The Virtual Writer's Group

We've moved (temporarily)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:50:00 +0000

The Florida Writers Conference is a great place to hone your skills as a writer and learn about the business side of the equation as well. The conference blog not only features information about the conference itself, but also on writing, the tools of the trade, and the business side of the fence. It's a great conference. You should come.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm the Marketing director. For the moment, though, I'm spending most of my time and energy on that blog, so please come on over and join the fun.

Re-setting

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:28:00 +0000

I'm tired.

The last fews months have been long on trips to take and retrieve children, support calls at work for things that had to be resolved right now (often because the user waited too long to start the process), and the need to produce more, better-quality data, quicker, while doing other things, too.

In other words, everyday life. Don't get me wrong. There's been nothing major going wrong, it's just been kind of a grind.

It strikes me that the first novel has to be the hardest. Maybe the second or third, or any novel you write while having mommy or daddy duty and a full-time job. And yet, if you look at early novels by people, and the lengths they've gone to get them done, you have to acknowledge the accomplishment.

But what happens when you need a reset, when your focus has drifted, and you need to get back to the basics? Given the rest of life, how singular does your focus have to be? Can you write and market a book while marketing a writers conference and considering whether you need to find another job? Can you do it while acting as care-giving to a loved one and working fulltime? Can you do it while major changes occur in your life?

The answer, of course, is yes. You can do all that if you choose to do it. By focusing on what's important and arranging everything else around the big rocks. (As in, put the big rocks in the jar first and the little rocks will fit around them.) By grinding through the times when energy is low and demands are high until the equation changes. By having faith in the future and your ability.

Critique Groups: A Primer

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:06:00 +0000

My friends really dig my writing. I'm sure Stephen King's friends dig his writing, too. Stephen has several million non-friends who dig his writing, so he's got a large dispassionate audience to give him valid input. I'm not so lucky, and you probably aren't either.

A critique group isn't going to make you as rich as Stephen King, but it will provide you the input that your friends won't. And if you find a good group, they'll read the parts that might make your mom blush and give you valid input.

Unfortunately, there's no website that lists and ranks all the critique groups out there, weeding out the chaff and giving you the best of the best. And if there were, the very best groups might have waiting lists. The best you can do is find one near you and try it out. Based on my experience, these questions will help you with the weeding process (your mileage may vary):

-- Do you have to pay to join? I was in a fantastic group for about three years, and though I didn't have to pay to join the group, I did have to be a member of the Florida Writers Association. If you do have to pay to join, make sure you get your money's worth.

-- How often can you submit? If you're working through a novel or book, it's hard to get any traction if you don't get to submit regularly. If you can only submit once a month, many critiquers might have to relearn your voice and characters every time, which means their feedback might be skewed. On the other hand, if you can submit every week, you'll also have to read others' manuscripts every week, which leaves little time for writing.

-- What are the rules? The leader and members should be able to summarize the rules without much problem. If there are no rules, or if understanding of the rules isn't consistent, it could mean problems. Our group allowed you to submit up to 20 pages, double-spaced, each time (twice a month). Submissions were limited to fiction, memoirs, and essays. Poetry, screenplays, and most non-fiction weren't welcome. We didn't have the expertise. Also, after some problems, we decided everything had to be typed.

-- Are the rules enforced? If the rules say 20 pages, double-spaced, are people regularly allowed to submit 35 pages? If a member's getting ready to submit a manuscript to Donald Maase, I'd probably critique that much. Otherwise, I'd probably so less than 20, if for no other reason to show my displeasure at their disdain for the rules and my time.

-- How do the critiques work? In my group, we passed out the samples and read them over two weeks, then critiqued the next time. Each person spoke for each sample. After a time, we started to limit the length of time people got for critiques, because we were getting out half an hour late each week. We also limited the membership to eight people per group (but had as many as three groups going at a time).

The answers to these questions will vary, as will each writers' desired answers. I liked having a smaller group with bigger writing samples. You were expected to submit work that was proofread and you were also expected to spend some time and effort on preparing your critique. We met Monday nights, so a couple hours or more each Sunday always went into the critique.

Your needs may be different, but if you're going to put the time in, you should find a group that give you what you need.

Next time: What should you expect in a critique?

What's on your MP3 player?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:05:00 +0000

(I'll get back to Twhirl. I promise.)

When the children are home, our house is the place to be. And when the doorbell rings, Max the Wonderdog feels it's his duty to announce the doorbell as only he can, just in case we didn't hear it. And then there's the inevitable yelling match between my two lovely children about computer time or who has to empty the dishwasher or whatever indignities they're heaping on each other.

Sometimes the only way to write is to seal myself off from everyone in the world. And because I don't have an invitation to the Vice President's secret location or a lifetime membership to Yaddo, I have to make due. Fortunately, I own an MP3 player and a reasonable set of earbuds.

Stephen King often writes to the hardest of rock music. Others are inclined differently. Some must even stoop to country music or contemporary rap (abbreviated as c-rap). For me, whose musical tastes are wonderful and eclectic, here's a sampling what's on my MP3 player:

U2 (Almost anything)

Dropkick Murphys (Kiss Me, I'm ****faced is my favorite. Yes, I have deep-seated issues.)

Electric Light Orchestra (Almost anything, but I like Do Ya)

Kansas (Almost anything)

Talking Heads (Almost anything)

NFL Films music

Patsy Cline

AC/DC

Chicago (earlier material)

Brian Setzer Orchestra

Sinatra (The Way You Look Tonight)

Genesis (I tend to like Phil better than Peter, but respect you if you disagree)

INXS

The Cars (I like the later stuff, but the earlier stuff is great, too)

John Denver (Looking for Space has amazing lyrics)

Paul McCartney/Wings and the Beatles

I'm fairly certain that my MP3 player is the only place where you can hear Patsy Cline followed by AC/DC, then Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode followed by the ? and the Mysterians and the Hives.

Does music work for you? If so, what kind of music?

And would you like an Australian sheep dog who likes to announce the doorbell and gets scared at thunderstorms?

What stops you from writing?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:08:00 +0000

I'm sitting at the laptop, awash in its pale glow, trying to figure out what to write. The Mets are playing the Giants on ESPN and I should be watching, but I also need to get ahead a little on the blog.

It's late May now, which means school is starting to wind down. Little League is over, and most of my child-transportation duties will involve taking daughter number one to synchronized swimming practice and hanging out at Panera until practice ends.

With all this extra time, writing should rocket forward, right? I'd like to think so, but I'm not holding my breath. In addition to this blog, I also blog for the Florida Writers Conference (awesome conference, you should go), I have a blog I'm posting pieces of short stories to, and I'm experimenting with some other online approaches to story-telling.

On the other hand, this week, I found time to: watch the season finale of Fringe, watch the two-hour season-finale event of LOST, went to a Rays baseball game, attended two Little League games, went to a season-ending party, walked for a collective total of about five hours, and attended a synchro fundraiser. Some of those activities come with parenthood. Some are just part of a balanced life.

But, the only thing stopping me from writing is me. And if I'm not passionate enough about what I write to put other things aside, it's an sign I need to work on the concept a little more.

Is $15 too much for an e-book?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:19:00 +0000

On the heals of yesterday's series of questions about what you'd pay for books published in non-standard formats, comes this article from the May 17 edition of the New York Times. The article presents David Baldacci's argument that substantially lower prices for e-books aren't sustainable in the economics of current publishing.

The article says that publishers are caught between the demands of "authors who want to be paid high advances and consumers who believe they should pay less for a digital edition." But in many cases, publishers struggle to make back the large advances and wind up losing money, even on otherwise successful books. No one wants to miss the next Harry Potter.

But if consumers aren't willing to pay more of the e-books, is the e-book phenomenon going to die on the vine? Not likely. Someone will push the e-books into existence, and force changes to an economic system filled with skewed incentives.

Would you pay?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:20:00 +0000

Would you pay for access to a website that has well-written stories and novels? If you spend $150 a year on books, would you pay $120 a year to be able to read or download stories from a single author or multiple authors?

Would you pay 99 cents to download 50 pages of a book by a compelling author? Then, if you liked what you read, would you pay another 99 cents for the next 50 pages?

Would you visit a blog that has episodic stories posted every month? Would you make a point of clicking through the ads for the sponsors of that site? Would you buy those products to help support the writer?

Would you tell your friends about such a site or a blog? Would you reference it on Facebook or in your e-mails to people?

Would you be less likely to read the site if the character drinks a Coke and the Coke is linked to the Coca-Cola website?

Do you absolutely need a physical book in your hands, so you can physically turn pages? Or if books moved to an electronic media, would you go along?

These questions are all hypothetical, but the answers will drive the future of how people publish and read books. The answers will also structure how literature is structured. If people pay to download sections of books, each section is more likely to end with a hook, sometime to entice the readers to come download the next section.

If the book is good enough, and the reason is compelling enough, you'll probably go outside the boundaries of what you think you'd like. And once you've done that, you might do it again. Which brings us to the final question: Is a great story any less great if it's told in an electronic format?

Amazing use of backstory and symbolism (or why Juliet Burke might not be dead)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:28:00 +0000

This week was the penultimate season finale for Lost, one of the most intricately written shows I've ever watch. You can complain about the pace of the first three seasons or the confusion of the time travel this season, but the show has been a clinic on character development and the use of symbolism and foreshadowing.

Which brings me to Juliet Burke. The last time we saw Juliet, she had set off a hydrogen bomb, presumably killing herself and perhaps many of the other characters. Given her proximity--a couple feet from the bomb--and the fact that Elizabeth Mitchell, the actress who plays her, will be in another series next year, Juliet is definitely dead.

Then there's her name, Juliet. She died at the end of Romeo and Juliet. But the writers have left a series of innocuous clues that make her fate cloudy.

In season two of the show, Juliet was sentenced to death, but Ben, another major character, commuted the sentence, but ordered her to be marked on the back. The mark (displayed above) was perceived as a punishment--and it must have hurt. From that point forward, Juliet was effectively displaced from her group, shunned as if she wore the mark of Cain. In Biblical lore, Cain was given this mark after killing his brother Abel. He was cast out of the garden of Eden for his sin, but also given a mark so that any who harmed him would know the wrath of God.

The mark, which has been conveniently forgotten, has some interesting meanings, too. According to Lostpedia, the mark:

Resembles the alchemic mark for spirit.

Includes an eight-pointed star. The number eight often symbolizes rebirth or resurrection.

Mirrors the Mark of Cain, which is a commandment from God that the marked person not be killed.

The point of this post isn't whether Juliet is dead. It's about building a layered story, and taking symbolism from other sources to enrich your story. Lost is filled with such symbolism. Some of the symbols are red herrings and some are real forecasters of story.

And that goes to the craft of effective story-telling. Layering your plot and your characters with telling details deepens the story for everyone involved. It doesn't have to be a tie of the character's name to a Shakespearean character. It could be a character's foible--perhaps a fear or nervous habit--described in a manner that makes it seem like a throw-away, until a future revelation gives it more meaning in the story.

How do you do that? How do you get people to argue about your characters?

We'll talk about it in future, periodic episodes.

Making Twitter Easier: Thwirl (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:06:00 +0000

Unlike, Tweetdeck, Thwirl is designed with a minimalist approach in mind. While Tweetdeck can take up a lot of real estate on your desktop, Thwirl is designed to be like a Windows Vista widget.

The interface displayed above shows everything Tweetdeck did, but doesn't display as much, or make the display as big. By default, all the tweets in your subscription stream appear. But you can use the buttons long the bottom to change the display to replies, direct messages (DMs), anything you've marked as a favorite (more about that in a future installment), or followers and those you follow.

To show followers, click the Friends/Followers button at the botton, then click the Followers button at the top. To show those you are following, click the Friends/Followers button, then click the Friends button at the top.

Controlling the API
As with any Twitter application, you must control the calls you make to the API or you'll be shut out until the next hour. To control the API calls in Thwirl, click the wrench button in the upper right corner, then click the Network tab and adjust the sliders.

Upcoming: Thwirl searches and shortening URLs in Thwirl

Plot? Character? Why choose?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Recently, on the Florida Writers Conference blog, I asked which was more important, plot or character. (One of the sessions covers that question, among other things.) Obviously, plot and character are as important as your right and left leg. You can't really choose which one is more important because both of them are required to allow you to stand.

But everyone has a dominant leg, and mine, in this metaphor, is character.

The first three seasons of Lost moved at a glacial pace. There were flashbacks galore, as we gained insight into the characters that make up the Magical Island. We found out what made everyone tick, even characters who are long since dead. Sometimes the plot points only seemed important in relationship to the character development.

Then, Jack flashed forward instead of back, the pace went from leisurely to breakneck. Since then, rescuers have found the island, turned out not to be rescuers, six of the survivors got off, the island disappeared and started hoping through time, Juliet and Sawyer wound up in love in 1978, Hurley went nuts, Jack became an addict, and Kate became a mommy. Then they all came back and half of them wound up in 1978 and the other half wound up in 2008. And finally, John was murdered by Ben, then came back to life and led everyone on the island--the 2008 version.

I still like the show, because I care about the characters. And because I care what happens to them, the show's writers get a lot of lattitude from me when it comes to plot contrivances. In most universes, going to a frozen cave and turning a wheel isn't going to cause people to careen around through time like little silver balls in a galactic pinball machine.

I'll put up with a lot if I like the people who are going through it. Magnum, PI is one of my favorite shows largely because of the character development. The central characters, Magnum and Higgins, aren't even close to the same people they were at the beginning of the series. Magnum was kind of shallow and immature and Higgins was a boorish pain in the butt.

By the time the series ended, they were interesting enough that you could get trapped in an elevator with them and not be bored. (In fact, that exact thing happened in a seventh-season episode--and it was a good time.)

Obviously, plot is required. Having Magnum and Higgins sit on the porch and watch the grass grow wouldn't be much fun. But strong characters can cover an average plot--and the details they bring can turn a pedestrian plot into a page-turner.

Plotholes are blessings

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:26:00 +0000

I've referenced Magnum in an elevator recently, so I'd like to go back to it to prove a point about plot. In the second-to-last season, Magnum and Higgins were stuck in an elevator after an extended period of petty brawling, when Magnum accused Higgins of being Robin Masters.

The accusation was a late-in-the-game invention by the show's creators without much basis in earlier character development. The show had already indicated very clearly that Archer Hayes held Higgins' position before Higgins did and regularly communicated with Robin Masters. Also, Higgins was fired--at least in theory--to be part of an intelligence operation that had him leading a band of extremists.

It was clear that Higgins couldn't actually be Robin Masters. The plot holes were just too large. Of course, if those plot holes could be filled believably, then what started as a contrived plot point because a well-conceived twist.

Let's say for a second that Higgins isn't really Robin Masters after all. Let's say Robin Masters doesn't exist, at least as a person. But to have a boozy, incredibly wealthy playboy who jets around the world and is considered a flaky philantropist, a rich clown with a big heart--that might be worthwhile to the British government.

So maybe Higgins isn't Robin Masters, but maybe he's running the operation for the Brits. And because Thomas Magnum, an intelligence officer with a few screws potentially loose from being a POW and watching his wife theoretically get killed, could use someone to keep an eye on him, why not enlist him ass part of this operation without really letting him know?

This approach doesn't handle all the plot issues, but it addresses a lot of them, and even makes for future character development. If Magnum were used in a British government operation without his knowledge--by a man who claims to be his friend--he's probably going to feel betrayed by Higgins, a father figure, and by his country.

Now the plot hole isn't just eliminated, but the new information takes the characters in new and interesting direction.

Making Twitter Easier: Tweetdeck, Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:05:00 +0000

You've got Tweetdeck going and everything's pretty good, except you don't know how to send a message or do any of the other supposedly cool stuff I promised. Today, we'll get into some of that.

To display or hide the area for entering Tweets, click the button all the way to the left with the dialog balloon displayed (the one directly next to the reference to Tweetdeck and the version number).

If you want to Tweet, enter your message in the What are you doing? field. To the right you'll see a counter that keeps track of the number of characters you have left.

Shortening a URL
URLs aren't typically short. The base URL for this blog (http://pub-news.blogspot.com/) is 28 characters long, and that's before I include anything that directs you to a specific post. Fortunately, there's a field where you can enter a URL and engage a service to reduce its length. Just enter the URL in the Shorten URL field, then click the Shorten button. For the base URL displayed above, this function reduces the length from 28 character to 19 characters. For longer URLs, the reduction is much more dramatic.

Interacting with People
If you want to send a message to all your followers, just type it in the What are you doing? field and either press Enter or click the conversation balloon butto to the right of the Twitter and Facebook checkboxes.

If you want to reply to an individual person's Tweet, hover your mouse pointer over their picture and click the Reply to button (upper left corner). @theirusername appears in the What are you doing? field. Adding the at sign and the person's name to the Tweet assures it will show up in their Replies area.

Retweeting allows you to forward someone else's tweet to all your followers. To retweet someone else's tweet, hover your mouse pointer over the person's picture and click the button with the right-facing arrow (the lower left button). Retweeting replicates the person's tweet with an RT in front of it. It's an honor to be retweeted. It's also okay to edit someone else's Tweet if it won't fit.

To send a direct message to someone, hover the mouse pointer over their picture and click the envelope. Sending a direct message starts the tweet with D thatpersonsname, which uses up some of your 140 characters. If you send someone a direct message, they're the only one who sees it.

Making Twitter Easier: Tweetdeck, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:08:00 +0000

As cool as Twitter is, it's a pain in the neck when you're working on it from the Twitter web page. You have to reload to see any new message and moving between your feed, the messages that reference you (@yournamehere), and any sent directly to you, is too difficult.

If only there were a tool that would allow you to do all that quickly and easily.

There are several tools like that, two of which are most popular: Tweetdeck and Twhirl.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a bigger application than Twhirl, but if you don't mind switching among applications, it's worth the monitor space. I have Tweetdeck set up with three columns: one for all messages, one for messages that reference me (@christheauthor), and one for any messages sent to me privately (DMs, or Direct Messages).

The key to using Tweetdeck is the Settings function, which controls how Tweetdeck works for you. Most of the settings are self-explanatory (or will be after you fiddle with them a little). The most important setting is found on the Twitter API tab.

Important: The Twitter API
Twitter has to control how many times you connect to the server, or its performance will suffer and--if things get too busy--it will crash. To prevent that, Twitter limits the number of times you can hit the server in a fixed period of time.

Tweetdeck lists a Remaining API ratio in the upper right hand corner of the window. The API starts at 100/100, and is reduced each time you hit the server. It resets every hour, and if you reach 0 before the hour is up, you can't attach to the server again until the next hour starts.

In the picture below, my API is down to 58/100 with 48 minutes to go before the next hour starts. In other words, I'm likely to get to 0 before then, which means any updates will be delayed until the next hour.

Controlling the API Value
To control the API value, click the setting button (the wrench button), and click the Twitter API tag. The settings listed below generally keep me clear of any API problems when I use Twitter.

Next time: Some other cool things you can do in Tweetdeck.

Happy Mothers Day

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Sun, 10 May 2009 11:03:00 +0000

I don't know what it is about my genre (mystery) and mothers. Mostly, they aren't around. Spenser, Kinsey Millhone, VI Warshawski, Thomas Black, Dave Robicheaux, Kenzie and Gennaro--none of them had moms with whom they had a close relationship.

And that's too bad, really. But there's something about a fictional private investigator that doesn't allow for moms in their world. I mean, if Sam Spade was getting garbage from his mom for the way he did his job, that wouldn't work. Would it?

Relationships with parents are tricky, and you don't understand how tricky until you have kids of your own and enough time's gone by to understand the depth of the mistakes you've made with your kids. One of my biggest fears is that someday, when they're grown, one of my kids will be sitting in the living room and say "You know, you did a really bad job."

Parenting is tricky work. It's a job that you don't get to walk away from when things aren't going well. You can't take a mental-health day, or schedule a vacation day for when you're overwhelmed, to get your bearings back. It's a 24x7 thing. It's hard and emotionally complex. And when you have kids, it makes you look at your parents in a different light. The things you used to be angry about change. You aren't necessarily thrilled, but you understand how fragile and fallible people are.

Sort of like when you're developing a character.

So Happy Mother's day to anyone who is a mom. It's a tough job and the critics can be unforgiving. But the real key was just being there and showing love.

The courage to drive people away

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:43:00 +0000

Let's face it. Most sane people like to be liked. In addition, most writers like to be liked, as well. I want you to like me.

I want you to like my writing, too. But maybe that's a fatal mistake.

On a regular basis, I read Seth Godin's blog. If you're looking for a blueprint about how a knowledge economy works--and that's where our craft is headed--Seth's book Tribes describes what a knowledge economy feels like. His approach to business is a great one for building readership, especially now that the tools are available online.

In his blog, he linked to another blog called Makin Ads, which described a night at a music club. The bands there were good, but the most memorable act of the night wasn't a band. He wasn't extraordinarily talented. He sat in the middle of the room with an acoustic guitar and started singing. In doing so, he made it a point to personally engage each person in the place.

A lot of people, not used to the difference, left. For those who stayed, he was the most unforgettable act.

A few days ago, I wrote about Cornelia Read's book, which severely damaged her relationship with her mother. If the book is well-executed, it'll help people deal with the wounds caused by sexual abuse. It's easy to say from here, but that benefit outweighs the harm done to the woman who, in this case, allowed the sexual abuse to occur.

In some cases, your best, most personal work may be the thing that alienates people the most. You may strain or even break some friendships. Your thought processes may grind to a sudden halt as you recognize the risk you take with what you write.

The next line is supposed to be take the risk anyway. No blog can tell you that. You have to determine that for yourself. The opportunity cost may be too great, and that's okay.

But think about the guy sitting in the middle of the music hall--the one who drove a lot of people away because it wasn't the comfortable presentation everyone was used to. He wasn't better than everyone else, but he was truer than everyone else.

When the time comes, I hope I have the courage for that kind of truth.

Twitter: How do I get followers? (Part II)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Once you've established your profile on Twitter, the best way to get followers is to find some people to follow and follow them.

You can start with me. To follow me, log into Twitter, then go to http://twitter.com/chrisTheAuthor and click the Follow button under the incredibly handsome man in the Mets hat. Let me know you've followed me, either my sending a Tweet (a message) starting with @christheauthor. I will follow you back.

Ask around and see who else you know is using Twitter. If you have facebook accounts, many people will reference their Twitter accounts there.

Twitter Search
If you click the Find People link at the top of the Twitter page, you can enter peoples' names and click their user name and follow them. As a word for warning, there are, for instance, three pages of Chris Hamiltons on Twitter. Make sure you've got the right one. Then converse with people a little.

Some suggested people to follow
In my experience, these people have excellent insight about Twitter or writing or both, and are worth following:

Penny Sansevieri, http://twitter.com/bookgal

Guy Kawasaki, http://twitter.com/guykawasaki

Paula Krapf, http://twitter.com/paulaatame

Trina (TS) Elliott, http://twitter.com/TS_Elliott

MB Weston (appearing at the Florida Writers Conference), http://twitter.com/mbweston

Then, look at their followers and follow anyone you're interested in.

Not all Twitter accounts are people
You can also follow publishers, news organizations, sports news, and just about anything else. Just get in, experiment, and have some fun with it.

Twitter: How do I get followers? (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:48:00 +0000

Okay, so you went and signed up at Twitter.com and all you've got is this dopey little picture that looks like o_O, and zero followers. How can you build that into a bunch of followers you can use to grow your online presence?

The first step is to modify your Twitter profile to be personal. Here's a few steps you can take to make your Twitter presence more useful:

Modify your profile

In the upper right corner, click Settings.

Enter your website or blog in the More Info URL: field.

Enter a good one-line bio.

Do not click Protect My Updates. This option limits what people can see about you. You're in Twitter to mingle and you can't mingle if people can't see what you're saying.

Create your picture

Create a small avatar-like picture for yourself. Your picture is better if it's you, rather than a logo. Again, this is a personal media, so you want people to connect with you. If you can make your picture more personable, you're more likely to connect with people. My avatar is me in a Mets hat, so I can get sympathy after their bullpen blows yet another lead. Note: Your picture should be more or less square and cannot be more than 700k in size.

In the Settings section, click the Picture tab.

Select your picture and click Save.

Next time, we'll talk about how to start to build followers.

Twitter: The Mortar in Your Social Media Wall (Part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:31:00 +0000

You can understand Facebook and blogging. But what about Twitter? What can you do with 140 characters?

Truthfully, you can't do much in 140 characters, if you view it as a single tool that doesn't connect with other tools. Using Twitter on its own is like trying to build a wall out of mortar. You might be able to build a wall, but it's not going to be very high or very stable. Most likely, you're going to wind up with a big gray mound that isn't worth very much.

Mortar is used most effectively with bricks, to knit the bricks together to form a wall. That's how you should use Twitter. Consider your website, your Facebook profile and page, and your blog as the bricks. Twitter will help them stand together is a single useful unit.

Let's say you've got a book tour. You're appearing at three or four local book stores and you're guest writing on three or four different blogs. If you have a group of followers built up (more on that another time), you can post your appearance on your website, then Tweet (create a Twitter post) that links to your website. In your 140 characters, you might say "Shane Black battles his past and the Tampa mafia. Booksigning tonight @ B&N, North Dale Mabry, Tampa." That leaves you 40 characters for your URL. (We'll talk about how to shorten your URL in a subsequent post.

Another use for Twitter is to highlight your blog posts. For instance, when I posted the most recent Google settlement post, I posted "Google to give 63% of revenue to authors who opt in. Good overview of the proposed Google Books settlement..." followed by the URL.

Again, Twitter is best use as a complement with other components. More on how to use Twitter in upcoming posts.

Use "utilize"? Never! Well, almost never.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:59:00 +0000

Utilize is the most worthless word in the English language. Seriously. It's superfluous, unneeded, pretentious. Useless.

And yet some very intelligent people constantly use utilize. From baseball commentary to business meetings, the utilization rate of utilize seems be increasing on a daily basis. In other words, people use it a lot.

Therein lies my dislike of the word utilize. There's no place to use this word where you can't say use instead. Right?

So why do people use utilize? Well, it sounds important. High utilization rates sound more impressive than saying people use this a lot. I mean, if you have high utilization rates, you are like to have a higher marginal income optimization rate, right? You won't get laid off if you're billable a lot.

So for all my dislike of utilize, I would never use it? Right?

Wrong.

The prime directive is to reach your audience. If your audience expects the word utilize, use it. If you're more likely to sway the project's budget committee to give your project money, then use it and all the other expected words. Your job is to be effective, and the rest be damned. Second-person writing with lots of active voice doesn't usually work in academic circles. You might be right to avoid passive voice, but in some circumstances you'd be dead right.

Of course, if you're writing dialog, the rules change. If your character is an agressive, career-minded up-and-coming manager, they'd be more likely to use corporate speak. Of course, you could also have a down-to-earth, stunning, strikingly attractive writer who keeps trying to correct her.

Resources about the Google settlement

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:45:00 +0000

The deadline for opting out of the Google settlement has been extended to September 4. This is a confusing issue that can't be explained in a couple blog posts. So here are some key points and resources:

-- Google has scanned more than 7 million works to provide and potentially charge for access to them. Most of the works to this point have been academic, but Google intends to create an all-inclusive library.

-- Two class-action lawsuits were brought against Google over copyright infringement. A settlement has been agreed to, to resolve this issue.

-- The settlement provides Google with rights to digitize and use included works on a non-exclusive basis. That is, you still retain rights to your books. However, if your book is included, you cannot grant exclusive access to others.

-- Only works published through January 5, 2009 are covered under this settlement. Works must be registered with the US Copyright Office to be subject to the settlement.

-- You can opt out of this settlement through September 4, 2009 (recently extended from May 5). You can also choose to remain in the settlement, but object to the terms by September 4, 2009.

-- If you remain in the settlement, you control the extent to which Google can use your work.

-- If you remain in the settlement, Google will pay at least $60 for past use of your work (less for inserts, such as graphics, charts, excerpts, etc. Beyond that, Google will pay 63% of its revenue from this database to a books rights registry, similar to ASCAP or BMI, to forward to rights holders.

-- To receive the benefits of the settlement, you must submit a claim form by January 10, 2010.
This settlement is not final. A fairness hearing will take place in US District Court in New York City on October 7 to determine whether the terms are fair and appropriate. The court may uphold the settlement, reject the settlement, or modify it.

In addition, the Department of Justice may decide to bring anti-trust actions against Google, and strike down the settlement or force changes.

Resources:
-- Google Book Settlement website. The settlement itself is more than 300 pages long, and the summary is 60 pages long. The FAQ may be very useful to you.

-- California Lawyers for the Arts webinar. A publishing and intellectual property attorney and author's take on the settlement.

When you tick someone off

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:50:00 +0000

A relative of my wife, a very sweet and generous lady, once asked me if I use the f-word in my writing.

"No," I said, primarily because we were guests in her house and it would have upset her.

Of course, I lied. I use the f-word, but not gratuitously. In On Writing, Stephen King addresses this by saying that if your writing calls for profanity, then profanity it should be. When Stephen King talks about how to write a story, it's good to listen. So, some day, I might irritate this lovely person when some dialog saves her money on her next perm.

In her recent post on Murderati, Cornelia Read does that one better. She bases part of a plot on events that happened to her and her sister as a child. Because of what happened, and her mother's role in it, her mother is quite angry with her.

Sometimes, there's going to be a tension between what we write and what might anger or hurt others. And while the writer is me says if they have to be hurt, then hurt they should be, the human being in me isn't so sure.

I haven't read Cornelia Read's story, but if she does a good job with it, I think there'll be a lot more good done by her writing it, than the harm she might cause locally. And that's really the key, isn't it? It's like using the f-word, or doing anything else in your writing. You have to do it with a purpose and that purpose should move the story forward and add to its value. Sometimes the hardest material to write is also the best.

Here's hoping that you never have to find out. Or maybe that you do.

This case will affect writers more than any other for a long time.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:09:00 +0000

For the uninitiated, Google has been scanning books into a giant database since 2004. Currently, there are seven millions books scanned into Google's big database. Of those, a million have had their copyright expire, putting them in the public domain. Another million are currently in print with active copyrights, and Google gained permission from publishers to scan the books. The remaining five million are out of print, but have active copyrights. In many cases, the copyright holder is very difficult to find.

To be sure, Google has spent an enormous amount of time and energy, not to mention money, on this effort and would like to eventually sell access to all these works and more. That desire didn't sit well with authors and publishers, who sued Google. Through negotiations Google reached an agreement.

In the deal, Google will be able to sell individual digital books, as well as access to its database. (Libraries will receive free access via a single terminal per location.) In return, Google will give 63% of its revenue to a books rights registry that will distribute the money to publishers and authors. Google will also provide $34.5 million to help build the registry and provide $45 million to a fund that will pay copyright holders at least $60 for each scanned title. (Source: San Jose Mercury News)

Authors have until September 4 to opt out of the deal and retain their right to sue Google. But, by opting out, they will also lose the right to have their books included in the registry, which may be the only game in town. Google will be able to digitize pretty much anything and show up to 20% of it for free. Currently, it links you to places where you can buy the rest of the book. (Speaking as a wannabe author, this sounds like a pretty good deal to me.)

The problem comes because Google is the only game in town. It may eventually decide to make all of your book free or none of it. It may also decided to drop your book entirely (similar to the Amazon "glitch" that resulted in gay-themed books falling out of its rankings system a while back). It may raise the cost of accessing the books to an enormous amount.

Or it may use its power in nefarious ways we can't yet imagine. (Uhhh, yeah. We don't like the way you wrote this part, so we took the liberty of rewriting it for you in a more non-offensive way. But it's okay. You can opt out. Of course, no one will actually see your book after that, but...)

A hearing will either endorse or reject the agreement on October 7. In the meantime, the Justice Department is starting to ask questions about anti-trust issues.

Personally, I'm split on this. On the one hand, Google is the only entity that had this vision to begin with and has poured an enormous amount of resources into it. On the other hand, I'm not comfortable with Google having that much power over my work, and the work of pretty much everyone else.

This case will have more impact on writers than any other for a long time.

This chapter brought to you by...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:40:00 +0000

The first time I had Samuel Adams beer, it was because Spenser drank one and really liked it. I figured why not try one? I did, and I liked it.

Product placement has long been a staple in movies and television shows. How often, when you watch a TV show, does someone's laptop have the ubiquitous Apple logo on its cover? In books, however, the product placement, like Spenser drinking Sam Adams, has been about telling the readers something about a character.

But, as the wave of multimedia advances into the book market and e-books take up a bigger niche, can product placement be far behind? After all, if Spenser's going to drink a Sam Adams anyway, shouldn't Robert B. Parker receive some money for the people who click through the mention to the Sam Adams website? Affiliate programs work this way all the time. If a certain number of people click through to the website, you get paid for the traffic.

I'm up for a few extra bucks, especially if I were going to use that brand in my story anyway. (My character, Shane Black, is partial to Magic Hat beer, which you can't get in Florida.)

Less comforting is the prospect of cash-strapped publishers inking deals with companies for product placement in their e-books. It's one thing for Spenser to drink Sam Adams because the product says something about the character. It's quite another for him to drink Miller Genuine Draft because the publisher inked a deal with Miller Brewing Company.

To be fair, forced product placement isn't on the horizon yet. E-books are still a niche, and will continue to be so until the price of the hardware comes down. But down the road, your e-books will almost certainly have room for ads, and will allow you to click through to supporting information about a specific passage. If you'll be able to do that, someone will certainly find a way to make money from it.

The return of the serial?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:45:00 +0000

My dad has told me fondly of what Saturdays were when he was a kid. The Palace Theater, long gone, was the venue and he'd spend much of the day there watching serials and then the feature presentation. Like the downtown trolley and the milkman, the serial is a part of history.

Sure, it rears its head every once in a while. Raiders of the Lost Ark was a loving tribute to the serial. 24 is a modern TV serial. But the serial as a common technique for telling a story died as the single-screen theaters gave way to suburban multi-plexes.

Until now.

When you buy music online, you don't have to buy the entire album any more. You can buy only the songs you like. And if the band can't keep your attention for each of the songs, you don't buy them all.

As books move toward a digital format, the same model may apply to writing. As this Wall Street Journal column points out, books may be headed the same way. Maybe instead of paying $10 (or whatever) to download an entire book, I can download five chapters for a dollar. And if they don't grab me, I can move on to something different.

If that's the case--and it's a big if--the pacing and strategy of a book may change. No more tension and release, building toward an overall climax. Now, a constant build may be required, lest the reader bail out of the book in the middle and find something that promises more immediate gratification.

We can argue all day over whether this is a good thing. I stopped watching 24 a few years ago when it started taking stories that could have easily covered the entire 24 hours and dispensed with them in an hour. Lost has some similar problems. I'd still like to know about Leonard, the guy who sat in the institute with Hurley saying the numbers over and over again. How did he get to know the numbers? Leonard, alas, is a lost detail included in an avalanche of clues and red herrings that overwhelmed us.

Sometimes stories unfold best slowly, building toward an inevitable climax that becomes irresistable as it approaches. For better or worse, such a slow build may become a lot harder to sell in a world where a new distraction is just a download away.

He said. She said. He said. She said. I threw the book across the room.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Hamilton) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:20:00 +0000

One of the most basic rules about dialog is that you should generally use said, rather than shouted, stated, asked, exclaimed, or screamed at the top of her lungs. And, like all rules, you should follow this one all the time.

Except when you shouldn't.

For an example, get one of Robert B. Parker's books on CD. I love Parker. He's probably my favorite author, and the one my style most naturally mirrors. But when I listen to one of his books on CD, his overuse of the word said becomes incredibly irritating. For instance:

"You have a fine patootie," I said.

"Perhaps if the baby can be enticed out of the room, you can see more of it," Susan said.

"I never got why you let Pearl do things you don't let me do," I said.

"Because you don't lick my face when I wake up in the morning or growl at strangers," she said.

"I could," I said.

"Lick my face?" Susan said.

"If you'd like," I said. "I was thinking more of the growling at strangers."

"You're incorrigible," Susan said.

"Grrr," I said.

That's not a real excerpt from Parker, but it almost could be. Even Hawk, the impassive enforcer, would be moved to angry violence if he had to listen to this passage. There were only two people speaking in this exchange, so the alternation of speakers is pretty evident. But even when there are three people speaking, you can use action to show who's talking.

Hawk adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see behind us without turning around. "Nothing going on back there."

Susan sat forward and put her hand on my shoulder. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"No telling," Hawk said.

"If Tony Marcus has her, he'll take his time to figure this out." I wished I hadn't had the second cup of coffee. I'd managed the switch to decaf, but hadn't managed to hold two cups for a long stakeout.

"We could hurry things along." Hawk smiled. In gathering darkness, he seemed more sinister than normal, even with the smile. Maybe it was the shotgun in his lap.

It should be clear which of the three people are speaking in the second excerpt (again, not a real excerpt). However, among five pieces of dialog, I only used the said tag once. With the other information around the dialog, there should be plenty for you to determine who said what.