relate to, seeing as we spent a good part of our days either reading or trying to write books.
We experimented with the three major sites, Shelfari, Library Thing, and Goodreads, and even though I preferred Library Thing, because it shows you who else is reading your books, I landed on Goodreads because my friends preferred it (evidently peer pressure extends to the internet). For a few weeks I faithfully typed in the books on my shelf and rated them, although I did not review them, believing I would come back and do that later. At one point I had the idea that I might use the site as a reference for my writing students, so they could check in and see what I had read and how I had analyzed a given book for structure, which I still think is a good idea, but so far I haven’t found the time to review the 136 books I’ve listed there. For the most part, I don’t spend a lot of time on Goodreads. It’s a good site, but it feels a little too much like work.
In December 2008 my writing group went on hiatus and we now meet only occasionally. Without Sonya’s weekly guidance, I have been left on my own to explore Web 2.0. Not confident that I could manage it on my own, I sought the counsel of marketing expert, who gave me some very good advice about bringing traffic to my website, which I still have not followed through on (I’m very, very slow). I did take his advice to get on Twitter, however, which sounded appealing for its 140-character limit.
One Sunday afternoon, sometime in January, I found myself sitting in my living room casting around for something to do while my daughter and her girlfriend played pretend in the backyard. Maybe this would be a good time to explore Twitter, I thought. I set up my computer where I could see the kids and logged on. I got my name, found a few friends, and proceeded to get totally lost. Evidently I was going to need more counsel before I launched my web presence on Twitter. It didn’t make any sense to me.
I could hear the girls giggling and shouting in the backyard. Knowing I still had some time before their blood sugar dropped and they were back inside demanding snacks, I decided I’d try Facebook, which is infinitely easier to navigate. I quickly found friends there and was immediately hooked. I was a bit nervous, however when one my friends wrote, “Welcome to Facebook, the happiest time suck,” because as working mother, I was already rather short on time. And for the first 48 hours it did indeed suck all my time and mental energy.
As it happened my husband was out of town that week, which meant after I got my daughter to sleep, I was free to stay up late, chatting and searching for new friends. And while I managed to get myself to bed before midnight, when I woke up at 2:00 to go to the bathroom, I peeked at my e-mail to see who had confirmed me as a friend. By 5:00 I was up and plugged in for good, at least until my daughter woke up and needed my assistance getting ready for school. But as soon as I dropped her off, I was back at it. If you’ve been through this, you know the pull. I became so obsessed with building my Friends list, it took me almost a week before I got back to writing anything.
In the early weeks I was mostly finding friends and sending “private” messages. I’d occasionally post a status update but, thinking this was supposed to build my platform, I couldn’t think of much to post beyond progress on my newsletter. After a few weeks trying to seem “professional” got dull and I just started chatting with my friends. Not the 500 people on my Friends list, but my actual friends, my writing buddies, most of whom are scattered across the country. “Finally, a day with some space in it to write,” I posted one day. To which I got several thumbs up. Another day I wrote, “Copying writing from one notebook into another. Laborious, inefficient, but that's the way I do it,” and I heard from several people about their own creative processes. Of course, this is what the Internet has always done best, build community and support for people who feel isolated—like writers and stay-at-home moms.
As time went on I found myself combing my mind each day for what I could post. I usually post at the beginning of the day, before I work, so that the status update works like an intention. I put my task out there in the public and then I feel obliged to go and do it. Sometimes I write at the end of the day about what I’ve accomplished—and again, I get a lot of thumbs-up and “you go, girl.” Lately, friends have been approaching me – in person and on line – and commenting on how productive I am. Of course I don’t post about the hours I waste checking e-mail and my friends’ status updates, but why disillusion them?
A few months ago I made contact on Facebook with an old acquaintance from New York, someone I’d been in a reading group with twenty years ago. It turns out her interests and mine have moved in a similar direction (away from critical writing toward creative writing), which became apparent by the way she was responding to my posts. When I wrote that I had “post-editing mush-brain,” she empathized. “Groan—yes—mush,” she wrote back. And another day when I listed the pile of tasks I had in front me, she shot back with a similar list. Ah, I thought, she’s doing it, so can I. “It’s nice to have a running partner,” I wrote her.
As I write this, I realize how much I miss my writing group. While Facebook isn’t a replacement for sitting face-to-face with friends you trust and who support your work, it is nice to have company. Writing is lonely and we need each other. For me at least, that companionship is mandatory for survival.
Writing Topics: Friends
Home alone
Quotation: As we move our art into public venues, what we need is to find a few friends who encourage us by mirroring our competency. (Julia Cameron, Walking in This World)
I’m actually about to unplug for a week. I’m headed to Taos for another silent meditation and writing retreat with Natalie Goldberg. It will be good to be away from my computer, alone in that strange territory of the mind. I also want to let you know that I’m taking a break from the newsletter for a few months to work on another project.
Have a safe and healthy summer, and I’ll be in touch in September.
My best to each of you.
Saundra
To find out more about the Agents and Editors Conference, go to www.writersleague.org.
To order Deltina Hay’s new book on Web 2.0, go to www.socialmediapower.com.
If you’re interested in bringing more traffic to yours website, write to me and I’ll pass on my friend’s contact info.
About a year ago I attended the annual Agents and Editors Conference, sponsored by the Writer’s League of Texas, as a volunteer. I went to support my writing buddies who were looking for agents and to be part of the annual influx of energy to our city. While I spent most of the day behind the information desk giving pep talks to nervous writers and directing people to the restrooms, I managed to break out for a few sessions. I attended a particularly good course on freelance journalism by Chuck Sambuchino, editor of the annual Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents, but missed what I understood to be an excellent session on Web 2.0 for writers, led by Deltina Hay of Dalton Publishing. Fortunately, my friend Sonya, who happens to be in my writing group, attended Deltina’s session and came back with a mission to get us all started immediately in social networking.
For about six months our writing group met at a local Tex-Mex restaurant, where we discussed the state of our writing lives over salsa and salad. At our first meeting after the conference, Sonya gave us a pep talk about social networking. As we sat stuffing chips into our mouths, she described Deltina’s presentation, and gave us a list of networks we needed join. Let’s just say that two of us were a tiny bit resistant, mostly because we were overwhelmed, and that our enthusiasm for Web 2.0 seemed to vary according to age—and I was not on the side of youth. But we did leave the meeting in agreement that we would all join one of the book sharing sites that Deltina had recommended. That seemed simple enough and something that we could all relate to, seeing as we spent a good part of our days either reading or trying to write books.
We experimented with the three major sites, Shelfari, Library Thing, and Goodreads, and even though I preferred Library Thing, because it shows you who else is reading your books, I landed on Goodreads because my friends preferred it (evidently peer pressure extends to the internet). For a few weeks I faithfully typed in the books on my shelf and rated them, although I did not review them, believing I would come back and do that later. At one point I had the idea that I might use the site as a reference for my writing students, so they could check in and see what I had read and how I had analyzed a given book for structure, which I still think is a good idea, but so far I haven’t found the time to review the 136 books I’ve listed there. For the most part, I don’t spend a lot of time on Goodreads. It’s a good site, but it feels a little too much like work.
In December 2008 my writing group went on hiatus and we now meet only occasionally. Without Sonya’s weekly guidance, I have been left on my own to explore Web 2.0. Not confident that I could manage it on my own, I sought the counsel of marketing expert, who gave me some very good advice about bringing traffic to my website, which I still have not followed through on (I’m very, very slow). I did take his advice to get on Twitter, however, which sounded appealing for its 140-character limit.
One Sunday afternoon, sometime in January, I found myself sitting in my living room casting around for something to do while my daughter and her girlfriend played pretend in the backyard. Maybe this would be a good time to explore Twitter, I thought. I set up my computer where I could see the kids and logged on. I got my name, found a few friends, and proceeded to get totally lost. Evidently I was going to need more counsel before I launched my web presence on Twitter. It didn’t make any sense to me.
I could hear the girls giggling and shouting in the backyard. Knowing I still had some time before their blood sugar dropped and they were back inside demanding snacks, I decided I’d try Facebook, which is infinitely easier to navigate. I quickly found friends there and was immediately hooked. I was a bit nervous, however when one my friends wrote, “Welcome to Facebook, the happiest time suck,” because as working mother, I was already rather short on time. And for the first 48 hours it did indeed suck all my time and mental energy.
As it happened my husband was out of town that week, which meant after I got my daughter to sleep, I was free to stay up late, chatting and searching for new friends. And while I managed to get myself to bed before midnight, when I woke up at 2:00 to go to the bathroom, I peeked at my e-mail to see who had confirmed me as a friend. By 5:00 I was up and plugged in for good, at least until my daughter woke up and needed my assistance getting ready for school. But as soon as I dropped her off, I was back at it. If you’ve been through this, you know the pull. I became so obsessed with building my Friends list, it took me almost a week before I got back to writing anything.
In the early weeks I was mostly finding friends and sending “private” messages. I’d occasionally post a status update but, thinking this was supposed to build my platform, I couldn’t think of much to post beyond progress on my newsletter. After a few weeks trying to seem “professional” got dull and I just started chatting with my friends. Not the 500 people on my Friends list, but my actual friends, my writing buddies, most of whom are scattered across the country. “Finally, a day with some space in it to write,” I posted one day. To which I got several thumbs up. Another day I wrote, “Copying writing from one notebook into another. Laborious, inefficient, but that's the way I do it,” and I heard from several people about their own creative processes. Of course, this is what the Internet has always done best, build community and support for people who feel isolated—like writers and stay-at-home moms.
As time went on I found myself combing my mind each day for what I could post. I usually post at the beginning of the day, before I work, so that the status update works like an intention. I put my task out there in the public and then I feel obliged to go and do it. Sometimes I write at the end of the day about what I’ve accomplished—and again, I get a lot of thumbs-up and “you go, girl.” Lately, friends have been approaching me – in person and on line – and commenting on how productive I am. Of course I don’t post about the hours I waste checking e-mail and my friends’ status updates, but why disillusion them?
A few months ago I made contact on Facebook with an old acquaintance from New York, someone I’d been in a reading group with twenty years ago. It turns out her interests and mine have moved in a similar direction (away from critical writing toward creative writing), which became apparent by the way she was responding to my posts. When I wrote that I had “post-editing mush-brain,” she empathized. “Groan—yes—mush,” she wrote back. And another day when I listed the pile of tasks I had in front me, she shot back with a similar list. Ah, I thought, she’s doing it, so can I. “It’s nice to have a running partner,” I wrote her.
As I write this, I realize how much I miss my writing group. While Facebook isn’t a replacement for sitting face-to-face with friends you trust and who support your work, it is nice to have company. Writing is lonely and we need each other. For me at least, that companionship is mandatory for survival.
Writing Topics: Friends
Home alone
Quotation: As we move our art into public venues, what we need is to find a few friends who encourage us by mirroring our competency. (Julia Cameron, Walking in This World)
I’m actually about to unplug for a week. I’m headed to Taos for another silent meditation and writing retreat with Natalie Goldberg. It will be good to be away from my computer, alone in that strange territory of the mind. I also want to let you know that I’m taking a break from the newsletter for a few months to work on another project.
Have a safe and healthy summer, and I’ll be in touch in September.
My best to each of you.
Saundra
To find out more about the Agents and Editors Conference, go to www.writersleague.org.
To order Deltina Hay’s new book on Web 2.0, go to www.socialmediapower.com.
If you’re interested in bringing more traffic to yours website, write to me and I’ll pass on my friend’s contact info.
This newsletter is sponsored by Drash Pit
(www.drashpit.com)
a literary theme part for readers and writers.
Check it out!