Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 138
February 27, 2014
It's Time to Retire Follow Friday
Twitter is one of my favorite places to hang out. I love having conversation with people there and checking in to see what others are talking about, but there's one Twitter tradition that needs to be retired. Follow Friday.
Let me be clear, I appreciate each Follow Friday mention I receive, but there are authors and others who only do it to promote themselves. There's even a service that will do all the Follow Friday tweets for them!
That's not what Follow Friday (#FF) was intended to be.
In the early days of Twitter (and I've been on there for six years now!), Follow Friday was a way to help new people find others to friend. Someone would usually tweet the person's user ID and then a short reason about why they'd be fun to tweet with.
Before much longer, this morphed into tweets with just a list of user IDs and a #FF tacked on. The problem with this, though, is that it had nothing about why to follow someone. As this new list style became more and more pervasive, Follow Friday became less useful and fewer people participated.
But there are still some diehards who tweet out their list of names for Follow Friday every week, and in an aggravating twist, those who were part of this list began retweeting the #FF post.
Maybe it's just me, but the only Follow Friday mentions I see anywhere on Twitter right now are from the people doing it to promote themselves. With those they mention either retweeting the tweet (which means everyone who's friended them sees it) or my style, which is to say thank you and then put the user ID (which means all of my friends see it).
Again, maybe it's just me, but when I see a #FF with a list of names that fills all 140 characters, I don't even read it anymore let alone check anyone out to see if I want to follow them. This defeats the whole purpose of the hashtag and why I think it's time for it to end
The value to this type of tweet is long, long gone.
For Follow Friday to be worth anything again (as well as it's less well known cousin, Writer Wednesday (#WW)), it means that those sending out the tweets need to go back to adding a reason why I should care about following this person. You know like this: "#FF @Patti_OShea because she always retweets the best science stories and loves to say good morning to people."
And if I'm interested in science stories, I might check out this Patti O'Shea. ;-) But just a list of names? Um, no. We might as well call Follow Friday done and move on.
BTW, if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me here: https://twitter.com/Patti_OShea
Let me be clear, I appreciate each Follow Friday mention I receive, but there are authors and others who only do it to promote themselves. There's even a service that will do all the Follow Friday tweets for them!
That's not what Follow Friday (#FF) was intended to be.
In the early days of Twitter (and I've been on there for six years now!), Follow Friday was a way to help new people find others to friend. Someone would usually tweet the person's user ID and then a short reason about why they'd be fun to tweet with.
Before much longer, this morphed into tweets with just a list of user IDs and a #FF tacked on. The problem with this, though, is that it had nothing about why to follow someone. As this new list style became more and more pervasive, Follow Friday became less useful and fewer people participated.
But there are still some diehards who tweet out their list of names for Follow Friday every week, and in an aggravating twist, those who were part of this list began retweeting the #FF post.
Maybe it's just me, but the only Follow Friday mentions I see anywhere on Twitter right now are from the people doing it to promote themselves. With those they mention either retweeting the tweet (which means everyone who's friended them sees it) or my style, which is to say thank you and then put the user ID (which means all of my friends see it).
Again, maybe it's just me, but when I see a #FF with a list of names that fills all 140 characters, I don't even read it anymore let alone check anyone out to see if I want to follow them. This defeats the whole purpose of the hashtag and why I think it's time for it to end
The value to this type of tweet is long, long gone.
For Follow Friday to be worth anything again (as well as it's less well known cousin, Writer Wednesday (#WW)), it means that those sending out the tweets need to go back to adding a reason why I should care about following this person. You know like this: "#FF @Patti_OShea because she always retweets the best science stories and loves to say good morning to people."
And if I'm interested in science stories, I might check out this Patti O'Shea. ;-) But just a list of names? Um, no. We might as well call Follow Friday done and move on.
BTW, if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me here: https://twitter.com/Patti_OShea
February 25, 2014
That's Luke
The characters demanding my attention right now are not from the story I'm supposed to be writing. Not only are they from another world entirely, but if I did write them, there are around seven other books I'd need to write first. I have them planned out and it would be correct chronologically. None of that seems to matter.
To try to get them to stop bugging me, I started writing one of the scenes they've shown me. I didn't get far before I started looking for pictures of them.
Usually, I need to write two to three chapters before I look for pictures, but I know this couple well already, so I guess that's why it was different. Looking for character images is not normally a lot of fun and it wasn't this time either. I still haven't found the right image for either of them.
I know Cam doesn't have long hair, but I stopped at a picture of a guy with shoulder-length brown hair anyway. If the face is right, I can sometimes manage to find a picture of the model with short hair.
Before I can even get a really good read on his face, though, Cam says, "That doesn't look like me. He looks like Luke."
I'm like Luke? Who the hell is Luke?
My brother, he tells me. Okay. I knew Cam had two younger brothers, but I had never gotten their names. Now I have them name of one more. Luke Brody. I'm guessing this means he has a story, too. :-/
To try to get them to stop bugging me, I started writing one of the scenes they've shown me. I didn't get far before I started looking for pictures of them.
Usually, I need to write two to three chapters before I look for pictures, but I know this couple well already, so I guess that's why it was different. Looking for character images is not normally a lot of fun and it wasn't this time either. I still haven't found the right image for either of them.
I know Cam doesn't have long hair, but I stopped at a picture of a guy with shoulder-length brown hair anyway. If the face is right, I can sometimes manage to find a picture of the model with short hair.
Before I can even get a really good read on his face, though, Cam says, "That doesn't look like me. He looks like Luke."
I'm like Luke? Who the hell is Luke?
My brother, he tells me. Okay. I knew Cam had two younger brothers, but I had never gotten their names. Now I have them name of one more. Luke Brody. I'm guessing this means he has a story, too. :-/
February 23, 2014
The End of an Era
The DC9 took it's last commercial flight in the US in January when Delta retired the aircraft. I didn't miss the 727 when it sailed into the sunset or the DC10, but I do feel a little misty about the DC9. I'm not sure why. Ah, well, onto the future.
February 20, 2014
Cool Runnings
I love the winter Olympics. Seriously love. There's only one sport in the whole thing that I can't stand watching--curling--but I enjoy everything else. In fact, I'm watching figure skating as I write this. Or attempt to write. There are a lot of typos I'm fixing. :-)
Just before the Olympics began, I read an article online about Eddie the Eagle who was a ski jumper for the United Kingdom. The article said that after he competed, the ski jumping federation set some kind of bar that made it impossible for someone like him to ever be part of the Olympics again. His theory--and who knows if this is true or not--is that the other jumpers didn't like all the publicity he got.
This year, the Jamaican bobsled team is racing again, the first time in years, because they didn't qualify for the Olympics. Apparently there's a bar in bobsled too.
Now granted no one would enjoy the field being overrun by amateurs. Part of what makes the Olympics fun is watching the best in the world, but I also think that competitors like the Jamaican bobsled team make the games more fun to watch because we root for the underdog (at least I do).
It's like the Miracle on Ice from the 1980 Olympics. There will never be another hockey miracle like that, not now that the teams are populated with NHL stars. Part of what made the miracle was how outclassed the college kids on the US team were compared to the Soviets who were professional in all but name.
Anyway, I love seeing the occasional underdog, the everyman, in there competing at the Olympics. Now there are people who are truly pursuing their dreams.
Just before the Olympics began, I read an article online about Eddie the Eagle who was a ski jumper for the United Kingdom. The article said that after he competed, the ski jumping federation set some kind of bar that made it impossible for someone like him to ever be part of the Olympics again. His theory--and who knows if this is true or not--is that the other jumpers didn't like all the publicity he got.
This year, the Jamaican bobsled team is racing again, the first time in years, because they didn't qualify for the Olympics. Apparently there's a bar in bobsled too.
Now granted no one would enjoy the field being overrun by amateurs. Part of what makes the Olympics fun is watching the best in the world, but I also think that competitors like the Jamaican bobsled team make the games more fun to watch because we root for the underdog (at least I do).
It's like the Miracle on Ice from the 1980 Olympics. There will never be another hockey miracle like that, not now that the teams are populated with NHL stars. Part of what made the miracle was how outclassed the college kids on the US team were compared to the Soviets who were professional in all but name.
Anyway, I love seeing the occasional underdog, the everyman, in there competing at the Olympics. Now there are people who are truly pursuing their dreams.
February 18, 2014
Dream On
A few years ago, I blogged about pursuing dreams (not here, but on a different blog). I wasn't prepared for the angry responses I received for a post that I thought would be encouraging. It's entirely possible that I didn't write it well enough, but watching the Olympics got me thinking about chasing dreams again.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Olympic figure skater. It was my dream. At six, my parents signed me up for lessons. Unfortunately, the class was too big and the teacher didn't seem to care about actually helping students learn to skate. It was more like he was there and that was it.
Despite my disappointment, I kept at it because I wanted this. At least until I fell during class and broke my leg. The tibia. But the dream didn't die, and even though it took me three years to work up my courage again, I got back on the ice. My friends taught me how to skate this time and I had a blast. So much fun that I wanted to go the next day.
And I fell and broke my left ankle.
The dream of being an Olympic skater died then. I wasn't willing to risk breaking a leg for a third time. But you know what? Just because that dream was gone, didn't mean I didn't find other dreams.
When I was in eighth grade, I discovered fiction writing and fell in love. I always had stories in my head, but now I'd found a way to share them with others. I found a new dream--to be a professional writer.
Selling my first book might have satisfied the basic dream, but then I grew it, let it become more. My goal now is to be successful enough at writing to be able to do it full time. I'm still chasing that dream, but I know that if I ever reach it, I'll come up with a new dream because life is a journey, not a destination and I need something to shoot toward.
So when I got the backlash from my blog post years ago, I didn't understand why people couldn't/wouldn't pursue their dreams. If someone is married with children and their dream is to run off and backpack solo through Europe for a year, well, maybe it's time to adjust that to visit Europe for a couple of weeks with the spouse once the kids are in college.
If the dream is to be an Olympic gymnast and someone is in their 30s, well, that boat sailed since most gymnasts are in their teens, but this is where I would find a new dream, like switching from Olympic figure skater to writer. Do I still feel a pang when I watch figure skating? Yes, but I also know that I'm not strapping on skates again for any reason and I let the regret go. Life is about choices and I made mine.
Dreams shouldn't be stagnant. There is nothing wrong with finding a new dream, even if it's simply taking an online class to learn something that's always been an interest. If circumstances decree that the original dream isn't feasible, then what's a new dream that is doable?
Just as an FYI, I turned off comments on this post. This is something I never do, but I simply don't have time or energy to deal with anger if I managed to say things wrong again.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Olympic figure skater. It was my dream. At six, my parents signed me up for lessons. Unfortunately, the class was too big and the teacher didn't seem to care about actually helping students learn to skate. It was more like he was there and that was it.
Despite my disappointment, I kept at it because I wanted this. At least until I fell during class and broke my leg. The tibia. But the dream didn't die, and even though it took me three years to work up my courage again, I got back on the ice. My friends taught me how to skate this time and I had a blast. So much fun that I wanted to go the next day.
And I fell and broke my left ankle.
The dream of being an Olympic skater died then. I wasn't willing to risk breaking a leg for a third time. But you know what? Just because that dream was gone, didn't mean I didn't find other dreams.
When I was in eighth grade, I discovered fiction writing and fell in love. I always had stories in my head, but now I'd found a way to share them with others. I found a new dream--to be a professional writer.
Selling my first book might have satisfied the basic dream, but then I grew it, let it become more. My goal now is to be successful enough at writing to be able to do it full time. I'm still chasing that dream, but I know that if I ever reach it, I'll come up with a new dream because life is a journey, not a destination and I need something to shoot toward.
So when I got the backlash from my blog post years ago, I didn't understand why people couldn't/wouldn't pursue their dreams. If someone is married with children and their dream is to run off and backpack solo through Europe for a year, well, maybe it's time to adjust that to visit Europe for a couple of weeks with the spouse once the kids are in college.
If the dream is to be an Olympic gymnast and someone is in their 30s, well, that boat sailed since most gymnasts are in their teens, but this is where I would find a new dream, like switching from Olympic figure skater to writer. Do I still feel a pang when I watch figure skating? Yes, but I also know that I'm not strapping on skates again for any reason and I let the regret go. Life is about choices and I made mine.
Dreams shouldn't be stagnant. There is nothing wrong with finding a new dream, even if it's simply taking an online class to learn something that's always been an interest. If circumstances decree that the original dream isn't feasible, then what's a new dream that is doable?
Just as an FYI, I turned off comments on this post. This is something I never do, but I simply don't have time or energy to deal with anger if I managed to say things wrong again.
February 16, 2014
The Power of Words
This got me teared up when I watched it.
February 13, 2014
I Want the Power
I'm writing this blog farther in advance than I usually do because Atlanta is under an Ice Storm Warning and I might not have power later. They way they're talking on the news, I might not have power for days. Gah!
This is so not cool. I can put up with being iced in a for a few days, but it's the loss of electricity that strikes fear in my heart. You see, I've been through an extended electrical outage once before and I quickly discovered that it's a good thing I was born when I was because I would have made a terrible pioneer.
It was a May thunderstorm in Minnesota that took the power down for five days. Losing power in winter when it's cold is a whole new kind of hell. No electricity means no heat.
No electricity means no coffee. It means no television. No computer or internet! It means only reading until the sunlight dims, and with a storm, it will be largely dim. And music only lasts until the iPod battery dies. It makes for a long stretch of nothing to do.
Maybe I'll get lucky and my suburb won't get as much ice as they're predicting. I've got my fingers crossed.
This is so not cool. I can put up with being iced in a for a few days, but it's the loss of electricity that strikes fear in my heart. You see, I've been through an extended electrical outage once before and I quickly discovered that it's a good thing I was born when I was because I would have made a terrible pioneer.
It was a May thunderstorm in Minnesota that took the power down for five days. Losing power in winter when it's cold is a whole new kind of hell. No electricity means no heat.
No electricity means no coffee. It means no television. No computer or internet! It means only reading until the sunlight dims, and with a storm, it will be largely dim. And music only lasts until the iPod battery dies. It makes for a long stretch of nothing to do.
Maybe I'll get lucky and my suburb won't get as much ice as they're predicting. I've got my fingers crossed.
February 11, 2014
Ice Ice Baby
As I'm writing this, Atlanta is under threat of an ice storm. This has me anxious--really anxious. I'm from Minnesota; we hardly ever get ice. It's pretty much only snow with a few exceptions now and then. I don't know how to deal with an ice storm.
It's been predicted that power will go down. For a long time. Losing power in winter? I can count on one hand the number of times that's happened when I lived in Minnesota and then, it was usually a matter of hours, not days. How the hell do you cope without heat for days on end? Even if it warms up to the 50s after a couple of days, that's still two or three days of cold temperatures.
They're saying to ensure you have enough water. I'm guessing that's for people with wells because city water still works without electricity. They're saying trees and branches can come down. I'm looking at the trees that surround my house with trepidation.
The ice isn't due in until Tuesday late in the afternoon into Wednesday, so there's a little time, but it's still nerve wracking. I'd rather deal with 31 inches of snow in Minneapolis than half an inch of ice in Atlanta.
I don't even want to think about the drive home after the commute that I went through 2 weeks ago. And I wasn't even one of the people stuck on the freeway for 12 hours plus.
It's been predicted that power will go down. For a long time. Losing power in winter? I can count on one hand the number of times that's happened when I lived in Minnesota and then, it was usually a matter of hours, not days. How the hell do you cope without heat for days on end? Even if it warms up to the 50s after a couple of days, that's still two or three days of cold temperatures.
They're saying to ensure you have enough water. I'm guessing that's for people with wells because city water still works without electricity. They're saying trees and branches can come down. I'm looking at the trees that surround my house with trepidation.
The ice isn't due in until Tuesday late in the afternoon into Wednesday, so there's a little time, but it's still nerve wracking. I'd rather deal with 31 inches of snow in Minneapolis than half an inch of ice in Atlanta.
I don't even want to think about the drive home after the commute that I went through 2 weeks ago. And I wasn't even one of the people stuck on the freeway for 12 hours plus.
February 9, 2014
The Seventh Continent
A brief aerial tour of Antarctica.
February 6, 2014
Dialects and Writing
I was thinking about words the other day. It kind of started because I said pop on my van pool and one of the guys asked, "You mean soda pop?" In Minnesota, we call it pop. You can check out the Pop vs Soda website where they break down which areas of the country use what term. You can even contribute your information.
This triggered some thought on other words I use, like freeway. Apparently in some parts of the country they call it a highway. In Minnesota, highway refers to a road where you might be going 55 mph, but there are traffic lights.
The New York Times had a dialect quiz up not that long ago and I scored Minneapolis, MN; Madison, WI; and Omaha, Nebraska. There are various questions you can get on the quiz, but one is do you call it a freeway, highway, expressway, or other options.
When I wrote Edge of Dawn, one of the things I asked Seattle natives was what do they call their freeway. My hero, Logan, was originally from Chicago and he called it an expressway, but I didn't know what my Seattle-native heroine would use.
The problem is, though, that there are so many words like this that can trip a writer up and it's impossible to run every single one past someone from that city. I've decided a writer just has to do the best she can.
This triggered some thought on other words I use, like freeway. Apparently in some parts of the country they call it a highway. In Minnesota, highway refers to a road where you might be going 55 mph, but there are traffic lights.
The New York Times had a dialect quiz up not that long ago and I scored Minneapolis, MN; Madison, WI; and Omaha, Nebraska. There are various questions you can get on the quiz, but one is do you call it a freeway, highway, expressway, or other options.
When I wrote Edge of Dawn, one of the things I asked Seattle natives was what do they call their freeway. My hero, Logan, was originally from Chicago and he called it an expressway, but I didn't know what my Seattle-native heroine would use.
The problem is, though, that there are so many words like this that can trip a writer up and it's impossible to run every single one past someone from that city. I've decided a writer just has to do the best she can.
