Social Networking...

When I submitted Game Plan to Fierce Ink Press, there was one sentence in their submission guidelines that daunted me: "A word about social media and why we require it." which pre-empted a discussion about self promotion and online presence with Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. I've had Facebook mastered for the past seven years. Probably too mastered if you ask those who aren't interested in what I'm having for lunch. Yes, I'm one of those. But I hadn't tried Twitter or Tumblr, mostly because I was intimidated.

Tumblr still confuses me a bit... I get the purpose but I can't grasp the community structure of it. I understand how FB and Twitter are laid out, but Tumblr is still a bit baffling. So, as Game Plan started to come together I signed up for Twitter and started Twitting about. 

Wednesday I joined in in my first Twitter Chat. Talk about confusing!!! It was kinda like that fuzzy drunk stage where you're sitting at the table with all your boisterous friends who are talking over each other and the background hum and music is competing with what they're saying and you only get every third sentence that anyone says and you can't figure out how one sentence leads to the other. But it's all super fun and you're having a great time and it doesn't matter that you're not getting everything. I piped up a few times and hoped I didn't make an ass of myself. I'm looking forward to trying it again!

N

BTW you can follow me on Twitter if you want to, @NSampson17 But only if you want to, I'm not forcing anyone into listening to what I had for lunch.

Getting organized

It's been a bit since I was able to concentrate time and energy on my WIP, so I spent today organizing it to remember what the heck I was writing in the first place. I came across a good deal on Scrivener, a writing software I had considered purchasing at full price, so it was an easy buy at half price.
Today I imported my WIP files and tried to separate and sort them in a way that might maximize the benefits of Scrivener.

It's an interesting process.

By it's nature writing is creative. But to develop a worthwhile novel, it takes much more structured discipline and organization than you would think. Even the most free flowing and organic stories need an almost mathematical formulated foundation.

So far Scrivener is helping with that; forcing my flighty right hemisphere to listen to my anal left hemisphere for once. I love the layout, the simplicity and functionality of it. I love the way it looks, the way it moves. I love the layers of explanation I can add. It's been a good process to review my WIP and pick up the scent of where the story was headed.

And that's why there's no procrastination involved. At all.

N

One of those moments...

So the Mooser and I went to Chapters to find some magazines (that's another story) and, as I have every other time I was in Chapters, I entered "Game Plan" into the search computer. BUT instead of saying "available to order" it said "1 available in this store". Um, what? So of course we had to go LOOK for it (which took longer than it should because my alphabetizing skills are terrible). Here it is:

How cool is that?

I mean, you could walk into Chapters in Bayer's Lake right now and buy that book! Unless someone else already bought it, in which case you can order it like before...

I was that close to buying it myself. I mean, it would be cool to have the first copy in stores, right? And maybe if I bought it they'd say "Hey, that book moved pretty quickly, we'd better order more" or something like that.

But Elliot told me to stop being lame and let's get going though not in those words. I think he said "Can we go now?" and said I shouldn't buy the book b/c it wouldn't be there for someone else, which is actually a very good point. 

SO, I left it behind in the store and left with my magazines as planned and a book for Elliot. We'll see how that goes.

N