Focus and Today's Writer - A Brief Manifesto by Lidia Yuknavitch

All this month the lit guests who've contributed to this blog have discussed their own experience with focus in this new age of social media (relatively speaking): how they use the medium as a way to build their author platform, promote their work and connect with readers; and what this all means in the evolution of the writer and the publishing industry.

But what about this medium's affect on creativity? Will status updates and 140 characters be the new micro flash fiction or narrative?

Today I give the floor to Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books, 2011), to share her brief manifesto of focus and today's writer. Enjoy.

I pour my coffee I put half-and-half in it I shuffle over to the CYCLOPS I open a window.

I check my yahoo email I check my gmail email I check my email at work and at my website and my blog and oh yeah over at Linked In. I slug more joe I open another window. I check my facebook email I check the facebook live feed most recent stories I check my facebook friends' pages I try again to think of a clever pithy witticism to post as my status or maybe it's a sad or tired day and I'm neither clever nor pithy and I post an image of a dead bird. I drink coffee. Five people post comments about the dead bird. I check my book page I check my fan page I make sure they are not sad and lonely I respond to the five posts about the dead bird image ten more appear. Then there are all those friends whose walls I need to comment on, don't I? So they know I care and am engaged and just to reach out and touch?

What are my favorite Youtube songs and which one should I post?

How did it get to be 5:30 pm and who opened that god damn window and am I really still wearing my bathrobe and HEY! It’s 5:30 pm! Where is my cocktail?

Here it is straight-no-chaser: the only way I can balance my creative process as a writer with all the varieties of social media competing for my attention through the giant CYCLOPS otherwise known as my computer is to make the very forms of its existence part of everything I write.

In other words, while I’ve got all those media going on the CYCLOPS I think about formal strategies in writing to make use of. Fragmented narratives. Characters whose identities are cut up and displaced over a sea of technologies. Voices overlapping and interrupting and threatening to steal plots. Status updates as dialogue.

You see, I’ve given up. I’ve surrendered to the dominant modes of production of my time, just like I did with television, just like I did with film, just like I did when I owned my first computer and began to cry with joy that a technology for making stories finally existed that was IMAGE BASED and multilayered. Just like inside my head.

So my fellow social mediaheads. Facehookers. G-stringers. Stop worrying about the trash you didn’t take out and the clothes you didn’t wash and the dishes piling up in the sink. Those edits your publisher needs? Playfully twist them into status updates and share them with us; better yet, let us do some of them for you. Start reading facebook like you would a novel. Write novels that admit this is how we now live and love.

Comrades. Unite. Surrender. It’s our turn to quit acting attacked and take over the mode of production for what it is: another form of making.

m.02 (my two cents worth)

143 (I love you)

14AA41 (one for all and all for one)

99 (parent is no longer watching)

?^ (hook up?)

About the Contributor

(credit: Hawthorne Books)

Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of three works of short fiction: Her Other Mouths, Liberty's Excess, and Real to Reel, as well as a book of literary criticism, Allegories of Violence. Her works has appeared in Ms., The Iowa Review, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Fiction International, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Her book Real to Reel was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets and Writers and Literary Arts, Inc. Her work appears in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Forms at War (FC2), and Wreckage of Reason (Spuytin Duyvil). She teaches writing, literature, film and women's studies in Oregon.

Focus and Today's Writer - A Blogshop with Award-Winning Author, Ellen Meister

Today, award-winning author Ellen Meister (The Other Life; The Smart One; Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA) shares her secret to staying focused when faced with the reality of being an author in the age of social media, as we continue our focus on, well, Focus in a Writer's Life. I asked Ellen to contribute because she is easily one author I enjoy following who is clearly managing her bustling online presence and book promotion with grace and energy...and appears to be having fun!

EM: When people get even a whiff of how busy I am online, they look at me with the pity they reserve for an individual suffering intractable pain and say, "How do you DO it?"

They assume, of course, that there's some special secret, some hidden key to finding time to maintain such a ubiquitous online presence, especially since my personal life is jam-packed with three kids and my professional life is rife with demands and deadlines.

I suppose they wonder if I have the help of some new tech invention that does it all for me. Or if I have a team of geeks in my basement drinking Red Bull and typing out status updates.

Neither of these is true, of course, though I will admit that there is a secret. Otherwise I couldn't maintain all these active accounts:

A Twitter feed geared toward the writing community

http://twitter.com/EllenMeister

A personal Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/ellen.meister

A professional Facebook page (the term "fan page" makes me cringe)

http://www.facebook.com/EllenMeister.author

A website
http://ellenmeister.com/

A blog
http://ellenmeister.blogspot.com/

A group for published and aspiring authors at CafeMom
http://www.cafemom.com/

Participation in a group blog for women authors
http://girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com/

An active social presence at Zoetrope.com, a once-vibrant but now (sniff) dwindling writing community

http://www.zoetrope.com/

Facebook page for Dorothy Parker to help create a platform for my next book
http://www.facebook.com/DorothyParkerQuotes

Twitter feed for Dorothy Parker to help create a platform for my next book
http://twitter.com/_DorothyParker

The big secret? Quite simply, I enjoy it.

Think about it. You know all those people who seem so amazed that you have time to read? They, apparently, have no time in their lives for such luxury.

But if you asked them what happened on the last episode of The Jersey Shore or who got bumped from Dancing with the Stars, they'd be able to tell you. Why? Because they like it.

But enjoying your online presence isn't just a way to find time for it. It's a way to be successful at it. Because if you're just going through the motions, posting updates for the sake of having something, anything, spewing into cyberspace, you're not going to make any real connections. And that's what it's truly about. They call it social media for a reason.

So that's my best advice to anyone trying to build an online presence—post about the things that speak to YOU ... and you'll speak to others, too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to set my DVR ...

TLC: Managing your writer's life is all about setting priorities. If you choose wisely, you'll have enough energy and focus to do what you need to do to stand out to your reader AND have fun doing it. Will there ever be enough time? No. Just breathe, take it day by day and most of all, enjoy the process.

Also, please note, Ellen has chosen social media accounts and activity that make sense for her. She's also highly organized. Only attempt Ellen's example if you're a master of time management.

Here's to Focus in your week!

TLC

About the Contributor

Ellen Meister is the author of three novels. Her most recent book, THE OTHER LIFE (Putnam), has been nominated by BookPage for the Top 20 Books of 2011 and by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association for Book of the Year. It was also selected by the Austin Public Library for their Best Fiction of 2011 list, and was singled out by the American Booksellers Association for the prestigious Indie Next List. It is currently under option with HBO for a television series. She lives in Long Island, New York and is at work on her fourth novel FAREWELL, DOROTHY PARKER. For more information visit ellenmeister.com

Focus and Today's Writer - A Blogshop with Literary Agent Bree Ogden

The topic of author platform came up in a professional editorial group I'm in (doesn't it always?). The hot button issue was when do writers need to build their web presence - before, while or after they finish their manuscript?

Today I give the floor to literary agent, Bree Ogden with Martin Literary Management Group to shed some perspective on the what comes first, the author or the platform issue as we continue our focus on FOCUS in a writer's life this month.

BO: Aspiring young adult writers, I’m talking to you. How many Twitter followers do you have? High hundreds? In the thousands, you say? What about blog followers? You’re kidding me! 600?? Wow! Impressive!

So…where can I buy your book? Oh it’s not published? I see…

So admittedly, that was a bratty introduction. But sometimes you have to be bratty to get a point across (Sorry, mom). While creating a huge and loyal fan base is just the bee’s knees, it won’t necessarily help you get you manuscript published. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

Where is your focus and is it in the right place?

All the followers in the world aren’t going to write that manuscript for you. They aren’t going to query that agent and they sure aren’t going to convince an editor to shell out upwards of 60K for a manuscript that you neglected because you were too busy tweeting and blogging.

It’s a bit of a vicious cycle, it is. Your fan base doesn’t matter until you have a book deal, but once you have a book deal you are too busy editing to build a fan base. There is, however, one social media outlet that will help you when your agent is trying to get you that coveted book deal or even more importantly, when you are trying to land an agent.

Blogs/Web sites!

A word about blogs; it’s not about how many followers you have who have actually “subscribed” to your blog. It’s all about the stats. How many hits do you get a month? Where are those hits directed? Are they going to that guest post Stephanie Meyer wrote for you, or are they directed to the page about your manuscript. (The latter is a more beneficial place for them to be hitting).

Are you following?

Editors care more that your blog is getting attention because of the product they might possibly spend thousands of dollars on. If I may use one of my clients as an example: He has a Web site that generates an insane amount of hits a month. But he has a variety of his other projects and work on his Web site and only a small portion of it is dedication to his manuscript that I represent. However, 47% of his Web site hits go straight to that particular section. Now that’s something to write home about. Of the 20 or so other pages that people can explore on his Web site, nearly half his hits go to his manuscript page.

I know. I’ve just told you to focus on your manuscript before worrying too much about a fan base, and then I tell you how impressive it is to have a ton of hits on your site. Here is the distinction. And it’s a big one.

His work is completed.

Once you’ve written, rewritten, rewritten, edited, reedited, reedited and perfected your manuscript, that’s when you focus on a fan base. That’s not to say you can’t slowly build it up while you are working on you manuscript. But I know how tempting it is to get distracted with all the fun social media. And that, my friends, without a completed manuscript, is a road to nowhere.

TLC: Writers, publishers expect a lot from you. They want a knock-out manuscript, they want you to publicize yourself and sell your book in a very big way. Don't lose your focus, my dears. You've got to have something to sell before you can sell it and something to talk about before you go social.

About the Contributor

Holding a master’s degree in Journalism from Northeastern University, Bree Ogden of Martin Literary Management represents graphic novels, children’s books and young adult. Bree has a passion for the middle grade genre, especially boy-centric fiction. She loves dark and quirky humor, as well as dark writing in general. While she is not a huge fan of paranormal or supernatural in young adult, she loves sci-fi and horror. Bree finds inspiration in the television shows Dexter and the late Pushing Daisies, classical music, authors that can entertain while building the imagination and writers without egos. She loves anything that will make her scream in terror or laugh in delight.

http://www.AgentBree.Wordpress.com

http://www.MartinLiteraryManagement.com

http://www.Twitter.com/Breeogden

Focus and Today's Writer - A Blogshop with indie author, Brandon Tietz

This last year left me a little concerned about the role of social media in the writer's life and how all this seemingly instant socialization affects a writer's focus. As I've said in previous posts, writers (well, writers 35+) have had to evolve pretty quickly to keep up with the PR demands of most traditional publishing houses and compete with the thousands of other books begging for attention. All this competition is a lot to think about. As a result, I'm seeing more writers consider the market and their marketing plan before they have a finished product.

Marketing and PR is an important piece of the publishing picture, but what I'm seeing on my end are too many writers dreaming and scheming about how they're going to get their book into your hands or onto your reading device BEFORE the book is finished. Somewhere along the way, more attention is focused on sales and all things social than craft and the book finds its way to me needing TLC. And my answer to the distracted writer is, "Snap out of it!" (she says with Snow White kindness).

Enough is enough. I'm introducing FOCUS as a new writer's virtue, which will be our focus all month.

This week, indie author of Out of Touch and Chuck Palahniuk Writers' Workshop moderator Brandon Tietz snaps us back into focus with 5 must-implement essentials of writing, platform building and social media profile development.

Via Twitter, we now know which celebrity is on bump alert.

We know which pop star is in rehab by Facebook update.

And we know that you have a novel for sale.

This is your “instant voice.” It’s how you keep hundreds—potentially thousands of people in the loop about what’s going on with you.

So you tweet about your book, and you upload pictures of the cover art to Tumblr and your Wordpress, and then you start a Facebook fan page because you know you’re going to be a New York Times bestseller one day. You say “buy my book” in every online corner you can imagine. The problem is that everyone with a screenplay, modeling portfolio, or Nikon camera hanging around their neck is doing this too. Surrounded by all this competition, it’s hard to feel special.

So the big question is: you’re demanding all this attention, but do you really deserve it?

Just like with anything in a creative field, you have to earn it. So here are some tips to social networking as they relate to writing.

1.) First things first, your novel can’t suck. I don’t care if you reached your 5,000-person friend limit on Facebook or how many Twitter followers you have, if your book is shit, you’ll be seeing #craptasticbook hashtags with your name mentioned left and right. Always remember that craft takes priority over marketing. The most important thing about writing is and always will be: the writing.

2.) Don’t be spam. This is the biggest mistake I see aspiring authors make in relation to social networking. Around the second or third “buy my book” tweet of the day is usually when I click the “unfollow” button.

3.) Publication is the best kind of networking; it’s a reason to pay attention to you. A published short story or an article in a literary magazine will not only give you credibility, but also serves as a form of marketing by association.

4.) Don’t neglect in-person appearances. Live events are meant to be the proverbial pay-off for both the reader and author alike. I can honestly say that a good review will never compare to the sound of applause, so go out and do something. The whole point of social networking is to further enable being social in real life. Don’t forget that.

5.) Turn off the “author” switch from time to time. Some of the most interesting authors I follow talk about their work in less than half their posts. The rest is mentions of random things in their lives: what they’re reading, a good movie, etc. Never forget that a public persona also involves you being a regular person.

These are tips to keep you from getting buried in the static that is social networking—not hard and fast rules. Ultimately, you have to decide what works best for you. Finding your social voice may very well be just as difficult as discovering your literary one, but not impossible by any means.

This is probably the best top 5 rules for using social media to your benefit list I've seen. Feel free to use them after your major crafting is all wrapped up.

And of course, if you have tips that help you stay focused please share.

Here's to getting FOCUSED!

TLC

About the Contributor

Brandon Tietz is the author of Out of Touch and one of the moderators of the Chuck Palahniuk Writers' Workshop. He has been published in Cannoli Pie Magazine, Red Fez Publications, Troubadour 21, Outsider Writers Collective, and the upcoming Velvet Anthology, along with flagship authors, Stephen Graham Jones and Craig Clevenger. His next book, a themed collection, is called Vanity. You can visit him at his official website: www.wearevespertine.com