Faith, Dreams and Charity...oh my!

Just when I was beginning to loose faith in social networking, something like this happens. Thank you CKHB for the award. I love the Panda!

And now I'm ready to begin again with the crazy writing-networking balance.

This past week for boring reasons I've been without any word processor whatsoever except the sticky notes on my Mac. (Well, and paper and pencil, the FIRST word processors.) It made me slow down my writing a bit, which made me re-evaluate my dreams and aspirations. I realized I don't have as much faith in my dreams as I used to.

But then this morning I saw one of my characters walk down the sidewalk. He was exactly what the villain in my story is supposed to look like! I was driving so I didn't even have the chance to embarrass myself and ask "Hey, you look like my villain! Can I take a picture?" which I know was for the best. So now I have a little something more to go off of. If anyone's ever seen the movie Inkheart, it was almost like the scene where the author sees Dustfinger alive for the first time. (And it is a great movie for writers. Soothes my burning unpublished heart every time.)

I've been thinking about all this social networking we do, trying to make connections. I feel a little like a lonely little chick just out of the egg. Awkward, struggling, and with goo still stuck to my feathers. But my thoughts so far have led me to this: Social networking is great because it's one of the few tools completely run on charity. People donate outrageous amounts of their time building connections and making one more weave in the net of people connected. So, in following with CKHB's recognition, I too wish to say thank you to everyone following this blog. It makes a difference to me and to the world. Seriously. Baby whales somewhere are spouting for joy.

I appreciate your charitable contributions of time and attention and connectivity.

My Metaphor for Social Networking

Sometimes I feel like a greasy, slick haired salesman who's selling products that are great but that no one cares about because they would never buy from a door-to-door salesman. The same product, if advertised on TV, then seen in a storefront window, then recommended by friends, would sell.

The publishing industry seems full of free advice givers and I am so grateful to them for taking the time to write blogs and show me the way. They are doing their part to make sure that agents and publishers have the most talented, capable, and polished writers to choose from. This in turn will (hopefully) lead to better books which will (hopefully) lead to more readers.

But is social networking really the golden goose of the new publishing era? I can't help but wonder if it's really safe to assume that because networking is free, people will network with you. Do you follow someone on Twitter just because they follow you, even if they're not of interest to you? I was followed by a self-proclaimed professional psychic the other day. (Outside the context of Twitter that sounds funny and creepy.) But I didn't follow them back because I have no interest in the tweets of that industry. (If I start writing a novel with a main character who's a psychic, well, then I might change my mind.)

Even though networking is free, I don't expect others to follow me or connect with me just because I'm there. I feel like I still need to be the agitated salesperson sticking their foot in the door before it slams (ouch!) begging for someone to buy my wares for free.

Price used to be a filter for decision making. But with networking, we no longer have that blockage/convenience/inconvenience.

So what kind of filter should we use to decide how our networking minutes are spent?

I don't believe networking is free. It just doesn't cost U.S. dollars per every tweet-follower or blog poster. But it does have its own currency and that is time.

Here's a fun activity to try: Quantify the currency of networking in values of time, specifically your time and what it's worth. Is one hour spent tweeting, facebooking and commenting on blogs worth 3k words of a novel? Are the ten minutes that people spend reading your blog worth one hour of your time to research what you put into that blog?

Note: This activity will drive you nuts. Have fun.

Parties get lame after about 5 years

People started using MySpace. Then it got clogged with spammers and add-happy users who wanted to increase their friend count. People who truly wanted to social network online moved to facebook. Then facebook got adds, and while there is little commercially induced spam, the constant self-promotion has forced those who are truly reaching out for synergy to move to yet another social networking site: twitter. Twenty years from now, I wonder if the same people will just keep drifting from one social networking site to the next as each becomes corrupted. This will mean connections must be made anew and it kind of resets the hierarchy every time we move. There will, of course, always be change ups with those who remain stuck on a slowly diminishing website and those who jump fresh into social networking online for the first time using the current site.

There should be a name for this phenomenon. I predict once there's a name for it, articles will start to be written about it. Then Apple will come up with a brilliant app to transfer connections between networking sites. Then networking sites will get even more creative and beat the app so you can't do that. Then a new job field will spring up calling for creators of social networking sites which will hire a ton of people to create a bunch of sites, and then lay a bunch of them off because they only need a few people to maintain the massive sites that have grown.

We are the true networkers. We travel from site to site, seeking connection and productivity first and entertainment second. We find havens here and there for half a decade before moving on. The advertising paparazzi follows us around, always conveniently 5 years behind.

In a sense, we are destroying the sites that we love with nuclear fall outs of spam and ads. Once the PR people find it because they want to reach out to us, it will be tainted forever. But the good news is we can constantly create new worlds, resetting the social hierarchies every 5 years. This means if I get rejected by an agent over twitter now, 5 years from now I might get accepted by that same agent on the future networking site, but neither of us will know this happened because we will both have different screen names and probably different IP addresses (unless we both use Macs, of course).

So here's to all my twitter friends, who I talk with regularly, who I used to talk with on facebook, who I used to see on myspace. Once these electronic sidewalks get crowded and we move to other places where we can bump into people, I will see you again in 5 years and I look forward to meeting you at the new alpha site again for the first time. Sorry if you don't make it. I would really have liked to see that other screen name of yours. You know, the one you only bring out once you realize you only have to live with it for 5 years. I personally am going to have my next half-decade identity be PrincessoftheAmazon. I think I can live with all the hits I get from misdirected jungle dwellers and book buyers for half a decade, especially if they're nice and have lived former lives on twitter alongside me.

All social networking sites have a half life, my friends. Don't get stuck as a worm next time around! Build up your karma personality and typing skills and for goodness' sake, weed out all the stuff that makes you sound like a moron. The force of the internet does not look kindly on rebirthing people who will kill the new network with their stupidity more quickly than an add for genital wart cures appearing next to posts about rainbows and puppies.

Drift on, true connectors. Drift on.

Side note: If two people who God made to be together are lucky enough to find each other, what happens if one of them gets stuck on myspace while the other one moves to twitter?

Other side note: I laugh when I see movies and tv shows trying to act current and cool by talking about social networking sites or incorporating them into a crime somehow. It's so obvious they're not trying to bring us entertainment by being relevant to our lives. They're desperately trying to fool us into thinking they are up with the times. It's so cheesy, it works. Every time the chief of whatever-law-enforcement-guild strolls onto the screen shooting personality out his butt and asks, "What's a blog?" (actually, they will probably name a social networking site from three cycles ago that no one uses anymore) and its supposed to be funny that the old guy isn't up with the times, I am entertained by it. I clap and say "Excellent metaphor for yourself, tv show. I'm surprised you're that self-aware." Of course, this is mean of me. I don't really want them to be up with the times because then networking sites would only last one to two years instead of five. But I still enjoy laughing at them because they are not.

And the metaphor that got me started on all this:

Using the word 'post' to describe new information that appears on a website. Kind of interesting to think that long ago, it meant to actually tack a piece of paper to a hitching post or the post of a saloon, etc. Using already existing objects that have a purpose to convey information. Fascinating to think of that as a metaphor for our electronic posts today.

MDA: I used several metaphors in this post without even trying (well, I sort of tried. I like metaphors). Pick your favorite and turn it into an extended metaphor.

Note: an extended metaphor is a metaphor that is not contained or explained in one sentence, but more like a paragraph or two. They're usually used to slow the reader down and make them focus on the metaphor to get it through their thick skulls that the tenure and vehicle are really, REALLY alike.

Or just write an extended metaphor on your own. You don't have to use mine.