Monday, October 18, 2010
Back-to-Business Monday: POSTING PARANOIA
Okay, I just deleted a very useful and practical post about authors who take too long to reply to emails from their publishers. It even had suggestions for professional ways of managing email/logistical correspondence if it isn't your strong suit. However, as we all know, nothing ever really disappears from the internet and it occurred to me that my helpful words might be misconstrued as the angry rant of a marketing person. Truthfully, this is not the case. I save all my real tears for my novels :)
However, after having wasted the better part of an hour composing, proofing, and deleting, I realized that what I was learning was that I have a pretty solid case of posting paranoia. In fiction, we work to quell the "inner critic" but in blogging, a sober second thought before hitting the "publish post" button is probably a good idea. Because, as bloggers, we develop our own online personas and they have to be in keeping with who we are, what we want to talk about and, hopefully, our offline objectives as well.
Have you recognized any boundaries of your blogging comfort zone? Could you describe your blogger persona in fifteen words or less? And, do you ever have posting paranoia?
Labels:
blogging,
business of children's books
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5 comments:
I totally understand posting paranoia. That's why it takes me so long to put up a post. (Sometimes all day.) Part of the problem, IMO, is that as fiction writers we rarely get to speak as ourselves--we're always trying to be authentic to a character voice--but on a blog we're forced to just be ourselves. (No character or "voice" to blame the opinion on.) We don't want our personal opinions to leak into how our writing is received. Does that make any sense or should I delete and start over? :) In a nutshell, it's much easier to be a fictional person than a real one.
Thanks for stopping by, Jennifer. Oh, the joys of being a 21st century writer--now we've gotta create both books and our online selves! Honestly, I even rewrote this comment, like, five times before posting. My world is becoming one giant edit!
Last night, actually, I ranted about CAPTCHA. I very tentatively pressed "SUBMIT", left it on for a few hours, generated one comment, deleted the post. I feel like rants, while they are expressing ones innermost feelings, I was afraid I came off a bit whiny--obviously not a desirable trait.
I'm sure this (gesticulates with swooping action an elliptical shape around computer screen) is made even more difficult when you're an author, since you're always 'on', you're always thinking of stories, and such...right?
I'm a new follower. I'm hoping your book will be fabulous. I love the title. ;)
I know exactly what you mean. Blogging can be scary sometimes because whatever you write, anyone in the world could easily take a look. And on blogs, it's what you write that gets judged, so everything you say reflects on you. There have been times when I wrote something in a post, published it, cringed, and then quickly deleted or edited it.
I guess I've been pretty naïve, and should probably be more careful cause I hadn't really thought about it too much. I kinda just write and post what I'm thinking without too much filtering :-s
thanks for the great topic to ponder:-)
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