the dilemma of self-promotion

I hear it from traditionally and independently published authors alike: more authors are in charge of their own promotion. Whether it's keeping up on Facebook or Twitter or their blog, or booking their own readings and blog tours, a significant portion of time goes into these actions, taking time away from writing.

Case in point: Around 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I was about to start revising a chapter from WILS. I went to my email inbox to retrieve some comments from my reader, when Stephen Windwalker's email appeared that the Kindle Nation Daily post was ready to go live. As if automatically, I went into PR mode: I immediately hopped on Facebook and Twitter and posted links. I came here and typed up a blogpost (which took longer than usual because I kept getting html format errors when I tried to "publish"). I emailed the link to a few others. I went back to Facebook and responded to some comments about the link. Then I went back to Twitter and followed up on some Tweets in the same vein.

By the time I finished all of this, two hours had past, and it was time for dinner. And while I finally did get to the chapter (took me three hours, and I still think it sucks), I went back online to check my Kindle Store rankings (which took a significant jump thanks to the Kindle Nation Daily post), post a thank-you on Facebook to everyone who re-posted the link to their own profile page, and so on. Went to bed around midnight. Thankfully it wasn't a school night.

Promotion can be a lot of fun, but I can understand the complaints of some writers hesitant to jump on this merry-go-round because "I just wanna write." Granted, I'm the worst of the worst time managers, but there's no getting around the need to keep that promotion carousel spinning on a daily basis, and the easily formed habit of putting it before the writing. And yet, without the writing, there's nothing to promote.

Once again, it's all about balance. We're authors. We're writers. We've got to put the writing first. There's no rule on how much time we devote to it -- be it ten minutes or two hours or 200 or 2000 words per day. There's not even a rule that says we need to do it every day. But we can't make it the afterthought. We can't let other things interfere with our writing time. Lord knows we wouldn't cut into a doctor's appointment to update our status (well, I wouldn't...). Why do it with our writing time?

That said, I'm off to the coffeeshop to catch up on grading homework papers. Hopefully later I'll get back to the manuscript...

fade to black

The Aaron Sorkin and the Facebook Movie page is gone. Don't try to look for it.

I came to the "Questions for me" discussion board about a year ago when I found out that Aaron Sorkin had a Facebook page. My first post was to tell him that I had included him in my acknowledgments for Faking It. Oh yeah, and I also asked him a question. Something really stupid in which I was trying way too hard to impress him.

He replied to my post. Said he was flattered to be included, and asked for a copy of my book.

Imagine being a musician and Paul McCartney asking for a copy of your album. Yeah, it's a little like that.

Every now and then, I think the regulars who returned to that discussion board day after day occasionally wondered if it really was Aaron Sorkin answering our questions. It wasn't so much cynicism as just wondering if life really was this good. If we were being deluded, then we were more than happy to be part of the hoax. Because it wasn't just the thrill of getting a response from our favorite writer, a man who has given us hours and hours of nourishment to make up for The Bachelor. He gave us writing advice. He gave us moral support. He joined our banter, made us laugh, made us think, and told us the best behind-the-scenes stories ever.

He let us play in his sandbox.

But here's the real gift that came out of it. "Questions for me" became "Conversations among friends." Or perhaps more like a happy, albeit occasionally dysfunctional family. When we weren't asking Aaron questions, and when he was busy attending to important matters, we carried on the conversation without him. Whether it was a spirited discussion about cake, or a debate about language, health care, or religion, we all talked. And we listened. And we agreed and disagreed. And we became friends. And we supported one another. We bought each other's books. We watched each other's shows. We offered support, comfort, and encouragement when needed.

We understood that all good things must pass; we just wish it didn't have to pass so soon.

On the final night, we all stayed together in the forum, as long as we could, waiting for the ship to go down. We kept talking, joking, asking questions, telling stories. But we mostly thanked Aaron Sorkin for being so gracious, such a good host for the last 18 months. It was only then that we had no words at all.

Once again, Aaron Sorkin touched me with his words. One of the last things he said, directed at the writers, was "I expect great things from you."

I just hope I don't let you down.

why I write

A woman on the Aaron Sorkin and the Facebook Movie discussion forum "Questions for Me?" asked Mr. Sorkin the question "Why do you write?" and invited other regular forum participants, myself included, to respond as well. Of course, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I wrote the following answer, although when I awoke this morning, I thought of a bunch of other reasons as well. Here's the reprint:

I write as a way of learning more about myself and the world around me. I write as witness, or in response to others' witness. I write because I have something to say, something to feel, something to sort through. I write because I want others to think about things in ways they've not previously thought. I write because I can't *not* do it.

I write fiction because I have a story to tell, as well as a truth. The idea for the story always comes to me in the form of a what-if, and it never comes when I'm looking for it. As for truth, I'm usually not conscious of that until the character(s) reveals it to me. And sometimes that can be well into the revision process. And before it's revealed, it's manipulated, denied, explored, hidden, questioned, argued, etc.

(A side note. I used to never get when lit professors talked about "hidden meanings" until I started writing fiction. And keep in mind that I was not a lit major in college, and my graduate work was in rhetoric. I don't think of my fiction as literary -- I think of it as rhetorical. I use symbolism. But sometimes that symbolism is lost on me until I read the final draft and say, "hey, neat." Or a reader finds something that had never even occurred to me.)

And yet, I also write fiction because it gives me a chance to re-arrange certain truths. After a disappointing outcome of a relationship, I wrote a novel (actualy, pieces of it -- I haven't finished it and may never do so, although my friend thinks it should be an HBO sitcom), and gave the protag the relationship I had wanted w/ this guy. I found it immensely satisfying to change the outcome. In a fictional world, the Twin Towers can stand tall again, or the Dodgers can remain in Brooklyn, or Jed Bartlett is president of the United States. I enjoy the Land of Make Believe. It was my favorite part of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. In rhetoric, the goal is to persuade. (I also loved when Stephen Colbert coined "truthiness." I've proposed academic conference papers on the subject, and have yet to be accepted.)

I also had lots of imaginary friends as a kid. How's that for truth.

That being said, however, I don't really get into fantasy or science fiction genres. Maybe it's too much belief for me to suspend.

Not to say that it's always easy; but in the end, writing is home to me.

I promise you that Aaron's answer was far less wordy and far more interesting.

And so, I pass the question on to you: Why do you write?

mind stimuli

I've noticed that lately I've not been spending as much time on Facebook or Twitter. Some of this is because of all the course preparations I've been immersed in (which has been a surprisingly positive experience). It's also that point in the summer where sluggishness is inevitable.

I've also noticed that, as a result, my book sales have slipped a bit. I also noticed that my dry spell in terms of writing (I'm talking creative writing)and imagination has also crossed over to Facebook and Twitter in that I can't think of a single witty status update, or any status update (why that matters is reserved for another post).

So, I've been thinking about ways to stimulate my creative energies by thinking about those things that stimulate my mind. I've been playing certain kinds of music (studies show that Baroque music positively correlates with study skills and creativity), limiting my tv and internet time, reading certain books in smaller increments, visualizing positive outcomes, and imagining conversations with my mentors and inspirations. (Notice I left off chocolate and pop tarts. I've been focusing on less addictive stimluli. Fill in the vice of your choice.)

And lo and behold, it's working!

Most of the writing I did this weekend was private journaling. I wrote until my hand hurt, and the result was not only an epiphany late last night, but little bursts of ideas along the way -- idea for a bit of dialogue, for a new course, for a painting, etc. Nice. (How I'm going to channel that back into specific projects or book promotions remains to be seen. But it'll come.)

So my advice for you who find yourselves sluggish and dragging, be it physically or creatively, is to think about what stimulates your mind, and turn your attention to those things rather than to all the writing you're not doing and think you should be.

And please, share some with us. What stimulates your mind?

why I tweet

It took me awhile to "get" Twitter.

I didn't wanna do it at first. I already spent way too much time on Facebook and figured I'd lose half my day if I added Twitter to the mix. I also found it a bit boring. For example, as much as I love John Mayer's music, I discovered that I'm really not interested in knowing what he's doing every five minutes. And the first people I was following didn't know me from a hole in the wall. Following your favorite celebs on Twitter also thins the veil of deception in terms of feeling like you actually know these people, and as a result they want to know you. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I started following Hugh Jackman, for instance. Until I discovered that I'm one of 400,000 followers, and he's tweeting things like "Just met with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon and First Lady Margarita. They were both incredibly interesting, warm and inviting." while I'm tweeting things like "The pop tarts... oh, the pop tarts!"

On the plus side, I do have actor and fellow Aaron Sorkin devotee Josh Malina following me, although he never RTs (re-tweets) anything I write, or replies to any of my tweets.

Something cool happened along the blog tour, though. Writers and publishing companies started following me, and vice versa. This is not necessarily because I'm all that. Another thing I've learned about Twitter is that it's keyword sensitive. For example, when John Mayer posted a photo of his guitar, I tweeted a reply: You do realize that I'm more in love w/ your guitar than w/ you. Seconds later, I received notice that LA Guitar Academy is now following me. I don't wanna tall you who started following me after I used the word "bubbles" in my tweet, just to see what would happen.

The point is that over the course of a month, I found myself becoming part of a specific community, one that I had nevr felt I'd belonged to before.

The cool thing about finding other writers and publishers is some of them are RTing what I post. One day Luludotcom plugged my appearance on Writers Inspired, and traffic increased both to the blog and to my storefront on Lulu.com. Another time, randomhouse quoted me after I responded to their tweet "What did you read this weekend?" Best of all, so many of these tweeters have blogs of their own, or they find blog articles and other useful sites all related to publishing, books, writers, etc. I can hardly keep up, there are so many.

My point is that agents, editors, publishers, authors, and booksellers are all using Twitter now. You never know if one of them is going to click on the link to your blog, check out your book, or read something you've written in response to someone else's post. It's like being at a convention and introducing yourself. Hi, I'm Elisa, and I'm an author. Here's my card. Granted, they've met a gazillion other authors, but who's to say they won't remember one of them, namely me? Or you?

The biggest advantage to Twitter is not the increase in sales, but traffic. That's just as important. People like to browse before they buy. You want them to keep coming back.

So I guess I can say that I "get" it now. And from a business perspective, I like it. It works for me. Now if you'll excuse me, I've just been informed that duranduran has "New vid on official youtube channel: http://bit.ly/4UGBR"

Ok. So sometimes it's not all business.