@hg47's Blog: The Tweet & The TakeAway, page 2

How To Promote Your Art

How To Promote Your Art.
1) Bash your head against indifference for decades.
2) Suicide.
3) Art Dealers can’t resist your tragic story.

Consider the story of how the novel A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES won the (posthumous for the writer John Kennedy Toole) Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. Now, I've read CONFEDERACY, and the novel is a train wreck, although it is, at times, a delightfully amusing train wreck. There is some serious entertainment within the covers of this novel, if the reader is willing to go with the flow and ignore how this novel is not like any other novel.

Legend has it that John Kennedy Toole was so depressed at his total failure as a writer that he offed himself in a car with carbon monoxide and a hose to the exhaust. About 5 years after John's death, his mother found a smudged barely readable carbon copy of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES and took it upon herself to find a publisher.

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confed...

Thelma Toole was persistent and tried several different publishers to no avail.

Thelma repeatedly called Walker Percy, an author and college instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, demanding he read it. He initially resisted; however, as he recounts in the book's foreword:

...the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained—that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading. In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good."

But I am joking a bit in advocating suicide as a method of artistic promotion. Bad Publicity may be much better!

Consider the career of Kanye West. My personal take on the 2009 MTV Video Award show where Kanye forced the microphone from Taylor Swift's fingers as she was trying to give her acceptance speech and proclaimed that another video should have won--was the best thing that ever happened for his career! This firestorm of negative publicity branded his name forever on the consciousness of Western media (and, in my opinion, the enormous exposure was also the best thing that ever happened to Taylor Swift's career).

Last I checked West has 21 Grammy Awards.

@hg47

Triangular Wheel

Spinning my wheels, stuck in the mud again. Thinking of going back to my Triangular-Wheel Design for TRACTION on the Road Less Traveled…

In the "triangular-wheel category": also thinking of writing a short eBook on Islam. Something like: 47 REASONS WHY I FEAR ISLAM.

I can make friends in Plastics Extrusion…eventually. Why can't I make friends in Publishing? What? It isn't "eventually" yet?

The real point of the tweet is that when you present your NEW IDEA to the Power People, that their first impression is going to be: "Triangular Wheel. Not gonna work, ever. What idiot would even think of such a thing??"

@hg47

Cut To The Chase—NOT!

I used to Cut To The Chase…But Bourne Movies have spoiled me for chase scenes…Now I fast-forward through dull hunts to get back to the STORY

The narrative is changing. What is needed to acquire and maintain the ATTENTION of the Audience is changing. Hardback books that seem abbreviated or abridged, when transferred to the eBook format are criticized for being too long. "Why won't this end already?"

Recently, I watched the TV show MISSING, Season One, on DVD. In fact, I watched it twice. But I realized that portions of the show didn't thrill me, didn't entertain me. I was fast-forwarding through the chase scenes! Don't get me wrong, for TV, these chases were state of the art, but come on, it's just "running around" and "cars going fast" and "bad guys shooting at the good girl while she tries not to get hit."

The "metaphor" cut-to-the-chase wasn't working for me, because I was fast forwarding through most of the chase scenes, and even a shoot-out or two. I wanted to get forward to the fascinating emotional drama of human interaction.

I blame the Bourne movies. My personal all-time favorite car chase is in the first Bourne movie. But they all have great car chases. I've been spoiled; my sensitivities have shifted. "I get it: she's running; they're shooting at her; but I want to get forward to where they are interrogating her and she verbally kicks their asses, takes their names, and tweets about it."

@hg47

Social Media: Network or Lostwork?

Karen Anderson of Writer Way answered one of my test emails to her with a lengthy response of very specific advice for writers, about a year ago. Half her reply was about setting up my own professional writer's website before promoting anything, and detailed notes on exactly what she meant by that.

Possibly she was just selling me her services.

But what she wrote next was pretty much a complete rejection of social media:

2. Become a member of good writers organization[s]: SFWA if you write science fiction, MWA if you write mysteries - you get the idea. Attend their events and workshops and do some volunteer work for them. Mention that on your website.

3. Volunteer to be a panelist at conventions for writers or readers. That will get your name on their websites, which will help your social media rank more than dozens of tweets and blog posts.

4. Ignore social media time-wasters like Twitter and spend your time taking writing workshops, finding mentors, and writing new publishable material. It's real-world, genuine connections with other writers, editors, reviewers, and bookstore owners that make the difference for writers. The social media stuff is about as valuable as spending your day staring in the mirror.

Perhaps Karen Anderson was just spewing boilerplate to get rid of a pest in her INBOX, but if so she has some damn good boilerplate! And I'm starting to think it is truer than true.

@hg47

ART: some mental assembly required

ക☻ꡆക☻ꡆക☻ꡆക☻ꡆക☻ꡆക
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കക some mental assembly required
ꡆ                ☻
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കꡆ☻കꡆ☻കꡆ☻കꡆ☻കꡆ☻ക

This is one of the defining characteristics of My Art, anyway: some mental assembly required. You have to think about it.

If you are sleep-walking, you won't "get" me. You have to do some of the work.

@hg47

Everyone will be published for 2 books

The long tail is getting longer. Everyone will be published for 2 books. Fewer readers every month; more writers every month. See the trend?

I have no clue what to do about this trend, or if I should even try to do anything about it. Something may come along to make this trend irrelevant.

I'm the blunt guy in the group who blurts out the awful truth, and often gets kicked out of the group. Selling myself is a skill I have been working on for 20 years, obviously without any success whatsoever.

I suspect that the majority of eBook writers never sell enough copies to mention in conversation, much less to deposit income in the bank.

Historically, my standard response, after writing a novel, and failing to find a home for it with a publisher, was to give up and just write another novel.

Am I wasting time, trying to promote my work? Should I just say the hell with this, and start up another novel?

On the plus side, I'm always at my happiest when I am writing a first draft…

Teleportation Suppository

Tomorrow’s Tweet: It’s Midnight, do you know which planet your daughter is on, and whether teleportation is possible within the conjunction?

Arthur C. Clarke conceived the geosynchronous telecommunications satellite. How's that for sci-fi cred? William Gibson? He's the jack-in cyberspace guy. Asimov has the 3 Laws of Robotics.

When authorities in the science fiction field tell me my writing is flying crap, they have a point. With everyone in the DAUGHTER MOON future using Teleportation Suppositories to remove poop and pee from their bodies automatically since shortly after birth, they would have no clue what a toilet was for…Found Art?

But I really must insist: My Writing Is Teleporting Crap! Get your facts straight.

Oh, you want a practical demonstration? OK, come back in 10-hours, I'm 3D Printing a half-cheese half-Pepperoni pizza, hold the anchovies, hold the beetle-protein.

@hg47

Reality Crashing Against My Dreams

Inspirational Tweet
Nobody hears you
If they heard you they wouldn’t listen
If they listened they wouldn’t act
Here’s your star
Now go away.

This tweet is me emulating the Universe crashing against my dreams.

I'm starting to believe that I need a sure-thing side-gig to my most cherished dreams, that if I invest too much of my time and energy and soul into my dreams…that I'm a gonner. It's a fact that I've written my best work in my spare time, while working full-time at something unrelated to literature.

Confess this tweet was aimed at the favstar crowd. There's a hostile-tweet thing going on there that I sort of tapped into.

Also, my world has been a bit dark lately. I keep having new "inspirations" about great potential ways to promote my writings, only to slam into a Wall of Silence when I follow through.

@hg47

“His writing is Mind-Ready.”

Some writers put words together in a way that makes it easy and fun for me to read them. Donald Hamilton. Robert B. Parker. James H. Cobb

Some writers are so awesome in the way they compose prose that I am continually distracted and am so caught up in admiring what they are doing that I can't really enjoy the story they are telling me. Tom Robbins.

Some writers cram words together so clunky that I don't care how great the plot or how many hundreds of millions of books they have sold, I can't read them. Robert Ludlum.

Many of my favorite authors are slightly difficult for me to read, but worth the effort. John D. MacDonald. Erica Jong. Douglas Reeman.

I'm not blogging about "Literary Absolutes" but about my own personal inclinations, my reading preferences, what works for me when I pick up a book and start reading. I'm a picky reader. Although, I'm sure there are statistical averages for writers that could be compiled along these notions of "Hard To Read or Easy To Read," and Stephen King agrees with me on Ludlum.

♀: “His writing is Mind-Ready.”
♂: “What?”
♀: “Off-hand…catchier than smooth prose.”
♂: “Huh?”
♀: [sighs] “Like dancing drunk…”
♂: “Got it.”

@hg47

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I've only had two or three good ideas, my whole life: I just keep recycling them.

In Extrusion, my one idea is "Better Cooling Will Usually Result In A Faster Line Speed."

In Writing, my two ideas are:
1) Actually writing a book will teach you more than all the writing classes put together; to learn more, write another book.
2) To improve the quality of a book you have written, cut 20% of the text. (I always eventually prefer the shorter versions of my own work.)

I've lost count of the number of lines and products I have sped up over the years, in Plastics Extrusion; but there's usually a year or two delay from when I suggest the improvement to when it gets implemented, and I don't always get credit for it. Suggesting a better way do to things is an insult to whoever set things up the way they are now; probably your boss or your boss's boss or your boss's boss's boss. It's a bit like walking up to a new Mother, looking at her child, and blurting out, "You know, she's really ugly. I can fix that!" So my fix may come back in a year or two with a minor tweak, only this time, They Thought Of It!

I'm clueless when it comes to selling my ideas, or my books. Of course, if I ever do get an idea on how to SELL, you can be sure I'll be Recycling The Hell Out Of That Puppy!

@hg47