Don't blog, do blog ... let's call the whole thing off!

Cartoon: Johnny Ancich

By Candy Gourlay

Over at Jane Friedman's guest blogger L.L. Barkat has called on experienced writers to stop blogging.

Does this mean I would recommend that everyone stop blogging? No. I encourage new bloggers, just the way I always have. It’s an excellent way to find expression, discipline, and experience. But if writers already have experience, and they are authors trying to promote themselves and their work, I tell them to steer clear. If they’ve already found themselves sucked into the blogging vortex, I suggest they might want to give it up and begin writing for larger platforms that don’t require reciprocity (an exhausting aspect to blogging and a big drain on the writer’s energy and time). Read the whole thing

Geek List: Paying attention to Facebook Pages

By Candy Gourlay

I had a hundred million other things to do the other day but then I came upon this piece in the New York Times about "Protecting Your Privacy on the New Facebook".

The NEW Facebook? Again?

Sigh. What with now being a quoted company, FB is adding new meaning to the word INSIDIOUS.

How We All Used to Think Getting Published Was Like

Lucy Coats (Coll the Storyteller's Tales of Enchantment) posted this on Facebook:

How sweet it is to remember those days when getting published seemed such a happy, easy thing to do.

Btw you might be thinking, she's just posting videos. She's not really blogging. But hey, I'm writing! I'm writing! That's what we're supposed to be doing. Oh, and I've got some website work too. Boo. ZZZ.

My Friends Are Dragging Me Kicking and Screaming Into Facebook

So you see, though I've got a page on MySpace and a page on Facebook and a page on Bebo and a page on YouTube, and a page on Ning (bet you haven't heard of Ning) I was only doing the social networking lark as RESEARCH.

Honest!

My main photo-sharing thingy is Multiply, which a lot of people haven't heard of and that's because it mainly populated by my family and friends in the Philippines and frankly, I was happy to keep it that way.

The main thing I've learned from social networking is that the "social" is just as important as the "network". You can network meaninglessly with as many people you don't know as you want on MySpace, on the off chance that someday you will need to tell all these strangers that you've published your book. But there's nothing like a network that actually interacts with you - it takes years of blogging to get more than four comments (unless you join the Nude Blogging Movement, and then you get an instant fan base).

Or not.

I find Multiply the most rewarding because it's where my "social" is ... I only have to put one silly photo up of my husband and within seconds I have 27 pithy comments from my best friend in Washington and 27 comments from my brothers and sisters in Manila (there are many of us), discussing in detail every aspect of my husband's nose, ears, hair, etc.

It's very rewarding (unless you're my husband).

Anyway, my Facebook contacts may have already noticed that I have increased activity on Facebook. This is because my Multiply friends are slowly moving to Facebook. So now I have to go on Facebook to leave insults on their albums. Boo!

Meanwhile, one of my fave YA authors John Green (Abundance of Katherines) posted this fab link imagining HAMLET's newsfeed on Facebook!

This brilliant cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle

AND here's an image of VP hopeful Sarah Palin that I took off the facebook page of Maureen Johnson (Suite Scarlet, 13 Little Blue Envelopes). Yup that's a bear. And yup, that's a giant crab. It really focuses the mind on the coming US elections.


THESE are the things that make all that wasted time on Facebook seem worthwhile.

‘Tell Me The Future’ Guardian Piece Leaves Out Publishers

The Media Guardian asked Vint Cerf, the godfather of the internet, to guest edit the MediaGuardian.

Vint Cerf's editorial describes how traditional media has always been vulnerable to new technology:

It is not often that a technological innovation changes fundamentally the way people communicate. In the 15th century the printing press made it possible to distribute the written word. In the 19th century, the telegraph enabled rapid point-to-point communication over long distances. Then there was the telephone. And we're still coming to terms with the social effects of radio and television.

It takes decades if not generations to fully understand the impact of such inventions. We are barely two decades into the commercial availability of the internet, but it has already changed the world. It has fostered self-expression and freed information from the constraints of physical location, opening up the world's information to people everywhere.

For the MediaGuardian's opening piece: Tell Me the Future Cerf selected a panel of commentators who can best tell us where technology is going.

Cerf's choices included Chris de Wolf of MySpace, Chad Hurley of YouTube, Peter Norvig, director of Google Research, and Biz Stone of Twitter. The presence of these social networking luminaries comes as no surprise.

Unfortunately, it also comes as no surprise that none of the seven experts he picked to predict the future came from the publishing industry.

Does traditional publishing have nothing to contribute to a discussion about the future of media?

Who's Afraid of the World Wide Web - Blog Panel

My talk Who's Afraid of the World Wide Web for Writer's Day went on for so long that we didn't have time to interview a panel of SCBWI bloggers who would have shed light on life in the blogosphere.

The panel was meant to include Sue Eves, Anita Loughrey, Sarah McIntyre and Addy Farmer. I was also going to talk to the author Diana Kimpton about her work with Contact an Author and Wordpool.

To make up for blabbing too long, I'm going to do the panel right here at Notes From the Slush Pile. A blog tour ... except it's a blog panel.

First up is Sue Eves, an actor, puppeteer and author of the picture book Hic!, who can tell you a thing or two about how to achieve the networking in social networking!

I joined myspace a year ago and facebook in June. The main reason I joined myspace was to research the children's book market. By adding global contacts focusing on children's authors, book publishers and literary agents, I soon had a small network of 85 'friends' across the globe from San Francisco to Perth. Read more

And here's Anita Loughrey, who has authored many teacher's resources and written articles for publications online and in print:

The worst thing about blogging is feeling like I am wasting time when I should be getting on with other things. The best bit about blogging is when someone leaves me a comment. It makes me feel really good knowing somebody has actually read what I’ve written and taken the time to write back to me. Read more

Uber-illustrator Sarah McIntyre keeps a fully-illustrated, (highly addictive if you love illustration) blog and set up a community blog for members of SCBWI over at LiveJournal (their current wheeze is a describe/draw your own mermaid self-portrait). Here's Sarah on why she blogs:

It's a blessing for the networking, the encouragement people have given me on my work, and the constant motivation to be doing something fresh. I've had commissions from people looking at my blog. And I've learned a great deal about comics and comic artists, since so many comics are only visible online, not in printed form. I like how reading comics online subverts publishers' ideas about what they think we'll read. The curse is that I can spend way too much time on it when I should be doing my work. And I sometimes worry about people nicking my stuff, and I try to label it to make it slightly more difficult. But that concern also motivates me to keep making fresh work. Read More

Addy Farmer has been blogging in the guise of a Science-Museum-mad eight-year-old boy named Wilf for more than two years now. The Wilf blog has fulfilled every blogger's fairy tale aspiration to have their blog discovered and published as a book! Addy's picture books Grandad's Bench (Walker) and Siddharth and Rinki (Tamarind Press) are out in August 2008, and a poem is appearing in Look Out! the Teachers Are Coming: Poems Chosen by Tony Bradman — and here, Addy explains how Wilf the blog led to Wilf the book:

I heard about a publisher called, 'The Friday Project' who publish blogs as books. They are medium sized and independent (bit like me) and importantly, their sales, marketing and distribution is handled by Macmillan. I submitted my blog to the commercial director, Scott Pack. He liked it and made suggestions for how it could be formatted which I liked. Basically, there is a 15,000 word story seamlessly blended with facts and inventions. After a year of slog I signed the contract and 'Wilf and the Big Cat' comes out in August 2008! Read More

Any questions? Go ahead, make our day!