Why I don't tweet that much

I have a twitter account. I’ve been on twitter for years now, and I only recently broke the 1000 tweet threshold. At this rate, I’ll be tweeting for a couple of decades before I smash into the next set of digits. I’m a complete loud mouth, so why don’t I tweet more?

Fear of making an ass out of myself.

One of the big problems with being a writer is that our work is glacially slow. We spend so much time too close to our work, and then we want some satisfaction when we finally manage to put that work out there, but Surprise! (or not a surprise if this isn’t your first rodeo) Publishing takes a long time. Example: I’m currently working on a draft that I wrote a year ago. I’m juggling it with a book I wrote two years ago, just before I got my twitter account. Yeah. And with writing, there’s so much of the process that you’re JUST NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT.

Are you querying? Yeah, don’t mention it on your blog.

Did you just send a manuscript to a publisher? Don’t mention that either.

Are you on submission and got an R&R with super awesome Editor of Your Favorite Big Five Imprint???? Yeah, you’d better keep that under wraps, too.

The idea is to keep your electron trail good and clean. Make sure that you don’t seem like the crazy writer, but I’m going to tell you a secret: if you write, you are crazy. It’s a good crazy, but really the act of putting words to paper is complete madness.

My problem with twitter is that writing forums are usually filled with, well, writers. Sure, a google alerts might pop up if someone were to mention something specific (I queried agent X with my novel AWESOME TITLE; she said I smelled like elderberries so I’m never querying her again!), but for the most part, they are filled with writers who know what it’s like to have your query called elderberry fertilizer.

That’s just not the case with twitter.

In a forum, if you make a mistake (post too often due to profound OMG HAVE THEY READ IT disorder, otherwise known as OIRX) most of the other people are writers. So even though they look at you like you’re the annoying one, they know: what goes around comes around—they’ll be in the crazy seat someday, too.

On Twitter?

Nope.

If it’s on a forum, it’s sort of like yelling it to a crowded room, maybe someone will notice, or care enough to acknowledge you, but likely, the conversation will just keep going right over your head. But in twitter, if you had a joke or a cute cat picture and you @ someone? That’s like having it hand delivered to their house (maybe put directly on their pillow—CREEPY). (And yes, I've done this and regretted it later--too many times to count.)

Sure, I thought my joke was funny, or witty, or whatever, but when your tweet is put into the “I’m a writer, and you’re a publishing professional” context, it’s really hard to see the witty over the subtext of the tweet. Right, so you’re all about to yell at me for making assumptions, but I’m trying to save you pain. I’m worried that all tweets from aspiring writers to publishing professionals also have the subtext “pretty pretty please just love my work and be my bestie for the rest of my writing days because publishing is scary.”

So yeah, I feel like twitter just makes it too easy to make a fool of myself. Thoughts?

Time for a Twitter PSA

Okay people, I have a confession. I am a bad twitter person.

This isn't because I'm bad at tweeting, no, not at all.

I have never--not once!--ever bought something that someone tweeted about. Not once. Not ever. And this is NEVER going to CHANGE. So all you people tweeting two times an hour seven days a week? I consider you spam. Have nothing on your twitter feed but promotion and "I got a four star review on amazon," quite frankly, I don't care.

So when someone on twitter follows me, I click to their full profile and check out their last ten tweets. If more than one of the last ten tweets is a promotion for their book (and none of the other ones are OMG, MY BOOK JUST CAME OUT! because seriously, people get to be crazy when their book releases) then I don't follow back.

Yeah, I know, this sort of means I'm an evil witch, but really, I'm old enough to know what my time is worth.

When I sign on to twitter, I'm not interested in having advertisements thrown in my face. I use twitter to check in with my friends, see what's going on in NYC (because most of the people I follow are agents and editors in New York... with some notable exceptions in California, Colorado and Minnesota), and maybe catch some awesome pictures of the planet from Chris Hadfield. If I have to wade through a hundred tweets about four star reviews and BUY MY BOOK!!!!! this makes me a little cranky. It's inefficient. It makes Twitter not do the one thing that Twitter does really well: Twitter lets me interact with people very far away. When my feed is full of spam, I don't stay. It's not interesting.

So I've stopped following people back. And thus has begun the dreaded follow/unfollow/follow.

People, I am here to tell you that if you seem decent, and are a writer and your last ten tweets were not about your book, then I'll almost always follow back. But if you are a spam bot, and you never link to content, only buy buttons, then I'm not interested, and no amount of follow/unfollow/follow will catch my attention. Ever. I saw you the first time. And the tenth time. If I haven't followed back by the end of the week, it ain't happening. And you know why? It's because Twitter is not free advertising. It never was. You have to build a following or else you're just a spam bot. You build a following by posting content, being interesting and above all else: INTERACTING. That's what Twitter is there for. 

Sure, I don't tweet often, and most of it is about contest and writing, but that's where I am right now. I try to interact with people (like agents and editors and other authors), but mostly on twitter, I don't have a lot to say, so I spend my time watching. That means I know. Spam is spam. On Twitter, in email, if you spam, I will delete you. I'm tired of it.

And before people go crazy about needing to promote their books, here is the truth: I don't buy books from spam bots. I buy the books that my friends (you know, the people I interact with on Twitter) tell me are amazing. But I don't trust them if they haven't put out enough content for me to judge their character. I mean really, if all people ever did was spam the feed then how would I know if their recommendation of The Bridges of Madison County would mesh with my Pacific Rim loving personality? Twitter is a great way to figure that out, and if you're just spamming, no one can ever learn that from you. And trust me, if you just released a Bridges of Madison County and billed it as a must read for my Pacific Rim loving soul and I "fall for it"? You just got one sale. But I'm going to trash your book because you pitched it as Pacific Rim and it was Bridges of Madison County. I'm going to tell everyone--EVERYONE. And I know a lot of people despite my twitter numbers. In short, if you lead me in with false advertising, you're not doing yourself any favors.

So tweet, follow, do whatever it is that you want, just don't feel like I'm obliged to follow you to "boost" my numbers. I mean seriously, have you seen my numbers? I follow a ton of people and literally have half the number of followers (George Takei hasn't followed me back! My life is now in ruins!), I'm not that worried, because honestly, one real follower who actually listens and isn't a spam bot is worth twenty spam bots. Think about it.

Dream agents, or how things are bigger in your head

We've all heard people talking about the dream agent.

Being a querying writer is a unique form of hell (somewhere near the one for people who talk in theaters). First you're throwing yourself out there, trying to catch the attention of the rare literary agent in their natural habitat: the slush pile.

You're elbowing around with all the other people who have stars in their eyes, and you have spent your whole life working on getting published. So you research the agents you're going to query. Turns out one of them plays hockey.

You play hockey.

The agent also loves Sci Fi art.

You love sci fi art!

The agent is funny on twitter.

You LOVE funny on Twitter!

So you send to this person to whom you now feel strongly connected (hey, it's hard to find an LA Kings fan in NYC, so don't look a gift horse in the mouth). They must be your dream agent. But despite being into Sci Fi, hockey, and funny on twitter, you really have NO IDEA what kind of AGENT they are.

This is a wake up call people. Being funny on twitter doesn't mean an agent is good at being an agent, and here's the problem I see with people talking about their dream agents: until you've worked with (or at least talked to) that agent, there is no way to tell if they are a good agent. Yes you can look them up on predators and editors, and Of Course you looked them up on absolute write and AgentQueryConnect, but that's all second hand information.

It's the difference between seeing something and hearing something.

Your eyes believe what they see.

Your ears believe what someone else says.

Until you've worked with that person, you have no idea how the two of you will work together.

So I'm sure you're all wondering, do I have a dream agent? Well, if you mean an agent I fantasize about having fall in love with my manuscript, well, yes, I have more than one dream agent. For me, my dream agent is the one who loves my books and wants to help me in my bid to take over the world (with great stories).
Helpful qualifications*: an excellent editorial eye, straight talking, professional connections, an abundance of humor (preferably black like my heart), the ability to play halo a plus but not a deal breaker.  But truthfully, I don't know enough about publishing to know what I should want in an agent (other than previous sales in my genre). I suspect that most of us unagented writers are sitting in the same boat.

But Rena, some of those qualifications perfectly match my one and true dream agent. How can you say there's no such thing until I meet them over the phone and then work with them? What about my psychic powers of intuition?

Ah, my sweetlings, let me tell you about that intuition.

For some people it is very right. For others it is very, very wrong. And now it's story time.

There was this actor. I won't say his name because I'm sure the experience was a complete fluke, but let's just say he played  a popular character on a popular television show.

It would be silly to say that he changed my life with his role, but he did. I based many of my dreams off of things I saw him do on TV (wow, where was my guidance counselor in all of this?? ). I spent thousands of dollars chasing a dream life molded by the character he played. I had spent so much time thinking about him and the character that he had played that it was hard to separate the two.

And then I got to meet him.

I was so nervous standing in line to meet the guy who had literally changed the shape of my life.

He was a robot. An autograph signing machine. I think he wrote something like Peace on the picture. He misspelled my name--well, maybe, it's illegible.

My whole life I thought I would have some deep connection with this person whose life choices (to act and be an activist) had changed my life so profoundly. But there was nothing. I was just another fan in a long line of fans, paying my money for an autograph. I got the same I-can't-believe-you-people-are-still-here-the-show-ended-years-ago-get-on-with-your-life-so-I-can-get-on-with-mine smile that he gave the lady in front of me.

I won't say that it broke my heart. I'd experienced something similar with Stephen Hawking (I don't think he's mean on purpose, I think he's mean because life is a lot harder for him than for able bodied people) (and oh yeah, it's hard for me to really hate people so I often make up excuses for them to be hateful).

My point is, the person in my head was much bigger than the one signing autographs, probably desperate for a break (can you imagine how his hand must have hurt, and the barrage of people "I'm your biggest fan!!!!"). Don't do this to yourself with an agent.

When you get an agent, you have to become partners in the whole publishing gig (and you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy--okay, it's nicer than that, but it's not shooting womp rats back home). Partnerships don't work out if you start on uneven ground. So don't go all moon-eyed in the query trenches. It's a dangerous place.

Also, you might want to go see Fizzy about oversharing. Zang, you don't want that problem. 





*helpful qualifications may change without notice as writer gains experience

I thought we'd figured this out already...

I've been sitting on this one for a few days. I don't want to be the downer blogger, but this is important. It's important because I'm not the only one. It's important because if it's even in science, it's everywhere.

A study just came out which found a significant gap in the perception of men and women in science. And it was a big gap. Men are simply seen as smarter and more accomplished. This is sadly a fact. They gave scientist a one page summary of accomplishments for a potential hire. They gave out the same summary to scientist in physics, biology, and chemistry. The only difference was the name of the potential candidate: one was named Jennifer; the other was named John.

On a scale of 1 to 7 they rated John a 4. They rated Jennifer a 3.3.

3.3

If this was scored out of 100, John had a 57 and Jennifer got a 47. Ten percent higher for being a man.

I play hockey in a co-ed league, and something that always comes up is should we make special dispensations for women hockey players. My answer has always been "no." Hockey is a game of speed and skill, and in my opinion, if a man isn't fast enough or skilled enough, they don't belong in the league and neither do women who can't cut the mustard. If, however, women are skilled enough and fast enough, then yes, they should play. That's it. The only difference is the gear they have.

All my life I've seen barriers come down for women. I've felt like we were closer to bridging this gap. I'd even started to feel like there wasn't as much gap left (despite my time in a very misogynistic physics department). And now I see this.

I'm floored.