Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Writing

Post by NCW member Anne-Marie Nichols

A blog is an easy and inexpensive way to promote you and your work. A blog can become your book’s marketing platform or an online freelance writing portfolio with links to clips and writing samples. But what if you don’t have time to blog? Or maybe setting up a simple website with your contact info and portfolio gives you a techie anxiety attack? Well, you can slowly get started in the social media realm by joining an online social network like LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com).

Social Networking for Professionals
More than 20 million professionals from around the world have created LinkedIn pages. And unlike MySpace and Facebook – two other popular social networking sites – the networking is professional not personal. This means no embarrassing pictures of you partying like it’s 1999. Though don’t be surprised if an old paramour or a high school buddy finds you through the site.

Besides being an online resume, there are more benefits to joining LinkedIn’s free service. If you’re a magazine or non-fiction writer, LinkedIn can be used to find experts for interviews. If you’re a commercial writer, potential clients can find you and see who you’ve worked with in the past. Many employers use and trust LinkedIn to find high-quality candidates. So while you may not be looking for a writing job, you may be looking for an editor, agent or publisher. Do a search on authors, publishers and agents in your niche. You may be able to connect with them via LinkedIn.

Getting Your Information Out There
When you join LinkedIn, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. The summary is your bio, and you should also include a photo, links to your blogs and/or website, your education, your professional memberships, and your interests. I recommend listing what you write about as your interests. For example, I list social networking, health, and diet since these are subjects I blog about.

Also, remember to be safe on the Internet. Don’t list your personal contact information. Instead, use a business email address and give a general idea of where you live, like your general metropolitan area instead of naming a specific town. If you have an office, use that address instead of your home.

Once you’ve set up your page, start finding people to connect to by search on their names or their company’s name. Look for friends as well as former colleagues. You never know where those connections will lead.

LinkedIn for Writers
When you’re a writer, it’s a little tricky using LinkedIn. How do you come up with a job history if you write books or freelance? Think about projects, not jobs. For example, instead of your job title, the company you worked for, and the dates you worked there, list yourself as an “Author of Children’s Books,” use the name of your book’s as where you worked, and put down the date your worked on or published your book. If you write a column for a newspaper, put in “Columnist at ‘Name of Column’,” the name of the newspaper, and the dates you wrote for them.

For those of you too scared to blog, I hope that joining LinkedIn will give you a taste of what it’s like to write directly on to an Internet site and to publish using the save button. I bet you’ll find it’s a lot easier than you think! So get out there, set up your LinkedIn profile, and stop by at http://www.linkedin.com/in/socialmediaexpert and add me to your network.

Anne-Marie Nichols is a blog wrangler and social media consultant who blogs from a mom's perspective about food, weight loss, health, social media, green and tech. You can contact her at am@the-write-spot.com. Visit her blogs: This Mama Cooks! On a Diet: thismamacooks.com, A Mama’s Rant: amamasrant.com, The Write Spot: the-write-spot.com or find her on Twitter @amnichols.

Passion for Writing

Post by NCW Director Kerrie Flanagan

A few weeks ago I presented at the Douglas County Writers Conference. All of the other presenters and attendees had the priviledge of hearing the keynote speech by Denver-based author/journalist Shari Caudron. Her topic was passion.

Shari found herself at a crossroads when she turned forty. For decades she dabbled in various hobbies in order to discover her one true passion. She tried Scrabble, snowshoeing, Buddhism, bridge, belly dancing, golf, fencing, running, piano, backpacking, gardening…

She says in her book, Who Are You People?, “Through all these years, through all these hobbies, nothing ever took hold and swelled into a grand, all-consuming, get-a-load-of-this obsession...And once I hit forty, once I was no longer obsessed with finding a job, snaring a mate or buying a house—I’d don’t all that, sometimes more than once—I began to want more.”

So she set out on a quest. A quest to spend time with those people we might call fanatics: Barbie collectors, dog-lovers, Josh Grobin fans, ice-fisherman, Trekkies, storm chasers, gamers… She wanted to find out what made them tick and what they had that she didn’t have. During her three-year trek, she met some amazing people and her answer came to her.

It was like the moment Dorothy met up with the Glenda at the end of Wizard of Oz, Shari realized she didn’t need to search for her passion—it was with her the whole time. She was a writer. Her problem was, she had been so focused on publishing, that she forgot about the words.

Like Shari, we are all writers, but there are times when our excitement for writing fades. We question why we ever started and wonder where the passion went. Here are three steps she shared to help nurture our passion for writing.

1. Claim it: Claim the type of writing you want to do and write about what matters to you.
Finish these sentences:

• Starting tomorrow I'm going to take my writing passion seriously by ________________.
• What I most want to write about is________________.
  

2. Comfort it: Give it what it needs to thrive and be happy.
Finish these sentences:

• I write best when___________.
• I write because I want to ___________.

3. Stand back: Get out of your own way. Let the writing tell you where it wants to go.

"It is an act of courage to face the page,
but the writing, when honored,
will never disappoint."
~Shari Caudron

Shari Caudron is an essayist, contributing writer for 5280, and author of WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? (winner of the Colorado Book Award, and chosen for Entertainment Weekly’s MUST list). She is also a writing coach who works with new and experienced writers who want to take their writing careers to the next level: i.e., breaking into the national magazine market, boosting their annual income, writing a memoir, or researching and writing a book. Check out her website at www.sharicaudron.com.

Author Interview: T.C. Boyle

Post by NCW Member Sara Hoffman

Here is an E-mail interview with T.C. Boyle conducted by Sara Hoffman. Boyle is the author of twenty books of fiction, including, most recently, A Friend of the Earth, Drop City, The Inner Circle, Tortilla Curtain, The Human Fly and Other Stories, and The Women.

You’ve written 20 books, including “Tortilla Curtain,” in which you use unusual words and occasionally, words that aren’t words. What’s your intention with your vocabulary? Is it purely for entertainment?

Boyle: English is by far the richest language in the world, containing at least twice as many words as the next closest language on the list (don't ask, I forget which is next), and so I figure, why not make use of this arsenal of verbiage? Sometimes I use a word because it is exactly the right word for the situation (to my lights, anyway), and sometimes, as you suggest, I'll use an obscure word for the little frisson it gives the reader.

You use “T shirt” in a lot of your books. A lot of people misspell “T shirt,” and “a lot” for that matter. As a connoisseur of the language, are you bothered by the frequent misspellings and grammatical errors on bus stop signs, restaurant menus and such? Has the English language lost its respect?
Boyle: I am made murderous by the misuse of the language, but since I can't really eliminate all those misusers out there, I grin and bear it. T-shirt could easily be tee shirt for that matter--each is valid-- and the language does evolve. Take lie and lay for instance. Even our finest authors (and their editors who let them slip) make errors with these verbs.

You name about 35 characters in “Tortilla Curtain.” Most of them are minor characters, but how do you write so that your readers keep these people straight? And where do you get these names? Are they friends, former friends, neighbors, home-owners association members, or total figments of your imagination?
Boyle: Names are sometimes symbolic, as with Candido Rincon, for instance, or Delaney Mossbacher, suggesting something about the characters who bear them. Or they are just names. One doesn't necessarily, depending on the comic valence of a given piece, want the names to stand out, as, for instance, in Dickens, who, in “Bleak House” has a character named Mr. Slime. In “The Tortilla Curtain,” most of the names are meant to slip by unnoticed, as our own names do, so that, for example, we have two Jacks living in Arroyo Blanco Estates, just as in real life we might have two Toms or Georges living on the same block.

Two characters you don’t name in “The Tortilla Curtain” are the bad guys, the illegal immigrants responsible for various heinous crimes. You describe them. One wears a backwards baseball cap, chews gum, and has eyes like “twin bruises.” The other has shoulder-length hair and a “silky pelt-like streak” of a beard. Wouldn’t it have been easier to write the book if you’d given them names? Why didn’t you?
Boyle: Not naming them doesn't allow them to enter into the reader's sympathetic purview. They remain unnamed and all the more menacing for that.

Do you have a special relationship with a specific dictionary?
Boyle: I use a colossal Webster's Unabridged I've had forever and the O.E.D. as well, but I find that with the advent of the Internet I am able to quickly cross-check not only definitions but facts as well. My encyclopedias are gathering dust. A shame, really, but the information tools at our fingertips are quite extraordinary. (Of course, “Tortilla” was written before such tools were available.)

Do you get e-mails from writing teachers about your tendency to break established rules of writing in your books? Do you allow your English students at the University of Southern California to break the rules? When is it OK to break the rules?
Boyle: No, I don't. And I don't break rules of grammar unless I'm doing deep point of view from the perspective of a character who would talk and think in such terms. As a writer of fiction, whether student or professional, it is good to remember that rules are meant to be broken if a certain effect is desired. In a formal essay, however, with its need for clarity and persuasion, the rules must be observed. That is, anything goes in fiction as long as it makes sense to the point of view, but when my students write analytical essays, those essays must be grammatically unimpeachable.

You are the father of three college-aged children. As someone who was a self-described “unreflective and dope-addled” hippie at their age, have you found yourself censoring your past; the books your children read; or the words they use?
Boyle: My youngest just graduated from USC. From the time they were conscious I have read aloud to them. As for what they read -- and more importantly, view on the Internet and the TV screen -- that is entirely their own business. None of my three children ever watched TV much, as I do not, but both my boys were -- still are -- addicted to video games. My daughter, Kerrie Kvashay-Boyle, is a published and award-winning writer herself.

What are a few of your favorite and least favorite words?
Boyle: We are said to use something like forty words in our normal discourse--I suppose kill, eat and screw would be at the top of the list--but there are really no words I dislike or words that I am over-fond of. One could, of course, find such words in my work and make a case for the fact that I must be enamored of them, else why so often use them. How about micturition, for example? Or circumvallate? Or steatopygia? (If you really want a wordsmith, look to the late Norman Mailer, who quite clearly must have been on steroids.)

People either love or hate the way you ended “The Tortilla Curtain.” Please explain why you chose the ending you did.
Boyle: What a surprising question. Everyone I've ever met has been utterly enchanted with the depth and profundity of that ending. If you look at some of my historical works—“The Women,” most recently--you will find endings that bring you up to date on all the characters and their fates. But in “Tortilla,” “A Friend of the Earth,” “Drop City,” you get endings that are suggestive, endings that (I hope) draw you back into the work to re-examine the characters and their actions in light of questions the ending may produce.

Bonus question: Do you get placement fees from Diet Coke, Pepsi or Ho-Ho’s for naming their products in your books? Why not just write “a sweet, murky and sometimes refreshing beverage?”
Boyle: Yes, of course. These companies have me on retainer. (But the obvious answer is that the author needs to adduce the real products of the world we inhabit in order to achieve verisimilitude; the trick is in knowing how much is enough so as to avoid overloading the text with such references.)

Facebook Friends

By Northern Colorado Writers member, Anne-Marie Nichols

Facebook is one of the most popular online social networks. Originally created for college students, now people of all ages are using it to connect with friends. More recently, Facebook has become a place where professionals network and companies connect with customers. If you have a book to sell, a writing business to promote, or you want to network with other writers, you need to be on Facebook. Hopefully, you already are.

However, the melding of the personal and the professional has become a challenge for Facebook users. You want to present a professional front, but you want to share your life with your friends, too. One way to do this is by organizing your Facebook page using Friends Lists.

How to use Friends Lists

To create a Facebook List, click "Friends" in the blue bar at the top. On the left side of the page, click the button "Make a New List." Give it a title. You should create a list (or lists) for personal contacts and another list (or lists) for professional contacts. Examples of lists on the professional side could be: Agents & Publishers, Clients, and Fellow Freelancers.

Once you have your lists set up, you can add people that you’ve already friended to your new list by typing in names one by one or click on "Select Multiple Friends" to add several people to the list all at once. (To add people, just click on their photos.) When you're finished, click the "Save List" button at the bottom.

Once you have some lists created, it is time to figure out who gets to see what. To edit your privacy settings, go to "Settings" at the top-right of the screen next to the search box. Hover your mouse over the link and click on "Privacy Settings" on the menu that pops up. On the following page, click "Profile," the top choice in the list of options.

On the profile privacy page, you have the option of customizing exactly who gets to see what. You can modify the following areas: Profile, Basic Info, Personal Info, Status Updates, Photos Tagged of You, Videos Tagged of You, Friends, Wall Posts, Education Info, and Work Info. If you're unsure of what any of those things are, click the "?" next to the item to read a definition.

Using the drop-down boxes, you can customize who gets to see your info: "Only Friends," "Friends of Friends," or "My Network of Friends." To lock down your profile to friends only, you could set all these to "only friends." But since you have now created specialized lists, you should use these instead.

To do so, click the fourth option from the drop-down box: "Customize." From here, you can add lists of people who should NOT be able to see this part of your profile. For example, if you wanted to block your high school buddies list from seeing your status updates, you could do so here – just type the name of your list in the box "Except these people" and save your changes.

More Facebook tips

- Untag unflattering and unprofessional photos of yourself from other Facebook profiles.
- Delete inappropriate comments made by either you or your friends.
- Use a professional-looking profile picture.
- Remember to put new contacts in the appropriate Friends List.
- Post content that is relevant to your professional life like publishing industry news or an article about a writing workshop you’re teaching.

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Anne-Marie Nichols is a blog wrangler and social media consultant who blogs from a mom's perspective about food, weight loss, health, social media, green and tech. You can contact her at am@the-write-spot.com. Visit her blogs: This Mama Cooks! On a Diet: thismamacooks.com, A Mama’s Rant: amamasrant.com, The Write Spot: the-write-spot.com or find her on Twitter @amnichols.

Agent Interview: Kate Schafer Testerman

Post by NCW Director Kerrie Flanagan

Read my interview with literary agent Kate Schafer Testerman with KT literary on the Guide To Literary Agents Blog.

"Agent Advice" is a series of quick interviews with literary and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else.

This installment features Kate Schafer Testerman with KT Literary. After nearly ten years with industry powerhouse agency Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Kate formed kt literary in early 2008, where she concentrates on middle grade and YA fiction as well as diving into some adult commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction. Bringing to bear the experience of working with a large agency, she’s looking forward to concentrating on all aspects of working with her authors, offering hands-on experience, personal service, and a surfeit of optimism.

She is looking for: "brilliant, funny, original middle grade and young adult fiction, both literary and commercial; witty women’s fiction; and pop-culture narrative nonfiction. Quirky is good. Please note: at this time we do not represent picture books."

READ THE INTERVIEW