Twitter, De-Mystified

Do you Twitter?

I do - my user account is @bmillerfiction. You can see the last few entries on my Twitter feed on my sidebar, about halfway down on the right. I started using Twitter last year, under a different account I use primarily for personal updates and info I'm not entirely comfortable sharing with the whole free world. I didn't have much to do with the personal account for a long time. It sat dormant for weeks at a time, because I'd forget about it. When I remembered, I just didn't see the point. Isn't this what Facebook is for? I'd think, shaking my head.

Then in January, I started working on building up my writer's platform. I beefed up my Facebook fan page, started this blog and created the B. Miller Fiction twitter account. What really decided me was finding other writers on Twitter and reading the things they had to say - namely Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite, and Joe Hill. Each of them just posted about their regular everyday lives along with whatever writing tidbits they wanted to talk about. I thought this was pretty interesting and I wanted to do it for my own writing - I like to daydream that one day I'll have lots of fans like the writers I just mentioned, and they'll be interested in what I have to say.

Since I started using Twitter I've met lots of new people and fans and found some really great sites through different tweets. It's definitely something I'm going to keep doing; it's a low time investment activity that I can do every day while getting the word out to the internet about my writing. But I hear a lot of people in the blog-o-sphere talk about how they don't like Twitter or they haven't taken the time to "figure it out" yet. I wanted to post a few basics about Twitter that you guys may not know, so you can start working on building your own Twitter feed.

Here's some tidbits to help make your Twitter dealings easier, in no particular order:

Hashtags - Have you noticed the highlighted words with a # before them? Those are known as hashtags, and they're a way of grouping tweets from different users together as a topic. I use the #writing hashtag a lot - especially when I post new blog entries!

Replying to tweets - make sure you put the @ symbol before the person's name. If you don't, they may not realize you're talking to them. Twitter uses special characters like # and @ to designate names and topics that should be linked to. If you don't use the special characters, they're just words!

Search function - you can use Twitter's search function to find people who may be talking about the same things you are. Here's an example: after my post about Murder By Death's concert I attended last month, I searched for "@murderbydeath" - to see who else was talking about the band. I found three new followers this way, just by messaging them about the blog I'd written and sharing how much I liked the band's music. You can do this with just about anything!

Organizing Tweets - I use a nifty program called TweetDeck to keep an eye on my tweets, who's mentioned me in their tweets, and other trending topics I'm interested in. It puts everything together in one layout on the screen so I don't forget to check anything. It also saves all my preferences and keeps everything in order without me having to maintain it. I use Twitter a lot more now that I have a program to help me organize it all. Without TweetDeck, I felt overwhelmed by Twitter, too.

Hope this info helps some of my blogfriends get a little more comfortable with Twitter. It's an important social media tool that I think can help us all get our names out there a little more effectively. Plus it's another way for us writers to communicate with each other! I know I need that every day now, because nobody else understands my crazy ways.

Do you use Twitter? If so, let me know your user name! I'd love to be your follower.

Greenville and Google

When I started mulling over possibilities for the letter "G" in Arlee Bird's A to Z blog challenge, the first thing to come to mind was the only thing I want to blog about today.

I love my town.

I mean, I seriously love my town - if Greenville was a woman instead of a city, I'd probably marry her. And I can say this after traveling around and living in other cities, larger and supposedly better cities. I lived in Indianapolis for four years, but I just couldn't stay. I had to come back to my home.

Greenville is an oasis of culture and industry, a sparkling jewel nestled in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Here, art and technology happily cohabitate; on any given night you're likely to find a networking party sometwhere downtown filled with equal amounts of techie geeks and artistic freaks. It doesn't matter here what your specialty is, as long as you're passionate about it. I live in a city filled with people who firmly believe in the beauty of their dreams, and those people strive to help each other achieve success in their chosen fields.

A perfect example of this thriving community coming together to work towards a common goal is Google on Main. Several weeks ago, Google announced their plans to bring Google Fiber to one lucky town in America. Google Fiber is a new, super-fast internet which Google is now beta testing. It's supposed to be up to 100 times faster than broadband internet. Google offered its new service to the community who could stand up and show they wanted it the most - by getting as many people involved as they could, including city and state officials as well as individuals from the general public.

Greenville responded by organizing Google on Main, an event which drew over 2000 people to Falls Park downtown. The crowd was given eco-friendly LED color-change glow sticks, and once twilight fell, we organized ourselves into the letters of the Google logo, creating the world's first and largest people-powered Google chain! (The photo above is an aerial view of our accomplishment. You can click on the picture to get a larger view.) This was an amazing feat considering it was organized in less than two weeks, and the heads of dozens of companies, several city and state officials, and even a senator got involved.

I volunteered at the event with my friend and fellow writer Leigh Green, and the powers that be decided I would be responsible for handing out the majority of the glow sticks. I had a blast helping out. Everyone at the event was happy to be there, and showing them how the LED color-change glow sticks worked was a lot of fun. It felt as if I was handing out happiness! Everyone walked away from me with a smile on their face.

Being in the diverse crowd of techies, geeks, artists, moms, dads, businessmen (and women), teenagers, grandparents, and every other flavor of person you could think of really made me proud of my community and what we can accomplish together when we put our minds to it. Google hasn't made any decisions on where Google Fiber is going first, but Greenville's been noticed by the big guys - we even had Google representatives downtown during the organizing of Google on Main!

Greenville is responsible for making me the writer I am today. I wouldn't be who I am without the town I grew up in. It's influenced my career as an artist in so many ways, and I'm so proud to be able to give back to the community in any way I can. I'm sure I'll be posting more about my city in the future.

What do you love about your town? What makes you proud to live where you do?

If you'd like to give Greenville, SC a hand in winning a Google Fiber poll, click here and cast a vote!

Writing Playlists

I draw a huge amount of inspiration from the music I listen to in every stage of my writing process. I have thousands of songs loaded on my iPod, and I love to put the thing on shuffle and just let Jeff take to the wind. My mind will often drop into the zone of brainstorming without me even planning it, setting a scene to a particular song. The creative juices start flowing, and for the four-to-six minutes the song's playing, I'm locked deep in my imagination, the music playing as a soundtrack to the movie in my mind.

I also listen to music as I'm actually working on the novel. I don't do this all the time; sometimes listening to music as I write screws with my ADD, distracting me, and I end up looking for the "right song" to listen to as I compose a particular scene, wasting several valuable minutes in the process. But other times it's exactly what I need to transport me to my fictional town of Bulton, SC. I've composed a playlist over the last seven months as I've been writing the novel. The playlist has evolved, growing and changing as the novel does, but the core music remains the same.

I've populated my playlist with some good old rock n' roll, of course - the Eagles are a large part of the lineup. I've mentioned before how the song "Heartache Tonight" was a huge influence in a pivotal scene in the novel... and I swear, if this damn thing ever gets made into a movie, I'm pitching the song to the director... it's that concrete in my head. Other grit-yer-teeth rockers include Creedence Clearwater Revival and the newcomers Deer Tick. (I'd love to call all these bands Southern rock, and I know a good many people think of them as such. I just can't in good conscience do that, though, because CCR and the Eagles are from out West and Deer Tick is from RI.)

I've also got a good bit of Murder By Death on the playlist. Their epic rock-meets-country-meets-orchestra sound, coupled with beautiful dark lyrics and an underlying current of desperation, fit my little Southern ghost story very well. I chose some tracks from the Fleet Foxes, because their mellow, folk-y sound makes me think of the South in general and Appalachia in particular, most likely because of their song, "Blue Ridge Mountains".

Then there are a few single tracks from different artists and movie soundtracks, which feed my brain beautiful images and keep it running at high speed. I've had a lot of fun building this playlist, and I love to see the influence it's had over the tale I'm spinning. I'm continually finding songs and adding them to the mix, so by the end of this I'll have hours and hours of music that I can choose a really solid soundtrack out of, to burn to a CD for myself... sort of a behind-the-scenes extra, if you'll allow me that indulgence. You'd better, 'cause it'll just be for me anyway.

I love hearing what other writers were listening to as they composed their particular masterpieces, especially if they showcase lyrics from a song as a foreword, or mention it in their notes. One of my favorite horror authors, Joe Hill, recently published (on his blog) highlights from the playlist he listened to as he wrote his new novel Horns. You can check out that blog entry here - it's a really interesting read.

How about the rest of you guys? What have you been listening to lately, as you compose your masterpieces? Do you need a playlist to work, or would you rather have silence as company? I'm interested in how our creative processes differ.

Social Media

A few months ago I read that publishers and agents are much more likely to work with an author if they have an established web presence, including social media profiles. This makes a lot of sense to me, because I know the publishing industry is changing on a daily basis, and many publishers or agents just don't have the resources which used to be available to them for marketing and publicity. If a publisher sees a writer already has an established presence online (I learned later that this is called a "platform"), it makes working with that author more attractive, because it gives the publisher one less thing to worry about.

Reading that article is what made me get started with this blog. I already had a Facebook fan page, but I hadn't done a lot with it. When I learned that publishers are seeking authors who are willing to take over their own publicity, I added a Twitter feed and started keeping a regular web journal. I want to be able to show a publisher that I've established myself and keep up with posting, and also I want them to see that I already have an established fan base. This is most easily calculated through my Facebook fans. While 122 fans might not be as many as some people out there, I feel it's a good start.

Blogging has now become part of my job as a writer - it's a way to get my words out there, tell people how my work on different projects is going, and record my progress. I also love being able to talk about the different parts of the writing process that really interest me, as well as other topics like music and art. I've learned so much since I started blogging a couple of months ago, and made some great new friends.

I also love my Facebook fan page. I don't update it more than once a week or so, because I don't want to inundate people with my posts and turn them off. I try to post every couple of weeks about the blog, and once a week or so I change my status message. I'm trying to keep a balance of online-and-active but not annoying.

My Twitter feed is fun to play with, but I don't use it as much as I should. I have found a couple of new friends and followers through Twitter by using their search engine and striking up a conversation on related interests. My newest follower, Ryan from Iowa, is a Murder By Death fan, and that's how I found him - by searching for @murderbydeath in the Twitter search field, then tweeting to him about the concert this weekend and my blog post about it, complete with a photo of Sarah, the cellist. There are a lot of wonderful ways to utilize Twitter that I haven't played with yet, but I'm working on it.

The website will be up soon, and I hope I can integrate these blogs with the website. I've been told it shouldn't be that hard to do because it's a WordPress website, but I wonder if my blog followers will still be able to see my updates if I'm posting on the website instead of directly to blogspot? Has anyone else had any experience with this?

I'm having a lot of fun establishing my "writer's platform", and the more I work on it, the more I feel like a (flourish of trumpets, please) REAL WRITER. It helps me get my headspace into where it needs to be - that is, making things up and writing 'em down is my career, and punching in and out at my daily grind-job (a la Clark Kent) is only how I pay the bills. It's gratifying.

What are some other social media sites you would recommend (or NOT recommend)? Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Submitting via Post

I sent out a submission to moonShine review yesterday. It varied from my normal submissions in the way it got sent to the market; I sent it via U.S. Post.

This is very rare for me. Almost everything I sent right now is submitted electronically; it's faster, easier and requires much less effort to produce a ton more results. I can keep up with my submission tracking with my email up on the adjacent tab in my web browser, if I want. I can send out a dozen stories for free, in less than an hour, including the time it takes to compose a short email for each submission. In contrast, sending stories via post is slow and expensive. It requires ponderous visits to the post office to purchase stamps (and to make sure your envelope has enough postage... how many words were in that story again?). I also hear back much faster from electronic submissions; after all, if I can send an editor a story with a single click of my mouse button, she or he can send a rejection or acceptance back just as fast.

And yet there was a simple, charming hopefulness that filled me when I slid my pages into their freshly addressed envelope and handed the whole shebang over to the less than charming postal worker who helped me yesterday afternoon. The cover letter was handsome and I love the personal touch of signing my letters (one of the drawbacks to email submissions). Holding the heft of the printed story in my hands was exciting, and looking through the pages, it dawned on me that this copy would be in the editor's hands in a few days, these pages which I'd printed myself and then carefully packaged for their journey would be read by another person, someone who had the ability to embrace or deny my work. I liked being able to send a little of my good thoughts and hopes with the pages, from my hands to the editor's.

Sliding the pages into the envelope and addressing it, making sure it had the postage it needed and then ultimately handing it over to the stranger behind the counter was simultaneously exhilarating and daunting. What if it gets lost? How will I know when it gets there? What if someone bends/tears/burns/runs it over with a Nazi Tiger Tank? I imagine it's the feeling parents get when watching their kids drive away without them for the first time... fear, hope, anticipation, joy.

The tactile, personal touch really connected me with the piece again, and the submission process. It's so easy to press a mouse button and submit. With a posted envelope, it's as if your dreams go right into the envelope along with the story, and it makes it more special, somehow.

I also love the idea of submitting in the same way of my writing idols. The internet is so recent; it's easy to forget that. But as little as ten years ago, the majority of authors were doing exactly what I did yesterday afternoon with every submission they made. What perseverance! What raw courage!

What an inspiration!

Fun Discovery

I drive a lot, and often I'm hit with interesting ideas or arresting images that would go well in a story while I'm behind the wheel. Problem is, I often lose those ideas because I don't have a way to record them when I'm driving.

I had a voice recorder for a while, but never really warmed to it - mostly because I hated having to keep up with one more thing; something else to add to the wallet-keys-phone-inhaler-lighter ensemble that lives in the pockets of my pants was irritating. I'd forget and leave it at home, then when I needed it, I'd resent myself and the damn thing for not being where I wanted it to be.

Today in the car, I had another one of those isn't-this-interesting ideas which so often strike me in the most inopportune places (they also hit hard in the shower, and right before I'm asleep at night, drifting in that hazy awake/asleep pseudo-reality). I liked the idea so much, but I felt immediate frustration because I knew there was no way I'd hold on to it until I got to a place where I could write it down. Parts of the concept, maybe, but not the whole thing, not all the nuances; not the things that turn the vision from something ordinary into something spectacular.

Suddenly I remembered my new phone has a lot of nifty gadgets on it that I never thought I'd use. Wonder if it has a voice recorder? I thought. I quickly navigated to my tools. Lo and behold, there was a recorder icon! I was elated. I used it to record the idea I'd had, along with all the interesting little details I'd been noodling.

The discovery made my day. I hope to lose less ideas and thoughts now that I know I'll almost always have a voice recorder with me. Amazing!