Susan Taylor Brown – Page 2

Who is your Hero…Now and Then?

Posted on 17 Jul 200917 Jul 2009 by beckylevine

Recently, on Twitter, Susan Taylor Brown tweeted about character traits she was considering for her hero. She tweeted about pairs of traits, because she was contemplating which of each set of two traits was true for this hero. I wish I could remember them now, but what struck me was the very subtle difference between the two qualities. I don’t think this was one of hers, but think about a pairing like “shy/reserved.” Close, similar, but with a difference–an important difference.

Susan’s tweets and staying away from my story for a couple of weeks got me thinking about my hero and who she really is. (Along with who goes why, but that’s the next step.) So this afternoon, I cleaned off the whiteboard, set Pandora to Pat Metheny, and got out the marker. Here’s what I came up with.

I didn’t work in pairs, like Susan did. (I also found nouns, verbs, AND adjectives popping out of the marker & just went wit that.) I broke the story up into who Caro is at/after four big plot points:

At the beginning/pre-beginning
After the early crisis
After the secret reveal/revelation
After the ending crisis (for Caro, “the march”)

Still, even without consciously thinking about pairs of character traits, I did end up with words that “go together.” I started out by thinking she was determined at the beginning, then realized she might not get there until after the first crisis. Even then I realized there was a difference between determined in the 2nd column and focused in the 3rd. I added narrowly to remind myself that she’s heading into a bit of tunnel-vision here. Which goes with furious. Originally, I had anger in that 3rd column, but realized she has plenty to be angry about already in the 2nd column, and she’d better be amping up in response to that revelation.

anger/fury
determined/focused

Yep. Trait pairings. Contrast, change, growth. What’s on your list?

Thanks, Susan!

You can follow Susan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/susanwrites.

Social Networking

Twitter Update: My Latest Thoughts

Posted on 25 Jun 200926 Jun 2009 by beckylevine

Okay, raise your hand if you knew, when you read this post, that I’d say this:

Twitter is growing on me. And, no, not like mold. 🙂

Honestly, it’s still not my favorite social networking place. My brain chemistry is still happier on Facebook, with the layout of the page and the way you can follow comments directly off the original update.

But I’m getting better at skimming through the tweets. I don’t feel, anymore, like like I’m only seeing stuff I’m not interested in and missing the tweets I really want to read. Just to get a little scientific here, maybe it’s one of those ways I can stretch my brain “muscles,” carve some new synaptic paths–which, you know, is always good. If painful.

And there are some interesting things going on out there at Twitter. Here’s what I’ve seen so far.

I mentioned that I’d heard there were more agents and editors on Twitter than on Facebook. So far, this seems to be very true. Obviously, this doesn’t mean we writers jump all over them, but it’s interesting to hear what they’re saying to us and to each other. Also, agents do send out tweets that they’re open for questions–which does give us a chance to find out some specific info we’ve been wondering about.
This week, Jessica Faust and Kim Lionetti of the Bookends agency are doing twitter-pitch contests. They look like a LOT of fun. And let’s face it–really good practice. You’ve got a couple more days, and you can find out the details here.
Mary Hershey and Robin LaFevers of Shrinking Violet Promotions are trying out Twitter for a month. They’re challenging some of us to turn the tables a bit–instead of tweeting about what we’re doing, to tweet a question to everyone else about what theymight be doing. The other day I asked people what their favorite character in their WIP was doing, and I got some great answers.
There’s an interesting site called TweetChat. They set up occasional “conversations” on a specific topic. I believe there’s a weekly (?) poetry chat, and I stopped by once for an interview (where a moderator and everybody else tweeted their questions) with my friend Susan Taylor Brown. It was a bit chaotic, but fun, and I’d like to try a few more.
Follow Friday. I’m just gathering a few names to do this one tomorrow. Every Friday, tweeters (I refuse to call us twits!) send out a few ids of people they enjoying following on Twitter. It’s a nice way to check out other people you might want to follow, and it’s one of those good Sally-Field moments, too, when you see your id in someone else’s FF.
Retweeting. I do like this one. If someone tweets a thought or a link that you like or find interesting/helpful, you can retweet it. (If you download Tweetdeck, which I prefer to the Twitter page, there’s a button that makes this REALLY easy.) Basically, it means that the people who are following you will get to see the tweet, check out the link, even if they’re not following the person who originally posted it. It’s a nice feature–it means I get to see some good tweets I might miss, and it gives me a chance to “introduce” people to each other.

There are still a few weird things about Twitter. I’d still LOVE to find an app that threads the conversations for me–that shows updates and all subsequent comments in the same place. If you hear of anything like that, puh-lease send me a note!

I’ve got things set up so my tweets go automatically to Facebook. I like this–saves me retyping. BUT it happens automatically with my retweets as well, which gets confusing on Facebook. I’ve passed on a few announcements of someone else’s success or good luck, only to have my Facebook fans congratulate ME!

A few weeks ago, I started getting a LOT of what I call “icky” followers. Some of them were people who have nothing to do with writing or other things I’m interested in–the Twitter equivalent of the door-to-door salesperson asking me if I want to buy a dozen eggplants. (Note: I could be a vegetarian if I only liked vegetables!) But others were definitely gross, porn-type tweeters. Okay, no, I’ll call them twits. They weren’t tweeting to me, but they were showing up on my Followers page. The Followers page is where other people can go and see who is following you, in case there’s someone they might like to add to their own list. For me, this mostly means other writers are coming to see who’s following me. And then they would get, yes…ick.

If this happens to you, there is a way around it. There’s an option on the first page of your Twitter settings called Protect My Updates. If you check this box, then you get an email telling you someone has asked to follow you. You then have the option to accept them or decline them. There is a potential downside to this that Susan Taylor Brown (a social-networking guru, as well as a wonderful writer) was telling me about. She’s going to send me a note later describing how that all works, and I’ll update the post. So stop back in for the full story! UPDATE! So I went back & forth with Susan a few times–because she’s a VERY patient teacher (check out her online social-networking class here), and I am not the most fast student on this stuff. The basic thing seems to be that, when you protect your updates, you are creating an additional step for someone to follow you–some people may not bother, which might lose you followers. Also, they can’t see your updates when they go to your profile, so they can’t get an idea of the kinds of things you’re tweeting about. Same possible result–people may decide it’s not worth the effort/chance to follow you. I can’t tell if that’s been happening to me or not. I am still getting people asking to follow me, and I’ve only said no to a couple–really just the eggplant salespeople! But, obviously, I wouldn’t know if people were passing me by. I know I’m supposed–in terms of promotion–to be in this for the numbers, but it’s hard for me to think that way, so I’m not too worried. Susan suggests also that these “icky visits” may go in waves, so I may try unprotecting for a bit every now and then and see if it makes a difference.

Finally, I found a couple of recent posts about the actual USEFULNESS of Twitter.

At Follow the Reader
http://followthereader.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/do-twitter-and-blogs-really-drive-book-sales/
At MiG Writers
http://www.migwriters.com/2009/06/25/10-ways-twitter-can-help-writers/#more-298

As a side note, I’ve personally had a couple of experiences on Twitter AND Facebook that have proven to me these are places I need to be. They may or may not lead to anything concrete, but I’ve gotten opportunities from both that I would not have gotten without being out there.

If you’re looking for me, I’m still at http://www.facebook.com/beckylevine and http://twitter.com/becky_levine.

Uncategorized

Blog Award: Honest Scrap

Posted on 24 Mar 200924 Mar 2009 by beckylevine

A couple of wonderful bloggers have given me blog awards lately. I have to tell you, getting these awards does make me really happy–it feels like such a compliment for something I’m having so much fun with, anyway! I’ve gotten a couple at my other blog (the more personal, sometimes whiny one at http://beckylevine.livejournal.com), and I’ve happily and quickly passed those along.

Because a few of these hit kind of at once, though, I decided to take a few minutes and actually think about what I’d like to do here, at Moving Forward on the Writing Path, with the awards. And here’s what I’ve come up with. I’m going to:

Send warm thanks to the blogger who gave me the award.
Talk a bit about what the award means and how we can all, if we want, incorporate the goals of the award into our own blogs.
Pass the award onto a few bloggers who I think deserve the award, and who will–I think–be helpful to you all as writers.

Honestly, I’m going to ignore the usual “requirement” of the awards to re-gift the award to a specific number of blogs. Somehow, for me, that feels a bit too much like quantity versus quality. Not that I don’t think there aren’t hundreds of wonderful bloggers out there, but I’d rather highlight a few of the best than overwhelm everyone with too many places to check out at once.

I may play with the other “game rules” a bit, too! And, obviously, I encourage anyone to whom I give a blog award to do the same. 🙂

So that’s my plan! Hope you all think it’s a good one.

Today: the Honest Scrap Award.

honestscrap

Thank you so much, Shawna at Just Another Day in the Life, for giving me this award.

Here’s what I think about honesty in blogs:

I think one of the fun things about blogging, to be truthful, is the online persona we get to create. Most of us, as writers, often write “better” than we speak. I know I do. My thoughts are more organized, I do better choosing the right words or phrases, and (I think) I’m funnier. At least until (in person) you get to know me a bit more. Is this being honest, though?

I think it is. By deciding which part of ourselves we are presenting at our blogs, we define ourselves more strongly. When I started my LiveJournal blog, my purpose was to have fun and meet (and learn from) other writers–mostly writers of kids’ books. Boy, did that work! When I moved my website to WordPress and started this blog, I decided I wanted it to have a slightly different function. I wanted the conversations to be more narrowly about writing, the tools and the journey, and I wanted to share the ideas and beliefs I’ve formed about writing with other people. To be “honest,” I wanted to use this blog to do a bit more teaching, to pass on my understanding of how this craft works. Within those two different blog worlds, I do my best to be honest. At my LiveJournal blog, I ask questions and talk about problems that are really challenging me. I’m half venting and half looking for answers from writers more experienced than me. At this blog, I try and give my true opinions about the things I think work, the places we have to push ourselves and the tools we have to use.

Why do I think honesty is important in blogs? Well–if we’re lying or covering up what’s going on in our own writing lives, what good is that? It doesn’t help the people reading our blogs, and it sure doesn’t help ourselves. The best thing about the Internet is that it has widened the circle of our writing community, increased the number of voices we can listen to about how to live this life. Honestly makes the most of this community; anything else is a waste of the connections we’re all making.

I know the rules of this award say I should state 10 honest things about myself, but I’m going to fiddle with that a bit and tell you why/how I think the bloggers I’m passing this on to are worth reading for their honesty.

Susan Taylor Brown at SusanWrites. Susan tells us when it’s going well and when it’s not. She lays out in wonderful, helpful detail the tools she uses to write and teach and how every trial plays itself out. She shares her knowledge and experience with incredible generousity. And if you want honest, and a wonderful story, read Susan’s book Hugging the Rock.

Mary Hershey & Robin LaFevers at Shrinking Violet Promotions. You met them here, and you should make their blog a regular read. They admit all the difficulties for introvert writers in putting ourselves out there, and they hold our hands to walk us through the process of actually doing it.

Vivian Lee Mahoney at HipWriterMama. Vivian is always stretching her understanding of the creative process, talking it out with us in her posts, sharing her successes and her not-so-much-successes. This writing thing is of the utmost importance to her, and she is completely open about the amount of work she puts into it, that we all need to put into it.

Lisa Schroeder at Lisa’s Little Corner of the Internet. Lisa published two booksin 2008. Does she act like it’s easy? Nope–she’s completely honest about the struggles and battles it takes to do this kind of work. Just check out the letters she wrote to herself (and shared on the blog) last week: here and here.

Check these blogs out; put them on your regular to-read list. And let me know about the honesty thing–what place to you think it has (or doesn’t) in your own posts?