Washboard Prose by Andy Scheer

I started reading two novels this weekend. I'd not meant to begin the second so soon, but after several attempts to engage with the first, I gave up.

Outwardly, the two were similar: mass paperback international thrillers published in 2010 by New York houses. The first involved a quest for the tomb of Alexander the Great—the subject of at least three other novels I've enjoyed. The second promised a search for an ancient lost religious artifact.

Despite my interest in the first book's topic, the prose quickly reminded me a trying to drive a washboard road. (If you drive only on pavement, it's a poorly maintained gravel road that's developed a series of closely spaced ridges—like an old-fashioned washboard.)

I'd encountered such a road a few weeks ago when trying to visit a waterfall in Colorado's San Juan Mountains. The online guide said the three and one-half mile drive from the blacktop to the trailhead was well maintained. But I suspect that description was placed by a company that sold replacement tires and performed wheel alignments.

Our view as the road snaked up the side of the mountain was gorgeous, but I was so concerned about not damaging the car, I couldn't enjoy it. If Zapata Falls hadn't come so highly recommended, I'd have turned around after the first half mile.

I remembered that road as I tried to read the Alexander story. Page after page I was distracted by the kind of elements I've told people for years at writers conferences to edit out of their drafts. The author did okay with narrative summary, but his dialogue was piled high with telling. And his characters seldom said anything. Given the choice, they'd grin or laugh their words—or, in a more serious moment, demand or insist them.

If you can write this way and get published by a New York house, why bother to polish your prose? Or so I wondered for a few more pages—until I had to put the book down. I just couldn't get into the story. The writer's technique—if I could call it that—kept calling attention to itself and pulling me out of the story.

So I picked up the other novel—and quickly found myself seventy-five pages in, enjoying the characters, the setting, and the action. It reminded me of driving the previous weekend to La Veta, Colorado, to catch a ride on the Rio Grande Scenic Railway. Smooth pavement, no steep grades, the curves and intersections well marked. Just as it should be.

The weekend after Labor Day, we're considering a return trip. And this weekend, I got another story by the same writer. I think I'll enjoy it.

Blog or Website? By Linda S. Glaz

A lot of discussion of online presence is going on at my clients’ loop. And one of the questions is:

Is it better to blog or to maintain a website or have both?

Most folks have been in agreement that a blog can serve the same purpose as a website only it gets a fresh makeover every time you leave a new post. You can have the same tabs, links, etc. without being static.

Why would you want to do that? Why not just set the post and leave it alone?

People aren’t going to return to see and read the same old things. You have the opportunity on a blog to review books, interview your favorite authors, and post pictures of your cats and dogs that nobody really wants to see on either one. But hey, you paid $2000 for Rover, so why not? With a blog you have the chance to keep it fresh.

What about a website? The good news here is you can do the website and not be bothered with daily/weekly/monthly maintenance. You set it and go. A new book out? You might add that, but you don’t have the regular changes that you would be investing in a blog.

Then why did my client group choose blogs?

Easy answer. Your updated posts are driving people new and old to your blog. They interact with you. You and they learn new things about the industry. You have the opportunity to voice your opinion. On ANY topic you choose. I know a few folks who maintain 4-6 blogs. All on different topics. A blog is little more than someone digging deep inside and posting their thoughts on a topic. (I guess you can see where blogs might be WAAAAY more information than you’d want) But you’ll soon find those who share your passion for writing, Rover, or any number of topics and can visit like an old friend.

Just remember, if bloggers visit your site, reciprocate, or you find them hanging around much.

Happy blogging!

Making the Most of YouTube by Jennifer Hudson Taylor

This week YouTube has announced that they are disabling the tag options on videos to the public. This is a significant change since most people rely on tagging their video content in a way that allows people to search relevant key words and search terms to find corresponding videos.

Some view this as pure genius on YouTube's part, while others consider it a disaster. People were abusing the tagging feature. Ever wonder how you can type in something and get a few results mixed in that have absolutely nothing to do with your search terms? It's because these abusers go to a very popular YouTube channel and copy and paste their tags into their own. Quite sneaky. And annoying to the rest of us.

The policy evens the playing field a little better. Here are a few tips in making the most out of your YouTube channel.

Don't Forget SEO

All search engines, including YouTube, are designed to deliver the best results that are most relevant to each search. This includes the metadata that you provide when you upload a video. YouTube reads the text that you enter for your channel description/bio, each video’s description and title, as well as closed captioning information and annotations added to your videos.Group your videos into playlists, and optimize those playlists for relevance.

Upload Fresh Content

Since YouTube is owned by Google, new content is ranked higher than old content in the same way as it is with Google. In an attempt to keep your content fresh, don't publish duplicate videos or replace videos with new edits. Instead, use YouTube's video editor for minor edits. Replacing videos restarts the view count, which will make it look lower than it should be for that particular video. Higher view counts are also ranked better than lower view counts.

Encourage Viewers to Rate Your Videos

Since visitors to your YouTube channel can give your videos a rating, YouTube ranks these ratings against other ratings in the search feature. Therefore, encourage your followers to rate your videos. Post your video in as many places as possible to increase your views and rankings. People can actually view your video on other sites where it is linked or embedded.

Create Playlists

Playlists allow you to organize and group videos on your YouTube channel so you can highlight the ones you feel best represent you. Also, you can choose a playlist to feature on your blog or website to further promote them.

Create Annotations on Your Videos

This is one of the best and underutilized YouTube features. Add annotations to videos that include clickable calls to action. These annotations appear on top of your videos for a specified length of time and can include links to other videos, playlists or channels, or include a subscribe option.

All you have to do is go to Video Manager, click Edit on the video of your choice, and select Annotations. Follow the additional options from there.

Design Your Channel with a Brand

You can upload a custom image as the background and choose from a few different layout designs. Include links to your website, blog and other social media sites. Upload your image or logo in the square avatar to give people a sense of who you are.

Do you have a YouTube page? How are you utilizing it?

Computer Glitch by Terry Burns

Have you sent me a submission or an email in the last couple of days? Well, I may not have gotten it.

I hate it when that happens.

I had a computer glitch pop up. I won't go into the details, but all of a sudden all of the email I had worked and deleted showed back up again. That's not so bad. I just check them against the logs and the ones that I've worked I can just delete them again.

But how about messages that have come in and haven't been worked yet. Near as I can tell, those are just gone. Bummer!

I don't know what I can do about it other than put the word out by social media and hope anyone who has sent me something and not gotten a letter of acknowledgement (I try to always acknowledge submissions) will see the note and re-send.

The only alternative that I see is waiting until they write me to check on it and I have to admit that I don't have it. There aren't that many, maybe a couple of dozen, but that's a couple of dozen more than I would like to see this happen to.

Did I mention that  I really hate it when something like this happens?

Lessons at a Concert

When you hear the same message several times in one day, maybe it's a good idea to pay attention.

My wife and I, with another couple, drove from Colorado Springs to the small town of La Veta. There we rode the Rio Grande Scenic Railway to their “Mountain Rails Live” concert near the summit of La Veta Pass.

We listened first to Dana and Susan Robinson, folksingers and songwriters from Asheville, North Carolina. Cowboy and country singer Michael Martin Murphey (“Wildfire”; “Carolina in the Pines”) headlined the show.

Having long been professional musicians, both the Robinsons and Murphey have experienced the tension of trying to:

● make a living at their craft

● please audiences

● satisfy demands of publishers

● communicate their own messages

Like many folksingers, the Robinsons followed in the tradition of using their lively narrative music to alert and inspire people to the need for change. One of their songs, “What Would Woody Do?” drew on the example of Woody Guthrie (born in 1912 and the author of hundreds of songs, including “This Land Is Your Land”).

What would Woody do?

Write about it,

Talk about it,

Sing about it too.

Murphey played songs from throughout his career, including when he wanted to sing encouraging love songs—in contrast to the lyin' and cheatin' songs that filled the country charts. Recounting his struggle to find positive lyrics—and to convince producers that such music would sell—Murphey paraphrased Woody Guthrie's philosophy that he never wanted to sing songs that made people feel worse.

Back home I found the full Guthrie quote, transcribed from one of his concerts:

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”

In the early 1980s Murphey found and recorded such a counter-cultural love song, “What's Forever For” (by Rafe VanHoy), and it spent sixteen weeks in the top forty. He followed it with “A Long Line of Love,” by Dove award-winner Paul Overstreet and Thom Schuyler, which also reached number one on the country charts.

Murphey didn't preach. He spoke of his own experiences, his struggles, his convictions--then followed those statements with uplifting songs. Appropriate to the venue, he closed with “This Train Is Bound for Glory” and “Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad (by M. E. Abbey and Charles Davis Tillman):

Life is like a mountain railroad, with an engineer that's brave;
We must make the run successful, from the cradle to the grave;
Watch the curves, the fills, the tunnels; never falter, never quail;
Keep your hand upon the throttle, and your eye upon the rail.

Refrain:
Blessed Savior, Thou wilt guide us,
Till we reach that blissful shore;
Where the angels wait to join us
In Thy praise forevermore.

I came home wanting to “write about it, talk about it, sing about it too.”

I again! Me again! by Linda S. Glaz

I got it again!

So they gave the puppy to John and I. Errghhh.

I can understand when you use I incorrectly in dialogue, because folks speak that way, but just because it sounds like it’s hoity toity better to say it, don’t! When I is used incorrectly, it stands out so much. There’s an easy solution. Whenever you are tempted to say him and I, or her and I, or John and I, just drop the other person.

Would you really say:

So they gave the puppy to I? Of course not. Just by adding another person doesn’t mean you have to switch from me to I.

So they gave the puppy to John and me.

They gave the puppy to me.

See how much better that sounds?

This is one of those that when I read it, I go nuts. How about you? Do you have one grammar/punctuation issue that sends you off the deep end?

What Genre Is Your Book Publicist?

Too many authors make the mistake of hiring a publicist with the expectation of a miracle and with no realistic idea about the buying market in their genre. I'm not saying it's a mistake to hire a publicist, but what I am saying, is that you need to do your homework about the publicist and their area of expertise. Also, you need to do some research on what to expect for your book genre for a first-time author versus a well-established author and start pulling together some ideas and goals.

You really shouldn't hire a publicist until you know what you want and what to expect. Otherwise, you're just leaving yourself wide open for a sales pitch. Publicists know their business and many of them are good at what they do, therefore, they can make it sound like a wonderful package. It's just like any other business. There are legit publicists who will do a great job and give you your money's worth. Some are not so legit, will promise the stars and the moon and you will end up disappointed. Others who mean well and will do their best for you, but their contacts and networks aren't in the realm where you need to take your next book.

It's no different in shopping for a car. You wouldn't plunk down several thousand dollars on a vehicle without doing some research and going for a few test drives, would you? Why should investing in your book or writing career be any different?

Even though you hire a publicist, that doesn't mean they will be able to handle everything and you can go back to researching and writing the next book. They need bios, book covers, endorsements, and answers to interview questions from you. They may need to clear some time on both yours and their schedule to plan and discuss things. They may need you to meet people for live interviews, to be available for podcasts and other media recordings, and give feedback on mockup designs.

Will you have time for these things? If not, you may need a different publicist or package. Most authors work WITH a publicist. Each author is different. Their work habits and styles are varied and just as some agents work for some authors, other agents don't work as well. It's the same with publicists. Are you the type of author who really needs to develop a relationship with your publicist so that you will feel you can trust their judgment? Are you the type of author who doesn't need that tight connection and you can go anywhere as long as they give you a good price and provide quality work?

Are you an author who may want to work on one core area of your platform at a time? For instance, with your first book you just need to establish a platform, but for your second book you might need to build on that platform and make your foundation more solid. By the third book you might want to focus more on increasing your Social Media, or your public speaking engagements, or revamp your online presence to target your market and establish your message more accurately to reflect what you write.

Not all publicists offer the same services, but many offer multiple services. In spite of the wide range of services they may offer, keep in mind that they will have strengths in core areas of the business. This is important as you determine what your needs are and you narrow down your selection. As your writing career advances to various levels and you begin to concentrate on specific areas of your platform, you may find that working with more than one publicist for specific needs off and on at various times will work best for you. It will also open your platform and writing to more networks than what one publicist has established.

Know your needs. Know your expectations. Do your research. Then make a selection.

Post your questions and concerns, and I will do my best to answer.