Being Social

I have to be honest: I'm getting a little sick of social networking. I could handle Twitter and Facebook just fine (well, I mostly ignore Facebook), but now Google+? As I probably mentioned before, social networking can be a double-edged sword for writers. Sure, you can connect with other writers and readers, but it's a massive time-waste that could be better spent, well, writing. If you don't tweet or make a Facebook or Google+ update every day, do you cease to exist to the others wired into the social network? If you let a week pass with no updates, do people just assume you're dead and move on? Does anyone even care?

Personally, out of all the social networks out there now, I like Twitter the best. I don't have to worry about friend requests or event invites or people asking me to like their self-made fan page. I don't have to sift through an ever growing stream of so-and-so is friends with so many new people or so-and-so just scored so many points in such-and-such a game or so-and-so is now in a relationship or so-and-so is now out of a relationship. Because, quite honestly, I don't give a crap about any of that.

Twitter is so much easier. I can follow who I want to follow. I can update when I want to update. I don't have to worry about getting notifications when someone "likes" my tweet or comments (though, yes, I guess @mentions are comments, no?).

There are different ways to use Twitter and Facebook and other social media websites. A lot of writers use it to promote their work. I'd be lying if I said I didn't use Facebook and Twitter to promote my stuff, but I don't do it constantly. When there's news to report (a new story or novel published), I'll mention it once or twice and that's pretty much it. My novels? They continue to sell pretty well every day, and guess what -- I'm not mentioning them on Twitter constantly, just as I'm not posting about them on message boards. I don't really understand the rationalization of writers mentioning their books and stories again and again on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ if their friends or followers don't really increase by much. If your friends or followers aren't interested in buying or reading your stuff the first time, they probably won't be interested in buying or reading your stuff the second or third or fourth or fifth time. In fact, they'll probably just get annoyed and unfollow (or block or unfriend) you.

If that happens, does it mean they don't like you anymore? Who knows. I've unfollowed people in the past on Twitter, and it was never because I didn't like them. It was just because I found myself not really paying attention anymore to their tweets. Or they retweeted like a madperson. Or they didn't tweet at all.

In fact, a long time ago, I unfollowed someone because I found myself not really paying attention to this person's tweets. I didn't not like this person anymore, but the next day I woke up to find a new blog post from this person making a big deal because I stopped unfollowing them. I mean, I have to assume this person meant me, otherwise it would have been way too coincidental to be anyone else. But anyway, this writer took it extremely personal that I would unfollow them. In their mind, I no longer liked them or considered them a friend. As you can imagine, I was embarrassed -- not for myself, of course, but for this writer making a big deal out of nothing.

At least, in my mind it was nothing, while to this writer it was clearly something.

But is that what social interaction is? Do we become virtual friends with everyone we encounter?

I know some writers play the Follow Me Game. They follow you and expect you to follow them back, and if you don't within a day or two, they stop following you. Why? Because I guess they think the more followers they have, the more successful of a writer it makes them. (Also, there are apparently programs you can log into that will automatically follow people and unfollow them after a day or two if the person does not follow you back. And of course there are people who just follow everybody they can because they want to.) I mean, not too long ago I saw a writer bragging how he had over 10,000 followers on Twitter. And it was true: he did have over 10,000 followers on Twitter. Of course, he was following about the same number too, which, if you think about it, sort of minuses the other one out.

Success is not judged by the number of Twitter followers you have or the number of friends on Facebook (or "likes" to your self-made Facebook fan page). At least, I don't think success is judged like that, but to each his own.

But again, I do like Twitter. Am I using it right? Is there a proper way to use these social media platforms?

A few months back, I tweeted some news on the Hint Fiction Twitter account. Someone responding, saying something to the effect of there you are, haven't seen you much, and I responded with something like, well if people talked more about Hint Fiction, I would post more. I was just trying to be friendly, nothing more than that, I was just trying to be "social," but this innocuous tweet was taken way out of context as an invitation to get a lecture on how I was doing the Hint Fiction Twitter account all wrong. How I needed to follow more people, how I needed to become interactive, how I needed blah blah blah.

My response was a simple thanks, but really the account is for updating any and all news about Hint Fiction, and left it at that.

Every person is different. Every person uses Twitter and Facebook and Google+ differently. Some of it can be too much. Some of it can be too little. Can any of it ever be just the right amount of socialness?

Lights! Camera! Action!

I told you I had an exciting announcement, didn't I?

This Is Not The Exciting Announcement

That will have to wait until Monday, unfortunately, as a few last-minute details still need to get worked out. For the time being, though, look what else I got.

How I Came To Write This Book

I have a guest post over at Patti Abbott's blog today in her ongoing series of "How I Came To Write This Book" on how I came to write The Serial Killer's Wife. Check it out. And be sure to tune in tomorrow for a very exciting announcement. Until then, have you seen the new Spiderman trailer? It looks pretty cool, though I really hope the part near the end of the trailer isn't included in the actual movie, and if it is, that it doesn't happen a lot. A little too videogamey for me, thank you very much.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XayxMPrUP4

Some Thoughts On Microstyle

Awhile back I got an email from Steve Colca, the Manager of Internet Marketing at W. W. Norton, asking me if I'd like a copy of one of their upcoming books. As you can imagine, my answer was simple but direct: Yes! So a few days later an advanced reading copy of Microstyle by Christopher Johnson arrived in my mailbox.

Now I'll be honest -- I'm mostly a fiction reader. I can put up with some nonfiction, but it's fiction that I almost always crave. Still, the idea behind Microstyle is intriguing, and I'm not just saying that because I'm the Hint Fiction guy. The truth is, microstyle is all around us, each and every day. It's so common we as a society have become pretty numb to the fact it's even there -- which makes truly effective microstyle even more impressive.

Anyway, from the book's introduction:

This is the age of the Incredible Shrinking Message. Some of the most important verbal messages we encounter are also the shortest. Headlines, titles, brand names, domain names, sound bites, slogans, taglines, catchphrases, email subject lines, text messages, elevator pitches, bullet points, tweets, and Facebook status updates are a few examples. While there are plenty of style guides to consult for writing advice, from old fogies like Strunk and White's Elements of Style to young hipsters like Constance Hale's Sin & Syntax, they don't help much with little messages like these.

Messages of just a word, a phrase, or a short sentence or two -- micromessages -- lean heavily on every word and live or die by the tiniest stylistic choices. Micromessages depend not on the elements of style but on the atoms of style. They require microstyle.

A little background on Christopher Johnson, who also goes by the moniker The Name Inspector. You see, Mr. Johnson is a independent verbal branding consultant. He has also worked for Lexicon, which is one of the top naming firms in the country. Come on, you don't think that product names like BlackBerry, Febreze, and Dasani just appear out of thin air, do you? Teams of people are assigned to different products, tasked with coming up with the perfect name. Mind you, the perfect name. It's fascinating, really, when you think about all the different products that have become synonyms with the product it's naming. Kleenex is the first to come to mind. It could be Puffs or Scotties or some other kind of facial tissue, but oftentimes if you sneeze, you might just ask for a Kleenex.

Anyway, Mad Men is mentioned briefly in the introduction, too, which is appropriate because the idea behind Microstyle is to make Don Drapers out of all of us -- of course, Don Draper also makes it look easy, which it is not.

Any writer knows the struggle with coming up with just the right words. It could be a short story or novel title -- because, let's face it, a novel title has to grab a potential reader's attention instantly -- but it also comes down to the words of the story itself.

Microstyle is broken up into four parts: Meaning, Sound, Structure, and Social Context. One of the things I found most interesting about the book was how Johnson takes ads and slogans we see every day and breaks them down and shows how and why they're effective ... and how and why some are not.

One example focuses on the idea of metonymy, which describes the real-world relations that allow for inferential and referential connections between concepts:

In 2010, I saw a billboard for 7-Eleven with the following slogan:

STUFF YOUR FACE WITH VALUE

Pictured on the billboard were two pale, unappealing lumps that I believe were microwavable burritos. That was the "value" you were supposed to stuff in your face. This ad might appeal to people who enjoy taking their meals at 7-Eleven, but it certainly doesn't appeal to me. Part of the reason stems from its peculiar use of metonymy. The word value refers to the food items that can be had at 7-Eleven. Tangible food is represented by the concept of the economic value you enjoy when you purchase it. But value, while desirable, lacks both specific sensory associations and emotional appeal.

Usually we use metonymy to make something easier to picture or to understand with our other senses. Representing the concrete in terms of the abstract works only when the abstract concept is especially interesting or emotionally powerful. A slogan like "have a bite of love" might work, because love is, metaphorically speaking, delicious. Value isn't. Taking something that really isn't delicious to begin with, and representing it with a dry, abstract concept like "value," manages to make those burritos look worse, especially since the abstract concept focuses on how little you pay for them.

Then of course there's the expression "stuff your face." It implies getting an excess of food into your stomach as quickly as possible without enjoying it. Overall, this slogan says, "Don't concern yourself with actual pleasure. Just eat some cheap crap and get it over with." Maybe this ad acknowledges the fact that people usually don't eat at 7-Eleven because they want to.

Another chapter I found quite fascinating was about making the sound fit, whereas some words have a kind of relation between sound and meaning by iconicity. Take the word whoosh for instance. It sounds just like it means. An example:

Iconicity can also be based more on the way it feels to say sounds than on what it's like to hear them. Try saying the name Mounds, for the Hershey's candy bar. You might notice that your mouth pantomimes taking a bite of something: your lips part, reach out and pull back in, and your front teeth start to come together.

There are so many other great examples to share, but you really should check out the book for yourself. It's definitely a must-read for anyone who cares anything at all for the English language. And, of course, much of the idea is the same as it is with Hint Fiction -- doing a lot with very little. I've seen countless Hint Fiction stories, and some had the potential to be great but were almost always lacking because of a misplaced word or two. That's all it takes.

Microstyle is now available in hardcover and digital from W. W. Norton.

P.S. The book got me thinking about this program my company has partnered with called CafeWell, which is "the social network to get well and stay well." Personally, I think the name is pretty bad. Because when I think of "Cafe," I think of coffee and pastries and hipsters sitting around reading pretentious poetry. So combining it with the word "Well" ... well, it just doesn't work for me.