Tag: Social media as publishing

2020 Content/Art/Poetry Projects/General Writing Post/Graphic Design/Here is the News

The Big Sky

It is time to begin the process of producing my first self-published pamphlet. I am quite likely to die of old age before someone decides my aesthetic suits their idea of a marketable product, and because of a number of changes in circumstance, I am now in a position to produce summat for myself that could be used to send to publishers. There’s also the investigation beginning of how I self-publish to Amazon, which was promised in the first half of this year.

The latter will not as I’d initially planned, but a thematically linked set of pieces I’m now in the process of putting together. I’ve decided on a title, and have designed a cover which gets exclusively revealed to Patrons before anyone else. For the Amazon production, I’ll need to spend a bit of time immersing myself in the process of production before deciding on the final running order. Once both of these are decided, we’ll pick a title for this group. Currently it is down to three possibilities.

Most importantly of all, photography for both books will be mine. There are plenty of stock images I could use, but in this case it would be useful to put my own work in place with the words. Certainly, in the case of the chapbook, showing off skills as a designer as well as a poet and photographer will demonstrate I think that there’s a real understanding of how all those elements fit together, and how to use them all effectively.

We’ll be spending our time over the next few blogs looking back at End of the Fear, which is when poetry and photography came together properly for the first time. It is entirely possible that the same will happen again next year with a similarly-themed project. At present, it is still at the planning stage, but I’m comfortable with the skills that have been learnt over the last eighteen months, I could come up with something even more dramatic.

Remind me of this in six months 😀

#Narrating2018/General Writing Post/Social Media Asides/Uncategorized

Oh, Joy

As a writer, there are days when knowing what to write is a tough ask. I can remember weeks when I was paid to produce words about one subject where finding an angle to cover was nigh-on impossible, and there’d be lots of frustrated staring at a blank screen, hoping inspiration would be forthcoming. Then there are the days when, like today, I wake up to find some random hooligan’s dropped into my Social media mentions with an inflammatory comment, clearly hoping to start a fight. Part of you dearly just wants to respond and to hell with it, when the sensible course of action is to ignore and block.

I reported him as spam too, for the record, because twats like that deserve all they get.

Giving everybody a voice will, inevitably, have its shortcomings. The people you’d like to speak won’t (because sensibly they understand the consequences when they do) and those who are unable to cope with the pressure of expectation inevitably fail to cope and implode. There’s also a thousand points in between: the wannabee Internet celebrities, the Experts, people writing books (or selling them) and then there’s the advertisers desperately trying to jump on everybody’s coat-tails.

Making sense of the Social media quagmire used to be a problem, but that’s really no longer the biggest challenge. Reality, such as it is, now accommodates shortcomings in the platforms: no edit function on Twitter means that stupid remains, often with a prophetic ability to return from the past to taunt the present (see American Presidents) The nerdier of my Nethead buddies will tell you that if you do fuck up, the Internet never forgets, which is often enough of a threat to prevent someone like me from even starting the post I’d like to write.

Today, for instance, is a case in point.

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When I look back on the moments which have defined my journey online, 99% of the issues stemmed from other people’s drama. If you take a breath, consider the consequences and then don’t say what you think so many of the issues would just go away. I’m getting better at not vague tweeting, and my subtweet GIF’s are beginning to gather dust. More importantly, when I look at all the people who have been removed from my online experience in the last year, none of them is missed at all.

It’s great these people are popular and liked by others. I get how important they are in the Community, or the community or even the community. You don’t have to like everybody. Yes, you can respect them, and understand them, plus you can occasionally be a wee bit jealous. All these emotions are perfectly acceptable, and very human. The fact remains, if you are friends with everybody, I’m going to look for a catch. Genuinely good and decent people can be so without everybody being their besties.

Adults get how Social media is only a version of reality.

As I become more comfortable with my own voice on contentious subjects, there are undoubtedly casualties. I’m not interested in NSFW sexualisation of computer game characters, or women who decide to use their bodies as means to forward their careers. Neither of these preferences has changed over decades, it is just that with Social media shoving stuff in my face 24/7 I need to impose my preferences on it, and not the other way around. It all comes back to curation: if you don’t like what you’re given, it is your job to alter that, not other people’s.

Spending more time making online life more bearable is an effort worth making.

General Writing Post/Here is the News/Poetry/Uncategorized/Writing Projects

Take the Long Way Home

There is no Book of the Month for December: instead some other stuff is happening. The main one is my first attempt at using Social media as a storytelling medium.

I am finally going home, to the place where both mind and body are at peace.

I’ve mucked about a bit with Twitter as storytelling (using pictures but not words) but now feel confident enough to push the boundaries. It helps greatly we now have 280 characters to play with, and that images can still be included (but only when necessary.) The temptation was, in the planning stage, to put in images for every day… but on reflection this could take away from the story I want to tell.

The key to whether the project is successful, I suppose, is whether anybody either a) reads it complete or b) retweets the parts. Only time will tell.

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In tandem with the prose will be poetry; this will only be available if you’re a Patreon follower. If you’d like to do that, you can find the details here. The plan is to publish this in sections, mirroring events from another point of view to my protagonist’s in The Journey Home. Hopefully things will begin to make more sense as time goes on. Needless to say, I would love any feedback you are prepared to provide, or ideas you might have for short stories/Twitter sequences in the future. Hopefully this will be the start of a regular series of features, using Social media not simply as advertising and chat, but as diversion and entertainment.

A new part of the story will be ‘published’ at 4pm GMT every day from now until Christmas Day on my @InternetofWords Twitter feed. The poetry will be published on Wednesday and Friday, making six parts up to the final instalment on December 22nd.

I look forward to hearing your feedback.

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