Oversharing? New Technologies & Emily Post

According to Amanda Smith’s “80% of Adults Say Mind Your Mobile Manners and Stop Oversharing,” adults are getting fed up with having to listen to your boring life on the bus, in the grocery line, and elsewhere. No one wants to hear it.

Smith then dusts off the old Emily Post and explains that rules like checking your text messages and email at the dinner table are not hard and fast. With new technologies, our world changes daily, and we, to an extent, shape that world by how we use our technology.

What do you want your world to be like? What should technology etiquette include?

Communism? Well, no, Manifestations!

As the ladies of the psychic occult society so delightfully demonstrate, some times definitions are necessary. How we define ourselves through our writing also matters, but sometimes our readers may totally reject our representations.

In this very rejection, though, may lie the difference between ok writing and good writing. When something captures our interest enough to make us respond to a piece of writing, either with vitriolic sarcasm (“I’ll bet”) or frenzied annotations (“What was he thinking?!”), the author engaged us, took a risk, and made us stop and think.

So when you’re feeling rejected, remember at that moment of rejection, someone actually took the time to really read your work. And that must count for something in the crazy, mixed-up writer/reader relationship.

More No-Nos for your consideration

Stephanie Buck’s “12 Things Students Should Never Do on Social Media” isn’t raising any eyebrows around digital publishing folks.

But it is a concern that writers are still churning these lists out, and since they are, what does that mean?

Yes, I’d say that students are still making these types of errors despite or because of the fact that it’s always been a part of their lives.

It is too easy to become neglectful of warnings we’ve all heard time and time again: “Never tell anyone you are leaving town via social media,” or “It’s not a good idea to friend your teacher and then make negative comments about said teacher.”

And when we are neglectful, the consequences may and can be anything from home invasion, robbery, bad grade, or worse, continuing circles of consequences–down to not getting or losing a job. Yes, William Faulkner was right about those darn circles.

Before your next rant via social media, stop. Tell your dog or your cat, but not your boss, your teacher, or the world.

Oh, and that picture of you at the party last weekend? Delete it now. Faulkner missed that tip.

Writer’s Block: A Paralyzing Affliction

I recently read people debating about whether writer’s block is real. I wanted to grab the writer and slap him/her! Are you kidding me?

Writer’s block is a very real affliction and can have serious consequences whatever your genre of writing may be. The more we have at stake or invested into a piece of writing, the more paralyzing writer’s block can become. We can simply become lost in a maze of thoughts we have but cannot communicate.

What can you do? These tips have worked for me in the past, and might possibly help you.

1. Take a break. Do something else for awhile–give yourself permission to play on FB for 15 minutes, or go for a walk.

2. Read. Sometimes when we have writer’s block, it means we have not done enough research on the topic.

3. Classical music. It’s a known fact that classical music gets the mind moving in two directions at once, and it might crack open your block. Caution: you risk becoming like Pavlov’s Dog–when I hear certain music, I am now conditioned to write like a mad woman.

4. Try approaching your topic from another angle.

5. Did you eat sometime today? Really, sometimes we become so wrapped up in our work, we burn the energy we need to keep working. Have a snack.

6. Talk it out. Some of us need to talk about our ideas with someone before we can articulate them well in writing.

If all else fails and you are in extreme paralytic lock down, you may need to either be yelled at or slapped. This sounds extreme, but it can and has worked for me in the past. I once received a poor grade on a paper (that I should not have received, and it was overturned–but that’s another story), and I was completely frozen. This situation was horrendous, especially since I had deadlines for several other projects.

In despair, I turned to one of my professors. Not being the warm, cuddly type, he gave me a sound lecture (read yelled). He then forced me to sit in his office for 15 minutes and write on a topic he provided.

Needless to say dear readers, this broke the dam.

If you personally don’t have someone to do this for you, perhaps vicarious pep talks will help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBfb77G47hU&feature=share&list=LPWhIFEP-tj9w

 

 

In case of panic, hit the delete button

I was not surprised to learn that potential employers are looking at your social media sites, and very little on Dani Fankhauser’s Job Seekers: Beware of these Social Media Traps came as a shocking surprise.

We all know pornography, drinking and drugs on FB is a huge mistake. What most people forget, on FB and other social media such as Blogs, is that grammar counts. And the cost may mean a job.

How difficult is it to use spell/gram check? Granted, FB doesn’t have spell/gram check, but if you aren’t sure, take a minute and type it into Word–or look up a word in the dictionary (shocking, I know).

And let’s not forget twitter and linked-in. Because of their very nature, these social media tools require brief, almost terse, communications. We have to be vigilant to fight our tendencies to descend into text speak because it matters.

Privacy controls, you ask? Please, do we really need a reminder that anything you publish on the web is fair game? Here it is: If your mother can’t read it, you need to think twice before you hit send or publish.

Take a few minutes, today–not tomorrow, and review your posts on FB and Twitter. Are they grammatically correct? Are they clean? If not, now would be a great time to engage the delete function!

How many of you found something on Fankhauser’s list? How often did you engage in deleting practices? And should we let lists like this determine what is, for the most part, our personal walls?

Tips for Kindle Authors

Tips for Kindle Authors

Thinking about publishing with Kindle? “Tips for Kindle Authors” might come in handy!

The most interesting tip here is that you need reviews on your book, and you should ask for them. Hopefully, your friends won’t give you bad reviews. 🙂

For those writing the reviews, be kind. Remember how difficult the publishing field is for all of us. And yes, we are in competition with each other, but along the way, let’s make life easier for each other and bring a smile to someone’s face with a glowing review.

I have never written a review for a Kindle book, but now that I understand how important it is, I’ll be writing.

Pardon me, Can I ask you a personal question?

How do you write? Are you a keyboard composer, or are you a pencil and paper person? Does it make a difference?

As we’ve progressed with technology, most of us have jumped from handwriting to composing on the computer. It’s saved us a great deal of time–revising and editing is much, much easier, and all of our notes and outlines can even be kept in the same software for easy composing! And of course, for those who publish with Amazon, the formatting has to be done just so–a computer is necessary.

But what are we losing?

A Christmas Carol

Are we keeping hard drafts that reflect how our minds worked during this process? Will anyone even care how we went about it? Does the process matter, if in the end, we are as great as Charles Dickens?

Can we ignore that insistent small voice saying: “It does matter.” Is saving a draft on the computer the same? I don’t think so…not unless we’re using the editing keys on the draft and saving it. How many of us do that?

Some day in the future, will people line up in a museum to look at one of your drafts? Only if you made it…..

Should we be planning and composing drafts of our blog posts? There are some writers who can sit down and spin out excellent prose, the Rhetors in our world, but most people can’t do this.

How will you approach your next blog, paper, poem, or book?

Psst: I know a secret!

I just read over Seven Secrets of Successful Self-Published Authors. While I did not necessarily agree with all of their tips, they are useful.

But my secret is the secret of all successful writers in all fields & walks of life. In Seven Secrets they’ve rather limited you.

Here’s my secret: rule number 1: know your audiences. While Seven Secrets would have you believe that you just have to know your audience, this is not enough.

True, you have a main or target audience. But you cannot forget the secondary audience or the hidden audience. Here are at least three audience groups you really have to think about before you write.

I also agreed with setting deadlines…but this isn’t a secret, either. Writers write. Everyday. It may not be sexy, seductive prose everyday, but still they write.

What secret would you correct or add to?

Writing & Ethics in a Digital Age

As the class looms next week, I’ve become distracted tonight with thoughts about writing and ethics. Heavy thoughts, right?

I took this picture for a course site this afternoon. The picture works because this particular course is on research and writing.

As I was happily uploading and inserting my picture into the web site, I felt a bit uncomfortable. The students will probably like it, and I’m glad. But what does this genre of literature promote?

Should I be worried that I’ll be inspiring serial killers? Or even worse (if that’s possible), killers like James  Holmes?

Granted, I seriously doubt the new Batman movie motivated his actions, but still I wonder.

Do images like this promote or hinder bad behavior? Do we have responsibilities as writers to make this choice?

Should we only discuss the victims and not the killer?

On the other hand, we also have a responsibility to study these incidents, and if we can, understand them in some way. Someone has to try. Sure, people like Jack the Ripper are mentally ill, but what can we do to stop the violence before it happens? And how will we ever understand it if we don’t study it?

As you can tell, I have some ambivalence on this topic, but it is a topic that I believe all writers and digital publishers should carefully consider.

We do have ethical responsibilities as writers, and we need to weigh the costs of the words and images we put out there.

All that being said, I’m still using the picture. 🙂

 

 

 

Technical Writing & Digital Publishing: All Alone in English

Today, one of my colleagues told me that I’m the only Technical Writer on staff. Well, maybe in the English department here. And I wondered, is it possible? And what does that mean really? And finally, how does Technical Writing “fit” with the other courses and the department?

The core staple of Technical Writing is documentation–and yes, it comes in many forms: pdfs, videos, websites, word documents, and graphics.

Remember those alphabet people in kindergarten? Quite frankly, I found them hideously frightening as a child and still do. Let’s face it: they were bigger than us at age 5/6 and quite intimidating. Back then, I had no sparkling premonition that I would spend my life teaching and creating my own alphabet people (in a sense).Or, maybe I did and that’s why I found them so scary.

At it’s very essence, then, documentation is meant to teach, and it can happen in any mode. So, yes, Technical Writing and Digital Publishing can and do share many attributes: writing for the web, design, color, and at it’s very best, digital publishing genres might teach us, too. (Not that I’m knocking the entertainment value of DP at all–believe me, I’m having a serious love affair with my Kindle.)

So am I alone? Maybe in terms of all that high falutin’ design and technology, yes I am probably alone in the English department. I’m ok with this. I’d share it all in a heartbeat if anybody wanted to learn. And there are folks in the Office of Learning and Tech and the Education department who share my talents in greater and lesser extents that I can always pal around with and say, wow, isn’t that cool? Let’s learn that!

But in documentation terms, we all do it. Maybe some do it better than others, and maybe some try to do it in a visual manner (shudder at the alphabet people above), and maybe some give verbal directions, and maybe some give too many directions. However we do it, I am sure that we all do it to the very best of our abilities with the pedagogical approach that works for us. And this is ok.

So, on reflection, yes, I belong with the English folks, and so does Tech Writing, Writing for the Web, and Digital Publishing. And it’s ok to be the tech writer, the usability guru, the digital publishing whiz, the graphic designer, and the layout pro. And this is good, because behind all of the fancy documentation, graphic design, whirling, twirling, blinking web pages, what matters is the writing and how it’s done.

Here I Go Again On My Own