Booklife: Strategies & Survival Tips for the 21St-Century Writer

MORE THAN TWO thousand years ago, the strategist Sun Tzu wrote that the warrior skilled in indirect warfare is as inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, as unending as rivers and streams, and passes away only to return like the four seasons.

Curiously enough, these classic lines could as easily describe the relationship between you and the Internet, given how quickly a writer must adjust to and take advantage of opportunities. It also reflects the ephemeral quality of the Internet. Because of the vast amount of information and opinion posted every single day, every hour, every minute — supplanting the information posted a minute, an hour, a day before. To exist in this world you need to be fluid and flexible while retaining inner calm and balance.

Traditional strengths like being fleet of foot, working hard, creating something seaworthy and imaginative, and finding interesting opportunities for collaboration still tend to be rewarded in the marketplace. However, the traditional career and promotional models that once helped you to brand and leverage your creativity often don’t work today.

The modern context requires from a writer some combination of the following qualities or abilities to achieve lasting, sustainable career success:

Thinking about and nurturing these traits will be invaluable in your journey toward a sustainable Public Booklife.

Creating and Managing Goals

The gap between the “professional” and “amateur” writer has been forever muddled by the advent of new media and the ability of individual content providers to find, at the very least, a niche audience. The situation in the writing world now more closely mirrors the way things work in the world of music. Many bands, including several that have hit it big, work from indie labels or create their own labels. A form of “self-publishing” is common and respected — an attitude we’re only beginning to see gain traction in a writing culture that largely discourages any do-it-yourself efforts by individual creators.

While I don’t believe anyone will ever completely replace gatekeepers in the publishing world, neither is that world the same as it was just ten years ago. Whether you’ve just self-published your book, or have a contract with an independent or commercial publishing house, you have a greater ability now to control the path of your career and the breadth and depth of your opportunities than ever before in the history of publishing. That amount of freedom can be frightening, and the complexity of possibilities mind-numbing.

That’s why establishing goals is one of the most important tasks you can ever undertake for your writing career. Spending a little honest time in this area can sometimes save you years of misguided or misplaced effort.

Creating and managing goals isn’t difficult or scary as long as you break it down into its component parts. A goal must be specific, measurable, and be attached to a timeline. Each goal should clearly state what you want to accomplish, and by when. Think in terms of declarative sentences like: “I will [achieve something] by [a specific date or time]. For example, “I will sell one novel to a commercial publisher by 2011.” Make sure to write your goals down.

In updating my short-term and long-term goals document recently, the simplicity of my bullet point list struck me again — even the details of how I intend to achieve my goals are simple. But when I mention this idea to beginning and even experienced writers many of them look at me as if the problem is actually that I’m too organized. Sometimes that look also says, “I’m a starving artist — my genius lies in my disorganized random approach to life, not just my art.”

I don’t actually buy this argument. Down through the ages, more than one creative juggernaut, including the Renaissance artist Gregorio Comanini, has counseled the equivalent of “Live an ordinary, regular life so you can be irregular and brilliant in your creativity.” Deep down, we all know that that focus — knowing where you want to go and how you want to get there — is extremely important to success. Having a document you can refer to that helps focus your efforts, even, perhaps, your behavior, seems ever more vital in this new world we live in — one so wonderful and yet so dangerous due to a combination of limitless possibility and limitless opportunities for distraction.

Providing yourself with positive structure is one way of affirming that you respect your own imagination and creativity enough to set yourself up for success.

Mapping Your Future: Think Strategically Not Tactically

Because writers often work organically and hate doing mechanical things like detailed novel outlines, they sometimes also shy away from creating actual lists of long-term and short-term career goals. Instead, many of my colleagues have daily, weekly, or monthly “to do” lists that help keep them focused but also keep them stuck in a tactical mode, which makes it hard to engage in strategic thinking. Yes, you know what you want or need to do for the next thirty days, but what about for the year? What about for the next five years? How do your daily/weekly/monthly tasks feed into short-term goals, and how do your short-term goals feed into your long-term goals?

Many writers never progress in their careers — except in a shambling, two-steps-forward-one-step-back way — because they always focus on the moment, and the moment after that. Their maps lack all kinds of details essential for finding their way toward a destination. Even if you self-define as a “disorganized” writer and believe you could never focus on the “big picture,” you can benefit from taking a stab at a loose plan.

Approaches to Planning

When I wrote briefly about this topic on my blog, the idea resonated even with those who had been skeptical. Writer Michele Lee, for example, had this to say:

I love making lists and organizing and goal making. But I wasn’t sure how much it would help me seeing as I’m only half a step into my career. But it really has helped. I got serious about it at the beginning of last year and wrote up a business plan. While a lot of the goals changed due to outside events and agent/editor feedback it’s still helped a lot to have goals. I break mine up into three categories; Private, Public, and Uncontrollable Goals. I highly recommend others sit and work out where they want to be and what they can do to get there. It also helps letting go of the things you can’t control.

I like how Michele acknowledges that even if you can position yourself to be successful some things will always be out of your control. Identifying those elements and acknowledging them in your list of goals will alleviate certain types of career frustrations. (See also Marly Youmans’ essay on luck and the writer, in the appendices.)

Another way to organize your goals is to create one-year and five-year plans. Your one-year plans should support your five-year plan. Each five-year plan should build on the last, if possible. It also shouldn’t result in the equivalent of crop failures or massive purges, like most of the Soviet Union’s five-year plans.

Here’s a simple strand of a plan, one I created when I was seventeen and beginning to think about my long-term goals. At the time I was going to college and had just transitioned from writing poetry to writing fiction. For me, short stories made sense because I couldn’t even comprehend creating something as long as a novel.

• FIVE-YEAR PLAN: Publish one book, possibly short stories, from an independent press.

• ONE-YEAR PLAN: Publish at least one story in a publication with greater prestige or circulation than any of my previous credits.

• MONTHLY TASK: Write at least half a short story per month. Complete one story every two months.

• WEEKLY TASK: Keep finished short stories in constant rotation, submitting each to the top markets and working my way down until acceptance.

Usually, barring acts of God and the tender mercies of editors looking for the hot new author, you cannot walk before you crawl. The simple fact is: if you don’t write stories, you can’t publish stories. If you don’t publish stories, you usually can’t find a publisher for a collection of short stories — just as you cannot build a wooden house without wood, and you cannot build the ceiling to keep out the rain until you’ve built the walls. It sounds simple, but many writers neglect this basic element to keeping their careers on track. (The same principles apply to novels, of course.)

Notice, too, that I gave myself more time for the act of creation, but that the pace quickened with regard to the task of getting my stories out there. One task simply requires more mental space than the other. As for meeting my five-year goal, I missed it by one year: it took six years before my first collection came out (although I self-published a chapbook before that).

What do my current goals look like? Here’s a peek at just a few, with most of the specific names left out. I wrote these down in early 2008 and each had a deadline of the end of 2009. Two have already been achieved as I write these words, in early February 2009.

Each of these goals has a timeline and tasks associated with it, as with the example from when I was seventeen. The only difference is I have many more goals now, some of them long-term and some of them short-term. You’ll also notice that my goals, even in this limited sample, are a mixture of career and creative. The goals document isn’t the place to map out what you want from your Private Booklife, but it should acknowledge that you want to grow as a writer, and push yourself to do new things. Diversification, if you have the temperament for it, is one of the ways in which you can best take advantage of the opportunities that have opened up in this century. It also limits your susceptibility to those elements outside of your control — like a weak economy, for example.

On a tactical level, you can use a high-level task list to encompass general activities that support your goals. These are things you weave into your month as time and opportunity allow, and which feed into your overall efforts. Here are a few examples of high-level tasks connected to my current goals:

Low-level general tasks get worked in with daily/weekly project-oriented tasks on a document tracking a month’s worth of effort. Remember I said weekly or monthly task lists are no good without additional structure? Within that structure they work marvelously well to focus you on important deadlines while not losing track of the bigger picture. Keep one eye on the task at hand and one eye on the horizon.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Notice how the emphasis is on the creative work first and foremost. Also notice how simple this list is — and I make it even simpler by keeping it in a standard Word document rather than in a spreadsheet. You need to be able to easily update the list for it to have value. The danger of using Windows project management software or some other organizational tool is that you’ll find yourself spending more time and energy creating your schedule than actually accomplishing the tasks associated with that schedule.

Ironically, many modern inventions designed to streamline our lives, such as time management software, can actually be counterproductive to creativity by being too complicated or automated. Simple actions, however, like using an automated reminder for deadlines or storing documents can be very helpful. You just have to experiment until you find the mix of tools that makes you efficient without distracting you from your goals.

Change Management

As my friend New York Times best-selling author Tobias Buckell reminded me recently, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, but you at least need a battle plan!” To put that comparison in writing terms, strategic goals are almost like a novel outline: the story always changes when you actually write it; or, in this case, live it. One of the trickiest things to determine is when to change your goals. You must continually revisit your progress, your level of happiness, and your interest level. Sometimes you just need to tweak your goals — or the tasks associated with them, if those tasks aren’t fully supporting your goals. Other times, you’ll need to perform a complete overhaul, especially if the law of diminishing returns has come into play. Here are some scenarios in which you may want to consider a change:

• YOU HAVE NEW PRIORITIES OR RESPONSIBILITIES. We all experience life changes, and when we do, we have to modify our goals to reflect those changes. Each change carries with it a range of pitfalls and opportunities. When I quit my day job and began to live off my book and reviewing income I took advantage of that opportunity to make my goals more ambitious, because I had more time to work on them. But one thing I discovered is that without the structure of the day job I also had to be more focused and work harder than I ever had before. Because I was used to the time it took me to do things with the day job, I had no idea how long things took when I could work on them 24–7 — or how important taking breaks would become. As a result, I missed several book deadlines before I adjusted to the new rhythms of my life — and had to go back and adjust my goals yet again.

• YOU HAVEN’T MADE PROGRESS ON THE TASKS ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOALS. While you’re busy berating yourself for being lazy, maybe something else is going on. Maybe you really don’t like doing the tasks associated with your goals. In fact, you dislike them so much, you can’t bring yourself to follow through in any consistent way. At that point, you have to change your goals or you’ll continue to be frozen. (If, on the other hand, you haven’t even attempted the tasks, maybe you just need a swift kick in the pants. After all, as the Romanians say, “A kick in the pants is just another step forward.”)

• YOU HAVEN’T MET ANY OF YOUR GOALS. Sometimes elements of what you need to happen to reach your goals will be beyond your control. If you don’t meet your goals in a reasonable time try to be patient and give yourself a few more months or even a year. Then consider either re-evaluating your goals entirely or amending them to be more modest. If you take a few steps at a time, you might soon be at the top of the stairs.

• YOU AREN’T HAPPY WITH YOUR LIFE. If achieving your goals doesn’t make you happy on some level — if you don’t feel fulfilled creatively — then you need to do some serious thinking about your life in general, and how your goals either support or do not support your happiness. There can be a huge difference between what others want for you, or what you think you want for yourself, and what the hidden core of you needs for happiness. Sometimes, too, talent is a curse. You may be talented in an area that doesn’t actually bring you happiness or balance.

Mission Statements

Sometimes when I lead workshops on sustainable writing careers I find it easier to start with goals than with mission statements. A mission statement is a high-level strategic view of your goals. For this reason, many writers feel uncomfortable with mission statements. They’d rather start with something more piecemeal — even if it means changing their goals once they’ve established a mission statement. This might sound backwards, but sometimes focusing on the details of goals helps you decide what’s important to you in a very real way — something grounded in the practical. You can, of course, do what’s more traditional and create a mission statement first, but, either way, make sure the mission statement and the goals are mutually supportive. You can have multiple mission statements to support different sets of goals, but I prefer having one mission statement to work with all of my goals:

I want to improve and challenge myself creatively and career-wise by diversifying my portfolio across genres and types of media — and use that diversification to drive a higher profile in terms of speaking engagements, book reviewing, and other opportunities.

If your mission statement is longer than one paragraph, it’s probably too long. Once you’ve settled on a statement that resonates with you, I strongly recommend printing out a copy and displaying it prominently in your workspace. Having a visual reminder of the “big picture” reminds you of what you’ve self-identified as important and reinforces the story of your unique Booklife.

Benefits

The benefits of such planning extend beyond making progress toward career and life goals. Yes, with a solid mission statement and a focused list of short-and long-term goals, you can achieve amazing things. But more importantly for many creators, this kind of approach also takes away the stress of endless decision-making.

What do I mean? Half of the fatigue you feel in a given day comes from what Jorge Luis Borges called “the garden of the forking paths.” Do I do X or Y? Do I veer off toward Z or stay focused on A? Irritation and anxiety often originate from our fear that we’ve chosen the wrong path, even if the decision is minor.

However, if you have a mission statement and goals, you immediately know if you should take advantage of an opportunity. You can easily recognize when an opportunity is not for you. You can even make a list of things you won’t do. For example, you won’t write a short story for a non-paying market. Or, you won’t accept a speaking engagement for expenses-only. Soon you’ll find that your mission statement and goals will make decisions for you, and each time you keep your focus on what you’ve already outlined as important, you take a big step toward fulfilling those goals. Sometimes an opportunity is an opportunity — and sometimes it’s just a distraction or even a trap. One of the hardest things for some writers to do is say no, especially early in a career.

“How Am I Possibly Going to Keep Up With All of This?!”

The complexity of an integrated approach to establishing long- and short-term goals isn’t about any one part of the process. It’s more about what looks overwhelming overall. If you think of a goal’s plan in terms of its parts, the idea, it becomes more manageable because you can probably face a daily task list or even a yearly goal without too much stress. Let’s review:

You’ll note that after the initial set-up, the only document you need to update on a regular basis is your monthly task list. With this structure in place, you can relax into a productive schedule that supports daily creativity and where you want to be in a year, or five years. (Although you’ll need to regularly re-evaluate your progress, make sure you don’t re-evaluate so frequently that it becomes an obsessive, self-defeating act.)

In all of this, too, there is still the human element. The simple truth is: no one reaches all of their goals, and no one has the inhuman ability to stay on task all the time. But making the attempt to articulate your dreams in this way means you will accomplish more than you would otherwise.

Finally, remember that living a productive Booklife requires a certain amount of introspection. After finishing any project or major task, take the time to reflect on and analyze your efforts. Try to identify factors that helped and hindered those efforts, and apply what you’ve learned to whatever you tackle next.

The Discovery Process

Being Yourself

It’s certainly possible that in the distant past you did not need to promote your work. It’s possible that in the past all writers needed to do is turn in the manuscript and let the reviews, the interviews, and the incoming royalty checks wash over them. But today, unless you’re Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, or Margaret Atwood, you do need to be able to promote your work. Even if you have a contract with a major publishing house, you will need to coordinate some efforts with that publisher’s publicity department. You will need to become accustomed to the uncomfortable feeling that you are somehow being less than true to your core creativity while out hawking your wares.

There’s definitely a potential disconnect here. As my friend and writer Marly Youmans put it when she saw this section listed in the table of contents: “The more I consider this idea, the less I grasp it, because I start thinking about that weird division between the daily self and what Proust called ‘le moi profond.”‘ The inner self, Youmans argues, “is subject to all of the disorder and pain of life, and doesn’t have to do the dishes or get the kids on the bus, doesn’t have any of the clutter that keeps our outer selves busy.”

For this reason, you need to find the level and the type of engagement that makes sense for you and your life. You need to be able to reflect your true personality, you need to find strategies that suit what you’re “selling,” and you need to find ways to separate your writing from your promotional efforts.

If you can do that, you will minimize the frustrations of promoting your work, the most basic of which is that it takes you away from your writing. There’s also a certain frustration in the fact that it’s often easier to joyfully recommend someone else’s book than it is to recommend your own. Still, part of success in this area means finding ways to have fun promoting your project. There’s no reason why self-promotion shouldn’t be enjoyable. You’re telling people about something in which you believe deeply. As we’ll also discuss, there’s no reason why everything you do has to be purely functional. You can use your imagination for PR in ways similar to how you use it for your writing.

Perhaps the most important advice I can give is just because everyone else does something doesn’t mean you should do it too. Question and research all “opportunities” touted as “bleeding edge” or “innovative” and make sure (1) using them fits your goals and (2) using them makes sense for you as a person. That process includes rigorous testing of the advice set out in Booklife.

Exploring Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Not every writer is good at everything. You might be shy. You might be bad over the telephone. You might be unable to type a concise email. However, before you rule out certain approaches to promotion you’re going to have to really analyze your core strengths and weaknesses, not just rely on random self-perception. You might be shocked or delighted at what you find out as a result.

For example, I’m assuming you’re good at writing—but what kind of writing? Writing nonfiction is different from writing fiction. Writing advertising or PR copy for your own work is different than writing general nonfiction. You might find out that what you think is a strength is actually a weakness. In writing about your own work, you might tend to be more modest or, conversely, too bombastic. You might make assumptions and leave out information because you already know it. In short, it can be as hard to write about yourself as it is to keep putting yourself out there for publicity purposes.

An important component of your analysis will be getting honest feedback from friends and colleagues, as well as giving yourself the distance to make your self-analysis valuable. For example, if you think you’re bad over the phone, tape a conversation and play it back to not only make sure you’re right but to identify exactly why you’re bad at phone calls. This process may be challenging or unsettling to you. If so, good! It’s supposed to be uncomfortable, but better for you to feel foolish or exposed in your own home than to look foolish or be exposed in public.

After you’ve completed this analysis you’ll still want to concentrate on what feels comfortable to you and doesn’t stress you out too much…but you’ll also want to confront one or two things that do make you uncomfortable so you can grow and change. If you can compartmentalize the unfamiliar in this way, it should also reduce the “sweat factor,” as I call it. Simply put, other people will sense when you’re uncomfortable, when you’re nervous, when you don’t really have confidence in what you’re doing. If they sense that, then they’re going to associate the lack of confidence with your book as well as you.

The good news is that you can find other people to do those things that make you really uncomfortable. If following a traditional publishing route, you have access to a publicist at your publisher, and you probably also have friends with different skill sets willing to help out. And, if you have enough money, you can always hire someone.

Not every writer can be a shining web presence. Not all want to be, some don’t need to be, and some recognize that they can’t be good at it precisely because they can’t engage in the social interaction needed to network effectively.

On panels at conventions and on posts online I’ve said myself that if you can’t chat with strangers, if your body language is going to speak of distance and discomfort, you either need to take some public speaking classes and join a few groups where you have to work on interacting with people, or you should seriously consider not attending conventions or doing book signings. There is something worse than not doing an event, and that’s being there and doing it terribly. People will notice, and they’ll remember, and they’ll tell other people.

A few years ago I was at a convention. I was leaving an event with another author when we were intercepted by a blogger. The person automatically engaged in conversation with the author I was with. I hadn’t met the blogger, but knew who they were from the Internet, so extended my hand and said, “I’m Sandra Ruttan” and they said, “I know,” didn’t shake my hand and just carried on with their chat. And, boy, did people talk to me about how I was snubbed later.

On the other hand, I met [mystery author] Lee Child that weekend, [and] he [not only] took the time to talk to me about my web presence, but at a convention this fall, walked down the hall, saw me for the first time in two years and said, “Sandra Ruttan. How are you?”

Lee Child: best-selling author, not a snob, great at remembering people and taking the time to say hi. And on the other hand, blogger with a handful of short stories published…I tell the story for one reason, and that’s to illustrate that how you treat people matters. Others notice.

In extreme cases, you may just have to avoid certain situations, the key being to not feel guilty about it. Just as Ruttan relates above about her experiences, I have one colleague who used to force herself to go to conventions and meet people because she felt she had to for her career. But, as she herself admits, this did her more harm than good because she gave off an aura not just of shyness but of extreme, intense, debilitating nervousness. She doesn’t do many conventions any more. That decision has helped her personally and with her career.

Improving Your Abilities

How can you work on problem areas without being overwhelmed? Make a list of your strengths, your weaknesses, and those gray areas in between — things you’re not terrible at but not great at, either. Even though you’ve presumably had others help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses to get to this stage, take this list and give it to a couple of friends or colleagues you didn’t include in your original analysis. Ask them if your list is accurate. After you’ve included their feedback, and been totally honest with yourself, do the following:

Live radio interviews (which now include podcasts) fit into the category of a weakness that scared me to death. The first time I was on, I mumbled and I could hardly breathe. Because I was so nervous, I wound up saying something like “You’re as stupid as I want to be” to the host, which was meant as a joke but came off as insulting and bizarre. The second time I was on the radio, it went fine. Until the host made a strange comment about whether or not I lived in a cave, which threw me off so much the rest of the interview entered a decaying orbit. The third time, I got the hiccups from drinking too much coffee. I spent the whole hour making sure the cadence of my speech allowed me to turn from the microphone just as I was about to hiccup. This worked better for the interview portion than for the reading I did afterwards.

What was my particular remedy? I relied on repetition and experimentation. I just kept accepting radio and Internet podcast interview requests. I also experimented with different kinds of preparation. Eventually, the combination of finding the best way to prepare and doing more interviews made me more comfortable with the format. I can’t tell you I’m the best radio interview ever — I still get nervous — but when you hear me on the radio these days you’re unlikely to say to yourself, “Wow! That guy was horrible.”

As for a gray area that I’ve turned into a strength, public readings fit that category. Unlike radio station show appearances, readings never scared me. However, I didn’t have a good sense of performance so my readings were serviceable but nothing to excite anyone. Over the past few years, I have worked hard to add an element of performance to my readings, along with humorous anecdotes. Part of that growth process meant watching myself on video giving readings. Another part meant being more careful about my selection of material and how long I read. Now, most people come away from one of my readings entertained, and I generally see comments on blogs afterwards along the lines of “Wow — that guy really put on a good show.”

Not only will you remove stress from your life by confronting some of your weaknesses and gray areas head-on, you’ll also learn a lot in the process. Like anything else in your Public Booklife, you just have to approach it systemically and incrementally.

Choosing Your Platforms

In the past, a writer had limited ways to convey content to a source or sources. Most methods involved dealing with a gatekeeper in the form of an editor or other entity that would accept or reject content, or ask for changes. If someone wanted to bypass these gatekeepers, he or she had to expend a ridiculous amount of time and energy in endeavors such as traditional models of self-publishing.

Today, the situation is much reversed, as the Internet houses dozens of free, unrestricted platforms that act as conduits of information from the creator to an audience and from the audience back to the creator. A platform can manifest as a social network, a variation on a blog, a microblog (for example, Twitter), forums, or even a channel of direct one-on-one communication (like Instant Messenger). Linkage between these platforms means that it’s no longer possible to define them as just one thing — no longer possible to set clear boundaries as to whether, for example, Facebook is a social network, a blog, or a form of direct communication. However, all of these platforms give you access to a wider world of readers and contacts.

Many of these platforms were intended to be, and remain, communities, and were not specifically built to allow writers to disseminate either creative or promotional content. Still, that is one benefit of their existence from a writer’s point of view.

At the same time, you cannot be everywhere at once, unless you’re able to download your brain into the Internet — something that looked very cheesy in the movie Tron. Be aware when considering these platforms that some will fragment you more than others.

What do I mean by that? From using all of these approaches at one time or another, I know that each puts a different strain on your attention span. Some require only a sliver, but that sliver can devour your day. Others require much more than a sliver of your mind but don’t give you the feeling of being nibbled to death by tiny sharks. For this reason, where relevant, I’ve discussed the fragmentation level of a particular approach. You will have your own unique perspective on how to use or not use each, and the interplay between them. Later, too, you’ll combine platforms with opportunities and tools to create a larger plan. Please note that (1) although an email could be considered a kind of platform, I haven’t included it here because so much of what I discuss elsewhere involves use of email, (2) podcasting is covered in the appendices because I believe for most people podcasting constitutes a form of blogging or providing book samples, and (3) blogs are covered extensively in “Public Platform Example.”

Here, then, are a few examples of platforms. I’m fully aware that even this relatively high-level analysis may be dated by the time you read Booklife. However, discussing current popular examples still provides you with information on the general value of platforms.

Facebook

Facebook allows you to connect with other professional and personal friends and share parts of your life with them. At first, I didn’t use Facebook because I already had ways (through my blog, MySpace, and email) to keep in touch with friends. It also seemed like just another thing to keep track of during an already busy day. However, once I had a chance to explore Facebook I began to understand its appeal. In fact, I have now abandoned MySpace entirely — which shares some commonalities with Facebook but is much more cumbersome (see below) — and focused my effort on Facebook.

Why? First, the light, delicate interface in Facebook creates a sense of calm in keeping with the platform’s primary purpose. You can easily upload videos, photos, and audio, as you can with most platforms. But more than this, I find that Facebook provides an opportunity that is different than a blog. You can post updates and links that give the people you allow to be your friends an opportunity to check out what you’re up to, but those people don’t have to make the effort to visit your blog specifically — they have a constantly updated list of all of their friend’s efforts, usually with a bite-sized sample, and can pick and choose.

Another great feature of Facebook is that each account comes with an embedded inbox for receiving private messages. You have the anonymity of exchanging messages without divulging your personal email account. This makes superstar creators who might otherwise not interact with the public able to communicate without fear of it turning into a commitment or, even worse, a liability.

For example, a creator responsible for a series of incredibly successful comic books and movies friended me on Facebook recently. This is someone I would have had to go through an agent or manager to contact otherwise. Any email I sent through those gatekeepers might or might not have gotten through. In the context of Facebook, this person and I had a friendly conversation, with the added benefit that they enthusiastically agreed to contribute to a new anthology project being edited by me and my wife.

But even if Facebook didn’t include this functionality, it would’ve proven immensely useful to my career and creativity. Eric Orchard, a Canadian artist who has done amazing work for children’s books, made a comment on a link I posted indicating he’d read and enjoyed my work. I checked out his art, fell in love with it, contacted him, and within a few days we were collaborating on a graphic novel version of my novella “The Situation,” which we subsequently sold to a major website. Eric read my blog but had never commented there. Facebook, because the format is informal and fluid, encourages people to comment who might not communicate through your personal platform.

You can also schedule Facebook events, create mini-forums around your book, and use a chat function much like Instant Messenger. (Just as with Instant Messenger, this last functionality can be annoying, and I usually turn it off.)

The biggest downside to Facebook right now is that too many writers are being aggressive in using the site for promotion. After a while, an invite to a Facebook party for a book becomes more like spam than anything personal. In fact, any generic invite or promotion across the Facebook email account becomes white noise quickly, and is not effective PR. Some writers set up their account so their name reads “Novelist John Doe,” annoying at the very least and not recommended unless your first name really is “Novelist.” In addition, unless you’re a seasoned pro with a couple dozen books out, it might not be the best idea to set your account so your friends have to become your fans. That approach reeks of pomposity, and creates a distance between you and other people on Facebook that can be off-putting.

It’s precisely the open, comfortable format that makes aggressive PR seem more obnoxious on Facebook than on other platforms. If you simply express your normal interest in what other people are doing, don’t overuse Facebook to promote your work, and let things develop naturally you’ll get good value for your time investment. Despite its penchant for providing multiple opportunities to post small amounts of text, I also find visiting Facebook incredibly de-stressing. In fact, during much of the writing of this book, under a strict deadline, I visited Facebook to let off steam. What I found there is a positive and uplifting community made that way in part by the vision of the people who created the platform. Facebook’s very look-and-feel discourages flame wars and most other negative behaviors.

Will Facebook prove to be the MySpace of its web generation? As it continues to provide more and more functionality in reaction to developments elsewhere on the Internet, Facebook may become too complex for new users — or it may evolve into a “one-stop shopping” platform that evolves into the dominant life form. Regardless, the potential of Facebook to influence and drive both careers and creativity has not yet been fully explored, and I expect it to be a major force for several years. You’ll find endless combinations of ways to make it work for you — limited only by your imagination.

MySpace

Although MySpace recently updated its look-and-feel, it still contains the seed of its legacy function as a groundbreaker among Web 2.0 platforms, and one that gained attention mostly because musicians love to use it. Musicians, however, don’t have a need to leverage MySpace to post different kinds of text. Therefore, it’s still easier to upload a video or audio file to MySpace and create a fan site if you’re in a band than it is to post text in a variety of contexts. For me, there’s little about MySpace besides its dedicated blog feature (which you can use to mirror your main blog) that can’t be done more efficiently, with less of a time drain, on Facebook. This sense of awkward functionality means that MySpace fragments me while multitasking much more than Facebook. The feeling is exacerbated by the fact that MySpace allows more opportunities to receive spam and other empty communiqués.

That said, I do maintain a MySpace page and you may find that you have the exact opposite reaction and like MySpace much more than Facebook. It all depends on what you want out of the platform, and how your brain is wired to appreciate one or the other. I would recommend, however, that you choose one as your primary time commitment and the other as a backup, as maintaining both, especially if you also have a blog, can be a daunting time drain.

Despite the reputation these services have as being the sole domain of teenagers, you’ll find that plenty of influential and well-known adults have Facebook and MySpace pages, making them both premium sources for networking and customer outreach.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows you to update the world on your daily activities via one-hundred-forty character posts sent by cell phone or through an Internet browser or software client. People can choose to “follow” your updates at their option, and you can do the same. It’s free to use, and you don’t even have to own a cell phone.

You can also synchronize your blog posts to Twitter, so that every time you post an entry it also shares the link on Twitter — you can have your Twitter messages post to Facebook. In a sense, Twitter gains its strength from combining the sense of community associated with a Facebook friend status message with the best elements of the various versions of Instant Messenger.

As of mid-2009, Twitter is the new hot thing online, with people using it as a kind of microblog to write Twitter stories and collaborative novels. Some Twitter accounts serve as communal wisdom about particular topics. Others, like the infamous “Amazonfail” Twitter page, allowed amateur journalists, in real time, to investigate the suspect tagging, and disappearance from search results, of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of feminist and gay titles.

However, most people use it to tap into a constantly updated news flow, and to communicate with their favorite creators. Ben Templesmith, the graphic novelist and artist responsible for 30 Days of Night, uses Twitter almost compulsively, and his fans get a level of interaction with him that they wouldn’t get otherwise. Pop culture giant Neil Gaiman also has a Twitter account, as do hundreds of others.

The main advantage of Twitter over Facebook is that you don’t have to confirm someone as a friend — anyone can follow you if you have a Twitter account. This makes the experience less personal but wider. You can find yourself with immediate access to all sorts of important contacts who might not give you the time of day in any other situation, even Facebook. Just keep in mind that some people use Twitter for creative purposes and others as a microblog for chatting. Chatting into the timeline of someone who sees Twitter as a creative outlet can create conflict.

While I use Twitter by synching it to my blog and Facebook, I rarely update it and rarely check it. For me, making a regular commitment to Twitter fragments my attention too much to allow me to focus on creative projects. It makes it difficult to focus on strategic goals, as it’s a very reactive forum. I don’t personally get the sense of community from Twitter that I get from Facebook. Facebook also has the advantage of contextualizing the trivial in a larger context. If someone changes their status in Facebook to “Angela just drank a great cup of coffee and went to work,” you see that within the continuum of a diverse stream of information about the daily lives, frustrations, and achievements of your different kinds of friends. If someone posts to Twitter “Angela just drank a great cup of coffee and went to work,” it’s in the context of a dozen other similar Twitter posts, without the benefit of a larger context. Twitter also makes Facebook’s anchor — your status message — carry the entire weight of the interaction.

Not everyone shares this view — in fact, by the time you read this book, mine will almost certainly constitute the minority opinion. For example, publicist Matt Staggs finds Twitter much friendlier than I do:

Depending on your level of commitment, you can indeed build a tight community via Twitter as you interact with your followers. Like Facebook, a certain level of intimacy is engendered by the informal “water cooler” nature of communication in Twitter’s social environment; this is compounded by the fact that Twitter users often find themselves talking to the same people every day. Conversations develop at lightning speed as updates prompt real-time responses and reactions throughout the Twitter network. Information spread that way will also often leap from Twitter to all corners of the social web, popping up on blogs around the world.

I understand the value of Twitter, and I expect it to continue to be popular, but some little part of me says it’s too early to understand the full effects of Twitter, and whether in four years it will be the Web 3.0 equivalent of Facebook or of MySpace. (Sixty percent of new users don’t continue after two months.) Depending on your attention span and your purpose, though, you may find Twitter more useful than I do currently. In theory it’s a great networking and promotional tool.

YouTube

YouTube is a free video upload service that also includes some social networking options, like comments fields, an inbox for messages, a subscription service, and a few forums. Most writers use YouTube to upload promotional videos or book trailers, which they then leverage across other platforms. Leveraging your video across YouTube itself requires (1) a popular subject and (2) identifying the institutional ways to get the video in front of YouTube administrators. You can also find “communities” through subject matter, but your effort might be better spent on platforms that more naturally lend themselves to communication.

However, you can also use YouTube to supplement your text blogging with video blogging. Web cameras and editing software are cheaper than ever, and with our society becoming increasingly visually oriented it makes good sense to explore that option. You could, conceivably, build a large vidblogging audience through YouTube. As with all such efforts, though, examine whether the time investment is fulfilling or fragmenting, and whether you’re getting the desired results.

Other Platforms

Other kinds of platforms either have specific targeted audiences or only vestigial social media accoutrements. These include:

• E-NEWSLETTERS. An e-newsletter is a self-created platform leveraged through email. These writercentric updates were popular before the rise of new media, and still have their place in a changing virtual landscape. My own VanderWorld Report, set up through Yahoo! Groups, includes more than news about my writing. I add previews of forthcoming books, give behind-the-scenes looks at current projects, and accounts of my travels to conferences and conventions that I might not be comfortable sharing in a more public forum. Follow a few rules and you may find you’ve created a tool that harnesses the enthusiasm of your core fans. Your e-newsletter should not be interactive — don’t make it a discussion group — and it should not be intrusive. Unlike blogs and other new media that require continual updating, an e-newsletter is most effective when delivered only once or twice a month because otherwise it begins to seem like spam. Don’t sign up people who haven’t expressed interest in your work. Don’t make it difficult to unsubscribe, either. The point is, if you keep the list pure, it will become a powerful tool for sales and for dissemination of information. If you dilute it, you will risk irritating people and you’ll develop an inflated view of the number of people who really care about your writing.

• FLICKR. Although primarily an image upload service — wonderful if you’re going to use photographs on your blog — Flickr does include the ability to share and tag your images, and to comment. Most writers have not explored this functionality, probably because Facebook and MySpace are much more robust.

• NICHE FORUMS AND MESSAGE BOARDS. In addition to communities like Facebook and MySpace, special interest groups and subcultures have set up a vast array of forums and message boards across the Internet. Some are open to the public. Others require you to sign in and meet certain requirements. In many cases you can join a forum and set up your own message board within it. The advantage of going to a niche group is specific to your project. You may be able to find core readers for a particular type of book much more easily in this context. Recently, I participated as a guest in two completely different forums: an Aliens vs. Predators forum to discuss a media tie-in novel and a literary fiction forum to discuss my short fiction. What I found useful about such specific forums is that I exposed myself and my work to people who had never visited my blog or other platforms. These readers otherwise might have remained completely outside the scope of my publicity efforts.

• SECOND LIFE. Some writers have staged readings in Second Life, a virtual reality platform, or even used it for their writing, but its potential for individual creators as opposed to publishers remains largely unexplored due to the huge time commitment. Writer Caitlín R. Kiernan is one of the few authors who maintains an active presence in Second Life, but she has serious doubts about its viability as a tool for writers, despite having been interviewed by the BBC in Second Life:

This is an environment where the lowest common denominator almost always holds sway. Most of SL is a wasteland of virtual strip malls. And even when you get lucky and stumble upon, say, a gorgeously built steampunk city, or a drifting derelict spacecraft, it’s likely to be overrun with [characters] dressed incongruously as their favorite manga or video-game characters.

(For more about Second Life, refer to the “Creative Objects” section of “Creative PR.”)

• INSTANT MESSAGING. Instant messengers are single-tier pop-up platforms that allow you to communicate with friends and colleagues from a small dialog box you can position anywhere on your screen while performing other tasks. Although many people ignore instant messaging’s a gorgeously built and consider it closer to email, you can have online chats with multiple gatekeepers through an IM and use it to conduct interviews, as I did for a wired.com feature. You can also use an instant messenger’s chat room function to have the equivalent of a private conference call via text. Several versions of IM exist, through media giants such as AOL and MSN. Depending on your need to concentrate, you may want to keep Instant Messenger off while working as it can be disruptive. On the other hand, if you have the discipline, it can be a good down-and-dirty way for a gatekeeper to quickly get hold of you.

Public Platform Example: The Blog

Multiple platforms or vehicles can carry your persona, your thoughts, and your creative work across the Internet. But the speed of change in new media is fast, and it often adapts to (some say “preys upon”) peoples’ work habits and their personalities. Today you might be most comfortable with a Twitter account and a Facebook page, or you might want something more substantive. But a year from now your needs or the platforms might have changed again, and you’ll be more active somewhere else. Complicating matters, we’re overly enamored of blinking lights and bells-and-whistles, like a baby in a crib looking up at a colorful mobile. It can be hard to think strategically in the midst of so much shiny-shiny.

For this reason, try to anchor yourself to shifts in perception rather than trends — and the most potent perception shift right now is the continuing movement toward personal content providers replacing entrenched institutions. As Matt Staggs puts it, “Everyone has become a stakeholder, the monologue a dialogue. Organizations now understand that the power they once held to exclusively disseminate their message via traditional media has come to an end.”

Blogs are even now becoming like the castle keeps of yesteryear — a stationary object around which people and armies move — but they’re still by far the best way for an individual to leverage content on the Internet.

Because the basic premise of all new media, besides communication, community, and connectivity, is providing some form of content, most of the information I give below about blogs should apply equally well to other platforms. The basics of what people want, what makes them excited, hasn’t changed for hundreds of years — just the delivery systems. Although this section deals with text-based blogs, much of the advice also pertains to blogs anchored in videocasts or podcasts. (For more on podcasts, refer to the appendices.)

Creating a Blog

How do you create a blog? You can use any number of platforms for blogging, but WordPress is my favorite, as well as Matt’s: “I enjoy WordPress for its clean design, integrated stat monitoring and ease of use, but it’s really a matter of preference.” Blogger provides the same ability to turn your blog into a complete website. You also may prefer a LiveJournal rather than a blog.

Launching a blog or its equivalent is a great opportunity to be creative, interact with your friends and readers, and contribute to the wealth of imaginative, funny, and informative content streams on the Internet. You may even find that your particular niche on the Internet becomes so popular that it not only supports your creative life, it becomes an integral part of that life.

I know that I’ve gotten so many positive things out of my own blog, Ecstatic Days (jeffvandermeer.com). Not only have I met many interesting people, but it’s fueled my creativity, given me ideas for short stories, and even resulted in the book deal for Booklife itself. In addition, it has resulted in collaborations with artists and illustrators, created discussion and discourse in other areas of the Internet, and allowed me to pay it forward by giving me an immediate audience for book recommendations. In one extraordinary case, my blog allowed me to connect a new author, Jesse Bullington, with an agent. Jesse subsequently went on to land a lucrative book deal.

I mention these successes to point out that I’ve included blogs in Booklife as a platform to help your career, but that a blog or other online presence is more than a launch pad for your existing work. For this reason, it’s important to think about the kinds of content and behavior you will support through your blog, and what kinds of content and behavior you won’t support.

To put it another way, a blog is like a kind of virtual garden. There are an infinite number of ways to make your garden uniquely your own. It’s also up to you whether you maintain and add to your garden wisely, in winter as well as in summer — or if you let it become overgrown with weeds and trash. It’s also up to you whether your garden fits with the adjacent house that is your Booklife or is radically different from it. In all ways, the choices you make will affect how others perceive you and how you perceive yourself.

Temperament: Should You Release Your Inner Evil Monkey?

In one discussion at Ecstatic Days, my readers talked about the temperament of bloggers. A comment by Graham Storrs struck me as particularly interesting, because I think it does reflect a stereotype about what you need to project as a blogger:

I find so many blogging writers — the more popular ones anyway — are really upbeat, peppy types. Myself, I’m in a constant struggle against letting out the bitter, cynical old fart within. The peppy ones are obviously more helpful when it comes to community building, encouragement, inclusion, and lots of other good things. Those of us who want to belong but feel that old urge to take our ball and go home have got to be a bit careful when blogging. It is too easy to turn to the dark side. So should I minimize the difference between the real me and what I put out there, or should I try to play nice with the other kiddies?

Personally, I think you should find a way to balance it. If every time someone comes to your blog it’s always to find something negative or dark there, that’ll probably turn people off. If they go to your blog and half the time it’s sweetness and light — which, c’mon, has to be part of your nature about some things — and the other half it’s cynical and whatnot, I think that’s just fine.

It’s always better to be true to yourself than to contort yourself into some constantly smiling automaton. But that doesn’t mean you can’t emphasize aspects of yourself that are upbeat and positive — just so long as you don’t let a minor part of your personality take over your blog. Otherwise, the disconnect between who you are trying to be and who you are will catch up to you over time.

In trying to find the right balance, I wound up creating an alter ego called Evil Monkey. I use Evil Monkey when my mischievous side comes out and I need to say something that might get me in trouble. Evil Monkey has been instrumental in allowing me to poke fun at bad movies, have complex conversations about politics in fiction, point to hypocrisy in controversial situations, and in general maintain the positive vibe of my blog while still saying many serious things. What’s amazing about this kind of displacement is that most readers of the blog wind up arguing with Evil Monkey and hold me blameless. This approach also highlights how far humor can take you in the blogosphere. (See also Evil Monkey’s Guide to Creative Writing in the appendices.)

Alas, an Evil Monkey doesn’t automatically come with your blog when you set one up. You’ll have to experiment on your own to find personalized strategies that help turn negatives into positives.

The Tension Between Ego and Information

When your ego gets in the way, any writer can turn a blog into a dingy backwater saloon where visitors are wary of getting knifed (or bored out of their skulls) if they linger too long. Especially corrosive over time are blogs that function only as promotional tools for their creators. English writer Chris Billet put it this way:

I honestly think that Internet/blog interaction is a thing that authors (well, anyone, but authors are in the business of selling to their audience) can really screw up big time. I recently read an author who posted some technical comments regarding spam, and in response to advice on the topic (which I, as a very, very experienced technical analyst can vouch for being good advice) commented something like “do you think the world would be a better place if I wrote less fiction and spent more time mopping up spam?” I rarely let authors’ politics or attitudes get in the way of my purchases, but coupled with some other exceedingly arrogant and downright rude comments to well-meaning commenters on the blog, I resolved never to send said author my money by purchasing his books when there are always a thousand others to choose from.

This freedom of choice Chris mentions has been enhanced a millionfold by the Internet. Only a fraction of visitors to your blog will buy your book or other creative project, but that fraction is still significant. Alienate your blog readers with rudeness, haughtiness, or arrogance, and you may well lose readers for your core creative work.

Modeling and Content Development

Most blogging platforms like Blogger or WordPress include templates when you’re first setting up your blog. You can choose from any of them, or, if you have a budget, ask a web designer to create your own distinctive look. Before you do so, though, you should check out the blogs of creators you admire. Make a list of what you like and don’t like, and give the resulting list to the designer. (For more information on this and related topics, I recommend The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.)

Similarly, you should make notes on types of content provided by your favorites. What keeps you coming back to a blog? How could you put your own twist on the same idea? As in writing, the difference between pastiche and a true riff on existing material is how thoroughly you remake something to reflect your point of view. The value of information on the Internet isn’t its exclusivity so much as its mutability. However, if you steal something without re-envisioning it, have the decency to note the original source.

At the same time, think about what types of unique or fairly unique content you can add to the Internet. I write for Omnivoracious, the Amazon book blog, and one of the best examples of unique content I’ve seen came from guest-blogger Charles Huston, author of the noir mystery The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. His guest-blogging consisted of anecdotes about various crime scenes he’d come across as research for the book, and especially his interactions with crime scene cleanup crews. It made for bracing but entertaining reading. Combining the exotic with concise storytelling is just one of the many ways you can provide enjoyable content.

Effective Approaches

In maintaining an effective blog, it’s often less about the information than about how and when you present that information. Being inclusive, being positive, making your enthusiasms other people’s enthusiasms, and keeping on topic most of the time are all important. Another key is to post on a regular basis (many successful bloggers suggest at least once a day) without overwhelming your readers.

However, over time, creating a variety of ways for your readers to approach your content ensures your blog will garner more comments, more appreciation, and more repeat traffic.

What do I mean by “variety of ways”? If you post a short article about your favorite book, next time you post about a book do so in the context of some larger trend and ask your audience to participate by asking them a related question. If you usually post photographs, mix it up by posting a video. If you have done several serious posts in a row, make sure to mix in some humor. Much as newspaper journalists have to worry about using the same old leads and hooks, you should worry about using the same old visuals and the same templates for your text. Here are a few more ideas that I’ve found useful:

Equally as important, listen to your readers, whether they make specific suggestions or a telling silence gives you a hint as to direction. Granted, a lack of comments doesn’t always indicate a lack of interest, but if you have a sense you’re not reaching a wider audience, and you’ve tried to get media outlets and other bloggers to link to your posts, then you might need to try something else.

Ineffective Approaches

As useful as a blog can be as a platform, certain behaviors tend to make maintaining one a neutral or negative thing for your Public Booklife. Bloggers often get into trouble because of a false sense of entitlement that carries over into how they communicate through their blogs. Avoid the following pitfalls:

A further note on overreacting to comments, as this is one of the most common ways that flame wars develop on the Internet. Matt Staggs has the best advice on this subject:

From my experience, fires like these online arguments and spats take fuel to burn, and it’s extremely important to weigh what you have to gain versus how much you have to lose before you engage in a conflict. For one thing, criticism is just going to be there. It’s the nature of the Internet, an open system through which information flows fairly unimpeded, and efforts on your part to stifle this flow are going to erode your overall appearance of authenticity. No one is going to take good word of mouth about you seriously if it comes out that you actively suppress bad word of mouth. For another, you can’t win an argument with a nut. You just can’t. It’s just best to avoid adding the fuel to the fire which your engagement will ultimately bring. Doing so will just make you look as crazy as the other person in the long run, and you’ll erode any sense of authority or respect you have. Just ask yourself before you even type that response: what do I have to gain from this? Chances are, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize it’s not a whole lot.

This advice really applies to any situation, including communication through email or instant messengers. The wise writer remembers to maintain both internal balance and external calm in his or her Booklife.

Enhancements

Remember your goals document, and the tasks associated with it? My goals document also includes enhancement goals for my blog, mostly to do with promoting certain types of information and posts, and de-emphasizing others:

• Yes

Breaking book news first

Cultural clearinghouse

Fiction

Humor

Information about my books (reviews, exclusives, contests, etc.)

Podcasts

Pop culture

Progressive politics

Reader-immersive posts (contests, etc.)

Reviews (movies, books, music, etc.)

Strong stances on important issues related to art and creativity

Video projects

Writing advice

Writing process

Writing life

• No

Prolonged arguments/disputes

Links to negative reviews

Responses to negative reviews

Snark

Whining

Depending on how central your blog is to your creative life, you can also create a mission statement specific to your blog. Now, do I always manage to live up to the positive vibe of this list? No, because no one’s perfect. However, I try hard, and that’s half the battle.

Managing Your Involvement

The public presence of a writer today is so different from even a decade ago — the distance between then and now is the distance between receiving a message via the Pony Express in a week and having it emailed to you in a millisecond. You can easily set up a blog, a LiveJournal, or a website in less than 24 hours — and suddenly, voila!, you have a public forum. Yes, having a book out is important, but a short story on a prominent website or a clever blog post can be almost as powerful for your career.

This immediacy, this ability to get attention for your work quickly, is wonderful. But it also accelerates the process of becoming public before most writers have thought through what kind of long-term commitment they’re willing to make to the Internet, and what kind of distance they want between themselves and readers (both readers of your work and of your online manifestations).

Sometimes this idea of distance is critically important, and many bloggers are taken aback once they realize the implications. Silence Without blogger and fiction writer Tessa Kum still struggles with this issue:

[Readers are] coming to the table under the impression that, because they read my blog, they know me, and thus engage in a level of familiarity that is not at all earned and makes me very uncomfortable. Blogs aren’t an even-ended dialog, the information doesn’t flow equally both ways. And just because you establish boundaries doesn’t mean anyone will recognize them. Although I imagine most people will have less issue with it than I do, there is still an unsettling period where the act of blogging wobbles about, and the purpose is fuzzy. By posting, am I feeding my need to say, or the reader’s expectation of something said? One is an act of release, the other is loss.

No matter what you do — no matter how much you think through your approach to the blogosphere — unexpected transmissions of intent and personality will occur, because you cannot control reader perceptions, and there is no group mind. Everyone perceives reality in a slightly different register.

Definitions of politeness and intimacy also differ from country to country, complicating the issue further. Still, you can minimize the psychic surprise by periodically measuring the overall effect and reach of your blog through a service like SurveyMonkey or Technorati. Knowing more about who reads your blog may allow you to make a few adjustments along the way.

However, this is not the only potentially serious issue pertaining to your level of involvement. Another concern has to do with the sheer diversity of approaches, in an almost infinite number of combinations. Some people don’t even know where to start. Natania Barron, a new writer, wrote:

It’s astonishing [how] the Internet has changed the way writers are connected. I think, at first (speaking as a fledgling) it’s a little overwhelming. You move from your own space, your own work, your own thoughts, to a world of such dynamic complexity and variety that it can often cause a bit of paralysis, both creatively and from a networking aspect. You don’t know where to go — there are just too many options. And, unfortunately, good advice is just as plentiful as bad advice!

Sometimes this paralysis has less to do about the options and more about personality type. Austin-based writer Jessica Reisman posted this comment after I posted a blog entry about high-level involvement with electronic media:

My thought is, I agree with you very much, particularly on your things to keep in mind, but I must point out that introverts — who like people and connecting, but like it selective and fairly low-key, and who often do not have the massive output of persona and self that graces and enlivens the pages of some — can end up kind of overlooked and drowned out in this model.

Just about every creative person working today feels some kind of pressure to develop an Internet presence on a platform or platforms — and for good reason. According to Victoria Blake — the founder of Underland Press, the publisher of my latest novel, Finch — not being Internet savvy is “practically a deal breaker”:

Publishing is a partnership between publishing house and author. Just as [most authors] can only go so far without the help of a publishing house, so too a publishing house can only bring the book so far without the help of the author. This has always been true, but it’s becoming more true as publishing moves out of the big-house, blockbuster mode and into the small-independent, niche-market mode. Smaller publishing houses need to work with the author more closely to make the most of every marketing dollar and minute.

But what that presence is should and must be different for every individual. Not everyone has the ability or desire to engage on the Internet. The critically acclaimed and beloved short story writer Kelly Link, for example, can quite happily have no Internet presence whatsoever beyond a website with a news section. (On the other hand, her husband, Gavin J. Grant, does engage in more aggressive tactics on her behalf.)

Other factors that play a role in your decision include whether you have a book to promote, what kind of book it is, and also the time and effort devoted to unrelated commitments.

Levels of Involvement

The majority of people starting blogs or other types of web presence don’t think about their long-term commitment to their platforms. They create a blog or LiveJournal because it seems fun, or they think they have to — and because the standards the average blogger sets for him or herself are fairly low, you don’t have to think about these issues. You can create a useful or popular web presence by experimenting “on the job.” However, if you’re serious about strategic rather than tactical solutions, you need to think about these issues. Here, for example, are three possible levels of involvement:

• LEVEL ONE: DISTANT AND STATIC. At this level, you probably maintain a static website that includes a news update feature or you have a blog or LiveJournal but you only post once a week. Sometimes months go by when you don’t post. You’ll sometimes comment on someone else’s blog, but otherwise you’re more or less a ghost on the Internet. You respond to email within a week or two. From a publicist’s perspective, this level of involvement isn’t recommended. Visitors have no compelling reason to return. Also, most writers provide much more interaction for their readers — to the point that people expect more from everyone. If this is your level of commitment, you’ll need to make sure that one visit does leave a good impression.

• LEVEL TWO: NEARBY AND AVAILABLE. At this level, you probably use your blog as your website, perhaps through a Blogger or WordPress template. You update your blog at least three times a week and you have either an active Facebook or MySpace page. You might have two of these, but probably not all three. You’re likely to use an instant messenger and your blog more than any other platforms. You’re likely to have synched up your blog and Facebook to your Twitter account, but you don’t post on Twitter very much. You may or may not take advantage of Google searches of your name and related subjects sent to your email account. You may or may not comment regularly on other people’s blogs. You tend to answer email within a day or two of receiving it.

• LEVEL THREE: “I ONLY FEEL FULLY ALIVE MANIFESTED ON THE INTERNET”. At this level, you update your blog at least once a day and it also functions as a dynamic website — but you also have websites for individual book projects. You may even have multiple blogs to accommodate different kinds of content. You maintain active MySpace and Facebook pages that you visit regularly. You also have a Twitter account that you check twice a day at least, you use an instant messenger for close friends and colleagues, and you receive information directly into your email through Google searches and RSS feeds. You comment regularly in online forums and on other people’s blogs. You’re online constantly, so you respond to email within minutes or hours.

Every person will create their own unique combination of elements to build an online identity and a corresponding level of involvement. Although consistency is key to building a long-term presence, you can also play with levels. For example, I’m always updating my blog with new entries because that’s the bedrock of my online presence, but I’ll float in and out of Facebook and MySpace.

The effect of mixing up your level of involvement is to create a new sense of excitement in places long abandoned when you suddenly turn on the lights. Also, given the rate of change and mutation online, visiting a platform you haven’t been to in a few months keeps you up to date on any essential changes.

Follow Through = Personal Integrity

As you develop your online presence, keep in mind two important rules that will help you in the long-term.

• AFTER CHOOSING YOUR LEVEL OF INVOLVEMENT WITH THE INTERNET, STICK TO IT. As discussed, if you want minimal involvement, create a static website about your book or other creative endeavor. If you want medium-level involvement, establish a blog. If you want more, do more — but decide upfront what your approach will be, how much time you can spend, and whether you can actually follow through or not. Any disconnect may determine how much integrity you have in other people’s eyes. If, for example, you start a blog and you post a lively selection of entries over the first month, and then… nothing…that makes a statement about you in the public sphere. If you start out making your blog a personal diary and then it becomes basically a place to post information about your book, that disconnect is going to cause you to lose some readers. If you get drunk and post some rambling manifesto, that may also lose you some readers.

Where and how you choose to manifest yourself creates assumptions by the public about you as a writer and as a person, too—just as, in fiction, a wise writer knows that it is what your character does, not what s/he says that determines whether the reader thinks of that person as good, bad, or indifferent. If you’re the crank who always posts negative, cynical comments on writing advice blogs or in online forums, that will affect perceptions. Perceptions become a reality that’s hard to shed, and this can hurt the appeal of your work.

• WHEN YOU CAN, MAKE SURE THAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHO YOU ARE ONLINE AND WHO YOU ARE IN REAL LIFE IS MINIMAL. I used to think that you could control reader perceptions of your online persona if you stayed on message. However, I’m not sure that kind of control is possible. As Tessa points out, some natural dissonance is probably inevitable: “I have come across a noticeable schism in the blogTess readers are expecting and the meTess I’ve always been. These are people I’ve met previously, at that. I don’t think I can do anything about it, as in both cases I am just being me.” The fact remains, she says, that “different forums of communication will always filter a personality in unexpected ways, whether we choose it or not.”

Some types of dissonance you may just have to get used to and learn to live with if you want to have a public platform. What I would recommend is that you shouldn’t proactively create an online persona for distancing purposes or any other reasons. One danger is that if your platform becomes popular you begin to believe your online persona is your real persona, and usually your online persona is going to be less complex than you as a human being. Another is that the disconnect that occurs when people meet you in the flesh for the first time can be jarring and unpleasant. I remember meeting one blogger who strikes a very aggressive posture online. In person, he looked nothing like his photograph, was meek and mild, and I came away from the experience thinking of the Wizard of Oz for some reason. I never did really regain my respect for that blogger, whether that’s fair or unfair.

A Personal Space the Size of a Postage Stamp?

Not only is everything you share on the Internet public, but it will reflect on you as a creator. When you create a LiveJournal rather than a blog, it may feel more like a diary than a public space, but it isn’t — it’s still a public space. In addition, many people don’t realize how having private information made public invades their personal space.

Always think about what kinds of information you’re willing to reveal online, and whether you would be comfortable sharing the same information with a room full of strangers. The Internet can create a premature sense of intimacy. Even if you think that no one at all is reading your blog, a private fact revealed in a careless moment can come back to haunt you years later as readers discover your online presence.

Even if you disable comments, you are still placing yourself in the public sphere. Many people don’t understand this, leading to a couple of negative effects. One, they project an unprofessional demeanor without meaning to do so. Two, they put so much personal material on the Internet, and allow themselves to be so available to readers and friends, that they come to feel that their personal space has been reduced to the size of a postage stamp. Not to mention, whether it’s fair or not, book reviewers often consider such material fair game in trying to guess a writer’s motivations in creating a book. Suddenly that throwaway comment you thought playful and imaginative becomes the horrifying thesis for an excruciatingly incorrect analysis.

Another issue you may need to consider: Will a confessional-style approach to blogging leave enough personal experience in reserve for your actual fiction or other core creative endeavors? The answer will vary for each of you, and may even reflect generational differences.

For example, twentysomething writer Desirina Boskovich, doesn’t buy into the argument that writing about personal things in a blog format “removes its energy and power and burns up your fuel before you use it.”

For years I kept an online journal that was deeply personal, and I find that the themes I explored and developed there became a major influence on my work. I worked out ideas there in rough form so that I could use them more coherently in fiction. I still look back at it for inspiration because the themes I wrote about — longing, loss, mortality, desire — are still important to me, and I’m still trying to examine the implications.

Still, many creators, without realizing it, may be taking what would be rich mulch for writing stories and novels, and using it instead to fill content gaps. Sometimes, once you’ve shared a personal experience, you cannot get it back for use in your fiction because, in a sense, you’ve already told the story. Your subconscious resists going through the process again.

The point is, experiment to find out if your Private Booklife supports sharing personal information as part of your Public Booklife. And, in general, beware of any involvement in new media that takes away any part of your ability to be creative in your core projects. As new writer J. T. Glover wrote, the Internet, for all of its benefits, is also “a demon with anesthetic-laced claws and breath that smells of chloroform.” Don’t be lulled into thinking that any kind of writing done online is good for you.

Chapter 1
Building Your Booklife

The Pillars of Your Public Booklife

Creating and Managing Goals

Mapping Your Future: Think Strategically Not Tactically

Approaches to Planning

Change Management

Mission Statements

Benefits

“How Am I Possibly Going to Keep Up With All of This?!”

The Discovery Process

Being Yourself

Exploring Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Improving Your Abilities

Choosing Your Platforms

Facebook

MySpace

Twitter

YouTube

Other Platforms

Public Platform Example: The Blog

Creating a Blog

Temperament: Should You Release Your Inner Evil Monkey?

The Tension Between Ego and Information

Modeling and Content Development

Effective Approaches

Ineffective Approaches

Enhancements

Managing Your Involvement

Levels of Involvement

Follow Through = Personal Integrity

A Personal Space the Size of a Postage Stamp?

Chapter 1Building Your Booklife

The Pillars of Your Public Booklife

Creating and Managing Goals

Mapping Your Future: Think Strategically Not Tactically

Approaches to Planning

Change Management

Mission Statements

Benefits

“How Am I Possibly Going to Keep Up With All of This?!”

The Discovery Process

Being Yourself

Exploring Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Improving Your Abilities

Choosing Your Platforms

Facebook

MySpace

Twitter

YouTube

Other Platforms

Public Platform Example: The Blog

Creating a Blog

Temperament: Should You Release Your Inner Evil Monkey?

The Tension Between Ego and Information

Modeling and Content Development

Effective Approaches

Ineffective Approaches

Enhancements

Managing Your Involvement

Levels of Involvement

Follow Through = Personal Integrity

A Personal Space the Size of a Postage Stamp?

Chapter 1
Building Your Booklife