…Authors and Artistes are Ageless… just look at ‘young’ Mick Jagger… #TBSU… | Seumas Gallacher

By Seumas:

…I’m sure if yeez dig deep enuff into the Great God Google yeez can find out what age authors(esses) were when they wrote their various masterpieces… I’m equally certain there will be no common specific age when this tome or that tome came streaming from these assorted cerebral creative minds…

(Click on the immortal Mick to read on)

 

[New post] … ‘multi-tasking’ is the ability to procrastinate on several things at the one time… #TBSU… – Inbox – Yahoo! Mail

By Seumas “The Mad Kilt” Gallacher…

…genius, me… I’ve discovered the art of deflecting non-time-precious activity to some nebulous future timing… don’t mistake me, I DO focus well, but have learned ‘focus’ is best applied to only one or two issues… everything else is just ‘stuff’… that’s where the multi-tasking ploy kicks in…

Click on the bootiful mug to read on…

 

With thanks to Chris the Story Reading Ape – How to Make Use of Google+ as an Author

Click on the logo to read it…

 

Read this and keep a dry eye…I dare you…

Click on the image to read…

 

Backlinks – underused and essential…

1. 

One way to increase your site’s (and therefore, your) visibility is increasing your ranking for search engines. Sites like Google and Alexa rank sites according to a formula, and all their formulas have one common factor – backlinks.

So, what are backlinks, and how do they work?

Many thanks to my brother Travis Luedke for sharing this – “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: Dealing with Bad Reviews”, by A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing

Click on Joe’s photo to read it…:)

 

Author Patrick Jones (The Linden Chronicles) advises – you better tune in to these 6 sites!

6 Social Media Sites, Essential for Writers | The Linden Chronicles.

I Love Lucy – What one episode tells us about writing today

 

Okay. So I’m addicted to I Love Lucy reruns. I love AC/DC too, so shut up. It is a great show, and harkens back to a time when humor was clean, and acting was really acting, not delivering ham-handed lines and getting paid a million bucks an episode. It’s also been on TV  since 1951, with no breaks. Let some of the crap on television today try and say that in 60 years.

One particular episode I watched this past week  got me thinking. Lucy and her husband Ricky were out to dinner with their buddies, the Mertz’s. (They’re all pictured above. If you aren’t familiar, Google it.) Their waiter came over and took their orders. Now, from there, they embark on a humor jag, but I’m not going to comment on that.

I’m going to tell you what they ordered. Ricky wanted a steak, Fred Mertz pork chops, Ethel takes lamb chops, and Lucy chooses roast beef. That’s it. All the meals came with whatever sides were listed, and that’s what you got. No one questioned it, no one complained.

You placed your order and ate your food.

Everything (including writing) was much the same back then. Think about it. No internet. No Amazon. No way to get your book out except to mail your paper manuscript to one of a handful of publishing companies and wait for 6 months to get an answer (well – some things haven’t changed so much.) Then, if you were lucky, someone took your work and you embarked on a wearisome journey of communication by mail, editing and so on, until finally, a book was produced. The whole process might have taken 2 years, 100 phone calls, and endless mailings.

BUT. If you were good, you stood out. And if you stood out, the money was there. How many truly good authors were there? Not many. At least, by today’s standards. And the public had much fewer choices. Just like Lucy’s menu. It was roast beef, pork chops, lamb chops, or steak. Take it or leave it.

Flash forward. Minimize this screen and Google publishers. Even taking out all the spam and mistaken hits, how many do you find? Fifty thousand, maybe, if you were to take the time to count them, and good luck with that. All with little tags on their sites, ready to take in the work of whomever wishes to make the jump. If you make that plunge, your work flashes over in a nanosecond to someone’s inbox, and off you go. To the trash heap, or to stardom. Or perhaps just mediocrity.

Because, see, stars don’t shine quite as brightly today, for one very good reason. And thus we get to my point. 

It’s a double-edge sword, you see. While the wonders of technology have made it easier to submit, edit, and publish our work (Amazingly, it’s not any easier to write it), it has also opened the floodgates for anyone who can (or thinks they can) write. If you have 50,000 publishers, how many aspiring authors do you have? How many submittals? 

How many choices for the reading public?

Bottom line is this. It ain’t 1951 any more. If you want to sell five books (much less the number you really have in mind), you better bring your “A” game. Your plotting, writing, editing, covering, hob-knobbing, tweeting, blogging, reviewing, interviewing, and whatever other “ings” had better be top shelf. Because, if yours isn’t, someone’ out there has “ings” that will eat your lunch.

Remember that, the next time you say “It’s good enough”.

 

Twitter – social tool or ad dump?

How many times has this happened to you?

You’re browsing around, and you spot someone you think might be interesting to follow, so you hit the button.

The response is something like, “Thanks for following because “Ajax Magazine says Darius Hootinannie is the most promising writer west of the Mississippi. His books are available at Junkieworks. com.”

This kind of doo-doo has caused me serious concern about the viability of Twitter as any kind of social networking tool.

Now, at this juncture it might be appropriate to say that I appreciate all follows, and I am WAY too new at this to judge just how much Twitter exposure is going to help my efforts at gaining knowledge – or plying my books – but I have some doubts. I mean, at this writing, I have 217 followers on the bird. Not bad…could be better, but not bad. But I hardly ever hear anything from any of these folks. Not many comments on my posts, not many subsequent follows on this blog – very little of what I had expected. My suspicions are that everyone on twitter wants the same thing. To be followed. So we follow, follow back, the numbers grow and the world goes round and round. But, how much conversation, trading of ideas, chit-chat, comments on articles, do I see? Not as much as I would have imagined – by a long shot.

So. I’m going to look to myself first. At this juncture, due in large part to all the ranting I’ve heard about this much ballyhooed social networking tool, I’m going to rethink my strategy on it’s use. Pay a bit more attention to the folks I’ve followed, and actually increase my participation a bit. Maybe it’s my fault…I’m about to see. After all, all things being equal, social networking is like anything else in life – you get back what you put in. So, I’ll give it another shot – and I’ll let you know. If anyone has had similar experiences, come on by and tell me so.

Thomas