Remember as you browse the first rule of social media: there’s no one-size-fits-all here. Some of these sites may interest you; many of them will not. And that’s as it should be, because you don’t want to spend all of your time online! Explore the sites at your leisure, see which ones seem to work for you, try them out. If you don’t like one site, move on.
And if you find more to add to the list, drop me an email at jcezanne@customline.com and let me know!
In addition to the list above, there is a Facebook application called Visual Bookshelf that you can access from inside Facebook. It’s another community that shares reading lists and reviews.
So that’s it for now! I’ll update this list periodically, as community life on the Net is always changing, always growing … but this should get you started. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>I’m here to say two things: yes, it is applicable and no, don’t give up yet.
One of the grandes dames of social networking is the virtual world known as Second Life. I know Second Life well, as I co-authored one of the chapters in Wiley’s Official Guide to Second Life. So you could say I wrote the book (or at least part of it!) on Second Life. Yet it took me what seemed like forever to learn my way around there, and then another long period of time before I got really involved.
I’d planned to use Second Life for fun only … but before I knew it, I was a writer-in-residence and figuring out ways to organize readings and get work “out there.” Because whatever your interest is, you’ll eventually find it in a social community.
Yes, a lot of people on Twitter mention their bathtub grouting or their choice of breakfast cereals more than anyone should want to share. But if you decided not to try any activity based solely on those who use it differently than you think you would, you might not do much at all in life.
So let’s give it a try. In the next few posts I’ll give you a beginner’s tour of some of the social networking sites that writers and word-people might find of interest. Try them out; some will be a good fit, some won’t. But you’ll never know until you try! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>A Salon article from the end of December posits one of the (unexpected) benefits of the crash: the reemergence of the small publisher.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, Open Letter Books, a small press based at the University of Rochester, illustrated how a more nimble firm can benefit from the freeze. The publisher bid on the English translation of Mathias Enard’s novel, “Zone” — a single sentence that stretches for 500 pages. An influential translator had called the work the “book of the decade,” and Open Letter director Chad Post expected tight competition for the rights. But no one topped his offer, and he hopes to publish the translation in 2010.
“There’s not much to cut at smaller presses, so they are going to stay the same — they will have an identity coming into the recession, and they will be the same when they come out,” Post says. “It will open up opportunities for the smaller, more stable presses. The bigger houses like Knopf and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are going through an identity shift. It will become very murky what kinds of books they produce.”
(for the full story, click here)
Years ago in this column I wrote that, in essence, the mills are closing. When the economy forced the closure of New England’s textile mills, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a lot of people—a whole lot of people—found themselves without work, without help, without hope. An entire industry had changed. Those who survived were those able to take their skill sets and refashion them for other opportunities.
Sound familiar?
The mills are closing—most of the big ones are having fire sales as we speak—and the production of literature is changing, too. We too need to refashion our skill sets as well as our expectations of how we will continue to read. Reading isn’t going away any more than the wearing of textiles has. You’ll still be buying (and, some of you, writing) books ten years from now. Will they be different? Probably. But isn’t the essence of literature—communicating ideas, enabling readers to fly away on a magic carpet of fantasy—more important than how it’s delivered?
Just trying to keep things in perspective, which keeps me … beyond the elements of style!
]]>So a quick post today for authors who are currently doing marketing: consider libraries. Yeah, you only sell one copy of the book — but you can sell it to a lot of libraries, and word of mouth is a wonderful thing!
Here’s something you might want to consider: putting a library request form on your website. Clicking on a link takes you to a page with book title, author, ISBN, publisher, etc. already filled in. The library patron can then just fill in their name and other information, and hand it in. There may even be a way to handle it online.
Remember that a book sold to a library is still a book sold. Many patrons buy books after they’ve read them for free. So check out libraries and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>Need a literary agent? Don’t ask your favorite author for a referral to his or hers — it puts that person in an awkward position (I know whereof I speak; I’ve been there). Instead, visit Agent Query and click the resources link. You may also wish to check out the Association of Authors’ Representatives both for listings and for a sense of how the industry views particular agents.
If the literary agent sites don’t tire you out and you still want to move toward publication, then sample some of the fare at Sensible Solutions, where you can click the — wait for it — “especially valuable links”!
Do you do children’s writing? Then it’s essential for you to know about Harold Underdown’s Purple Crayon site; it’s a fabulous website itself but also gives you helpful links to still more. Also be sure to check out the Children’s Literature Web Guide.
Are you a poet? Then take a look at the Poetry Society and click the resources link.
Here’s a site that’s filled with links to publishers, journals, conferences, magazines, and lots more: it’s the Literature Line.
Bookwire has a number of resources for writers under its “featured links” section.
Google as always needs to weigh in: check out its writers’ resources … but only if you have a lot of time to spend following links!
Good luck with all of it, and as always, feel free to share your own “especially valuable links” with me; I’ll be sure to credit you and your website for a little free SEO in the bargain. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>One option is to simply take a look at Shaw’s Guides and choose a few that look promising, then write for more information.
I can speak firsthand about a few, and I’ve gleaned recommendations for some other from colleagues, students, and clients. Here they are, in no particular order:
The important thing is to decide ahead of time what your goals are for the conference. Many of them can feel like a meat market, with writers waiting in line for their pitches to be heard by an agent or acquisitions editor; but if your manuscript is ready and you want to meet some people in the industry, then that may be for you. Others may be looking for workshop opportunities, the availability of known writers to talk about the art and craft of writing, or even just a few hours a day of solitary writing time. No matter what you’re looking for, there’s probably something out there for you.
Send me your suggestions and experiences, and I’ll add them here! And then we’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>And there are more people becoming freelancers every day out of necessity because of the downsizing of companies and the unavailability of jobs. So let’s get down to more concrete suggestions. How, as a freelancer, can you find work in these times?
Have other tips? Send them to me at jcezanne(at)customline.com and I’ll include them here! And then we’ll all be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>My local writing group recently lost a member, and we’d been wanting to expand anyway, so the need to incorporate new members has become quite pressing. And it’s brought up a lot of questions that are probably good to consider: who are we? What are the group’s goals? Who exactly is the person we want to have join us? Is there an ideal candidate? What can we offer that person? What do we need from him or her?
And can the group come to a consensus around any of these issues?
These are valid questions, I think, to ask of any writing group, local or virtual, large or small. We happen to be asking them because we want to have some new members join us; but you might want to consider asking them even if your group isn’t looking to expand. It’s easy to lose focus, to forget the original (or even evolving) mandate, to lose track of what you’re doing. Questions like these bring you back to the center.
One of my clients is a marketing firm that recently engaged me to write an operations manual for the company. An operations manual sets out everything about the company, from where the paper for the copier is located to the policy around sick days, from the specific steps entailed in everything the company does to how it hires new employees. It forces a company to review in minute detail every aspect of its business, much of which has never been articulated or was articulated so long ago that it’s been forgotten. In essence, the operations manual tells the company’s story.
Staying in touch with one’s story isn’t just important in the corporate world: it’s important for any group. The story allows for group members to bond, to recall common goals, to feel part of something larger than any individual member. Losing a sense of history means losing part of ourselves. And any group needs that backstory, the communal equivalent of “how I met your mother.”
Groups also need the ongoing part of the story: this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is why we do it. My writing group decided early on, for example, to break with the common genre-specific considerations: we are fiction writers and poets, and have discovered that having a good mind and a willingness to take risks compensates for not being as schooled in each others’ genres. It’s a decision that has worked for us, and certainly would not work for others. It’s part of our story, and it needs to be articulated.
Think of the groups to which you belong (and if you don’t belong to a writing group, seriously consider joining or starting one). What are their stories? Is your story still aligned with theirs? A periodic refresh of this process can be enormously helpful. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>It has often seemed to me that science fiction writers are the people most at home on the web, the people least surprised by its possibilities, the folks most likely to see its uses. This only makes sense: they are, after all, the ones most at ease with potential technology, spending their days writing coherent stories about complex possible worlds.
So it’s not surprising that they’ve come up with new and different ways to approach issues specific to writing and publishing.
During the early brouhaha over Publish America’s legitimacy (or lack thereof) as a publishing venue, it was a group of science fiction authors who banded together to disprove PA’s claim that it vetted manuscripts by composing a truly awful novel (that did, in fact, get accepted for publication). And it’s science fiction authors who co-host Predators and Editors, which has hopefully helped steer many unwitting authors-to-be in the right direction.
Not new, but not widely known, either, is the Turkey City Lexicon, a site meant to help science fiction writers workshop (or critique) each others’ work by giving them nice packages that say, far better than could any one individual, what might be problematic about a given passage. Named for the Austin, Texas workshop that was the cradle of cyberpunk, the lexicon has gone through a number of different editions (carefully uncopyrighted), and is as hilarious (and as thoughtful) today as it was back in 1988.
Here, for example, we can find Brenda Starr Dialogue (”long sections of talk with no physical background or description of the characters”), the Squid in the Mouth (”the failure of an author to realize that his/her own weird assumptions and personal in-jokes are simply not shared by the world-at-large. Instead of applauding the wit or insight of the author’s remarks, the world-at-large will stare in vague shock and alarm at such a writer, as if he or she had a live squid in the mouth”), and the Kudzu Plot (”Plot which weaves and curls and writhes in weedy organic profusion, smothering everything in its path”).
Much of what is offered in the Lexicon is, in fact, very good advice for anyone writing anything, and I highly recommend reading it, laughing over it, and taking it to heart. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>Was it me, or did a cloud just pass in front of the sun?
Now my family, of course, was quick to point out that no-one else in their right mind would have noticed, much less cared that altar is not spelled with an “e.” My spouse quickly envisioned a world in which I’d be the Spelling Queen, sitting on a throne of semicolons and exclamation marks, sentencing to die those who make sloppy mistakes such as those. We all had a good laugh about it.
But the reality is that I’m probably not going to go do yoga at that particular studio, and, yeah, it’s because of the brochure. If someone’s that sloppy about writing/proofing, they may well be sloppy about other things as well. Probably not; but I’m not taking that chance.
When I approach companies about doing marketing communications for them, most people’s first reaction is along the lines of, “I can write; anybody can write; we don’t need you to write.” Well, respectfully, no: many of us have been taught to write (though I’ve seen some of the grammar used by my stepchildren’s teachers and hold out no hope that schools are doing anything to increase correct spelling, usage, and grammar); but that doesn’t mean that we can all do it well. Or even correctly.
That yoga studio just lost a potential client. Can all businesses afford that kind of loss? Paying someone like me to write — or even simply edit — marketing communications is, at the end of the day, a bargain at any price. Those saavy enough to know their limits are the ones who will continue to prosper, even in a recession. And they’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
(Oh, and if you hurry, you can probably still get that brochure out of the rubbish …)
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