Social Networking - Splash and Splatter - by Morgan Mandel

We had another snowstorm over the weekend in the Chicago area. I was not happy about it, even though I should be used to it by now. After all, we seem to get one at least once a week this winter.

Yesterday morning, it got a bit warmer in Downtown Chicago. So, here I was dodging puddles and those scary slippery, mushy spots that happen after a snowstorm and a slight thaw, making my way, balancing my purse and tote bag on the left shoulder and my laptop computer on the right, scurrying as best I could to my day-job where I work as an administrative assistant in a law firm.

I wasn't doing too bad. Only a few blocks to go when suddenly out of nowhere on the street across from the sidewalk, a truck came roaring through, splashing everything surrounding it, including the nearby sidewalk. The spray came way too close. The vision of mudwater splattered all over my coat did not seem appealing. Thank goodness, I just managed to escape that fate.

Though I'd had a narrow escape and did not get splattered, the incident did get me thinking. Social networking is all about splashing and getting splattered. We make friends and join networks, listservs and sites, making large and small splashes, hoping to attract attention to ourselves and our books. How we do it depends on our personalities, as well as how well we learn from the experiences of others. We can be subtle or blatant, depending on rules set up on the various groups, sites and listservs and how much we pay attention to them.

While we're out and about splashing our way, we need to be prepared. We will inevitably get splattered by promotion from the other authors out there. We can side-step if we're not interested in what they offer, or we can happily get splashed and dive in, becoming a part of their lives, promotion and books.

I enjoy social networking and spend lots of time participating. Still, given my day-job responsibilities and the fact I do have a loving husband and a rascally dog named Rascal, I can't realistically spend as much time and effort bonding with the many authors as I'd like to, no matter how much I try. That said, what I do is pick the ones I really, really like or seem the most helpful to me, then respond and bond with them, willingly getting splattered by their joys and disappointments, immersing myself in their author lives, books and advice.

Everyone is different. It's for you to decide, as you wend your way social networking on the Web, do you want to splash, dodge, get splattered, or all three?

Remember, the more you put into it, the greater the return.
I'm on my way to getting splashed again!
Morgan Mandel
www.morganmandel.com
www.myspace.com/morganmandel
http://bookplace.ning.com
http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com
http://mysteryturtles.blogspot.com

Ah - the Internet - a Wonderful Thing!

One of the things I do for Todd is search the Internet periodically to see what's being said about his books - both fiction and non-fiction. I stumbled on a link to an entry back in 2003 by Piers Anthony about a workshop of Todd's that Piers attended. We were all attending the 2003 EPIC and Piers was the guest author/speaker and he was incredible. The fact that he included favorable comments about Todd in his blog still makes me smile. Piers Anthony was a best seller in the 70's and beyond, and I remember while studying at UCLA during that time how wildly popular he was as an author with all the students. It seemed like everyone was reading his books.

Well, here's what he said about Todd's workshop back in 2003:

"Next I attended Todd Stone's "Talk Like a Man" program, because I do a fair amount of female viewpoint narrative and want to be sharp on the distinctions between male and female expression. Todd used slides with printed paragraphs. He said that dialogue is a challenge, and said it is not recorded speech but forged speech; counterfeit rather than real. Had he lost his marbles? No, he was right on. Translation: he agreed with my observation over the decades. Real speech is fraught with "uh" and similar interjections, it backtracks, it sidetracks, it fouls up with wrong words and awkwardnesses. It would be boring as hell in narrative writing. So we clean it up for fiction, make it sharp, on-target in a way natural speech seldom is. And what do you know, that makes it seem realistic. Art imitates life, becomes more real than life. So if you want your character to talk like a man, you fake it. And before you females expire of the giggles, remember that female dialogue is similarly faked.

It was a good presentation, and I have more notes on it, but I'll skim on. I think I summarized the essence of the difference between male and female writing, which is akin to the distinctions in their dialogue, years ago: a woman takes the reader by the hand and leads him to view her wonders. A man picks the reader up by collar and crotch and hurls him into the action. Both techniques have their points. At the end Todd gave the audience a spot assignment: write a piece about two lovers who quarrel and make up, showing their different approaches. Then exchange it with your neighbor for comparison. I was sitting next to Katharine, a long-time correspondent and novelist in her own right, so we exchanged. And you know, we both found it hellish to write that on short notice. When we did, we discovered it was essentially the same thing, except that I was still foundering for a suitable lead-in to my text, while she had figured one out that would do for either of our pieces. "Andrea said, pirouetting: 'Do I look all right?' Andy, not looking up: 'You look fine.'" That of course precipitated mischief, which was the point of the exercise; she wanted to be noticed and appreciated; he wasn't doing it. Just like a man."


Here's the link for the complete entry about the conference:

http://www.hipiers.com/03april.html

And here's the link for more info on the EPIC

http://www.epicauthors.com/