Mary Sisson's Blog, page 74

Progress report

990 words! Whoo!

Good links, scammy crapola edition

David Gaughran has a good post on a service designed to help agents rip off writers. In a delicious irony, agents who sign clients onto this service will hasten their descent into bankruptcy, because as Gaughran's post makes clear, they obviously doesn't know a damned thing about actually selling books--they don't even use categories correctly! Honestly, the most serious problem facing traditional publishing today is that the people in it so clearly believe their own bullshit.

And Lindsay Buroker has a good interview with a lawyer specialising in literary and publishing law. I especially liked the story about the agent who would advise you on whether or not to sign an agreement with him. I'm sure that's some totally unbiased advice being offered there....

Progress report

Woke up at (UGH) 4 am and could not get back to sleep. So, no writing, but I edited away at Chapter 8 of the Trang audiobook.

Progress report

850 words--not a lot of words, to be sure, but like I said this is a difficult part, plus I did some sorting out.

Semi-progress report

I was feeling kind of blah today (you know how yesterday was too nice? Today was too dreary), so I started working on the audiobook--I know I said that I wouldn't work on the audiobook when I could be writing, but I was figuring there was really no harm to it. But then after editing part of Chapter 8, I went out to...I guess it was tea, because I'd already eaten lunch. And then I made another trip to buy some groceries.

And then I realized that, HELLO, I'm procrastinating.

Trials is simply a dark book--much darker than Trust, and maybe even darker than Trang. Bad things happen to characters you (hopefully) care about by now. And that's hard to write: It's simply a difficult mental space to occupy, and there's the fear that it will anger or turn off readers (although it's a fact of life that everything you do will upset somebody). But I can't imagine lightening it up--it just has to be what it is.

Oh, goodie

Trang has gone free on Amazon and Barnes & Noble--that didn't take long. (Did I mention that I had made it free on Kobo and Smashwords? That was maybe a week or two ago.) It's already #3 on the Science Fiction: Series free bestseller list on Amazon, so that's nice. Hopefully I'll start to see some movement at the other retailers as well.....

I restarted the Facebook ads for Trang--since I'm making money off Trust, not Trang, I plan to give them a fairly long time to run (they're set to run cheap) before I decide whether or not to keep them.

Progress report

It was really nice outside today, which is by no means a sure thing this time of year, so I went out and didn't come back until the clouds moved in again. But then I recorded Chapter 8 of the Trang audiobook, which turns out to be another bear of a chapter--as long as Chapter 6. Oy, that's going to be a pain to edit....

P.S. Ha! Somebody found this Web site by searching for "xxxxxxxxxxxxxfuck" (I'm guessing because of this post). Now I can die happy!

How I probably should be doing social media

Adding to yesterday's chemical-induced excitement was the fact that Zico of Block B released another single. (That you can't pay for. Because it's a remix of another song. That you can't pay for. Because while the label went to the trouble of making a music video, they never actually released that song to iTunes or anything. Did you know that the Korean music industry has a huge problem with people illegally downloading songs and not paying for them? I wonder why that is?)

I found out about the new song through the English translation of Block B's Twitter feed, which I check religiously at this point. (Another song came out today!) The group is currently on hiatus as they sue their label, but as Zico writes (translatedly), "Who said it's an absence period when things are coming out all the time [Korean character indicating laughter]."

Anyway, this got me thinking about the fact that, hey, I do check this random Korean hip-hop group's translated Twitter feed pretty much every damned day. And that's something, because 1. it's not like the translators update it every day, and 2. I'm incredibly lazy about Twitter and never follow anyone on it who I don't actually know--I've certainly never followed a music group before. (Yes, if you follow me, I will follow you back. And then I will totally ignore you. I am a Twitslut, sorry.) In addition, people keep remarking on how Block B has managed to maintain its fan base despite the fact that they're on hiatus and not doing standard promotions, and I think their use of social media has a lot to do with that.

So, I thought I'd take a crack at analyzing how Block B uses Twitter, with the vague, gauzy notion that, if I were a more-industrious sort of person, I'd actually apply these lessons to my own use of social media. Keep in mind, though, that what I see is the English-language feed, and that's both compiled and curated by these guys.

Here's what I notice:

1. They talk about something other than themselves. In their case, music. As a result, the feed never degenerates into boring pictures of what people ate today. They don't assume that you're there because you're an obsessed teenaged fan with no life--they're willing to assume that you and they share a common interest, which is not How Totally Awesome They Are, OMG, Squee!

2. They both fulfill and subvert expectations. The members of Block B still must cater to fans (and expectations in Korea are actually pretty rigid in this regard). So when fans send them presents, they Tweet pictures and thanks.

They also post "selcas," which is short for self camera--a phrase that is utterly meaningless in English, but has been adopted by Koreans to mean a picture you take of yourself. Teen idols post flattering selcas all the time.

So, when Block B's Jaeyho goes for a hike, he posts a flattering selca. And then, because he's with Block B, he posts an unflattering selca. He and the other members do that all the time--they call them anti-idol pictures. Taeil gets a bad haircut? Selca. Here's an anti-idol photo of the whole group.

3. The primary goal is entertainment. If it's funny, it goes public. Jaeyho's brother is pissed because Jaeyho won't answer the phone? It's a Tweet.

Because of that, the feed is like a little treasure hunt: You never know what you'll find, and it's sometimes really funny, cool, or otherwise rewarding. It's intermittent reinforcement, which psychologists will tell you is even more motivating for people than the predictable kind of reinforcement, and which emotionally-abusive douchebags will tell you is also way less demanding of your energy and time.

Progress report

Today was one of those days when the cat woke me up early and I couldn't fall back asleep, but I really wanted to work, so I drank a lot of caffeine, but it was too much and I wound up repeatedly slapping an old man.

But I got stuff done! Even in my impaired state! Which makes that fact extremely exciting! I was able to focus enough to rough out some ideas for the scene I'm working on (and I think that they are really! good! ideas! but that may be the caffeine talking). But then I started running around again (literally), so I decided to finish fixing up Chapter 7 of the Trang audiobook. So that's finally done.

Things to keep in mind

Edward Robertson has a good post about not getting too dogmatic. He points out that the AbsoluteWrite forum, like Writer Beware (if memory serves, they're pretty much run by the same people), has chosen to get left behind and is now virulently anti-self-publishing. Which is really a shame--both performed an important service once.

And Helen Kay Dimon has a great one (via Isobel Carr) about not being an enormous whiny baby to your readers. Seriously.