Wiley Wednesday: Return on Relationship

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One of the social media marketing buzzwords floating around is “return on investment.” (ROI) This is a metric, a measurement, of how “worthwhile” your social media efforts were.

The problem is, when quantifying, you can’t take into consideration the depth of a networking connection–only things like how many times a post was viewed, tweeted, or commented on. It’s hard to reduce human connection down to numbers, but many marketing experts make an art and science of it.
Even the term itself is scientific. I guess since social media takes time, and time is money, it is an investment. But that implies that your followers and their messages to you are some sort of currency, which defeats the whole purpose of SOCIAL media, doesn’t it?
Then came Ted Ruben, who coined the phrase “Return on Relationship.” (ROR) This change in wording brings a whole paradigm shift. It’s not about how many followers you have so much as it is the relationship you build with them.
To increase your ROI, you employ techniques like catchy headlines, tweet blasts, hashtag abuse, and, for some, what borders on spamming followers–because it’s all about the bottom line of “how many people can see my message.” It’s a lot of talking into the empty air of cyberspace.
ROR focuses on something more important: how many people will READ my message, and, more importantly, how many will ACT on it? To increase your ROR, Ruben suggests that you listen, focus on meeting the needs and desires of your audience, engage with them in the long-term (not just long enough to get a single comment), and, above all, knowing your audience.
Genius, I say. To learn more about ROR and meet some awesome tweeters who are all about it, follow the #RonR hashtag, @tedruben, or read his blog at http://www.tedrubin.com/

Wiley Wednesday: A Useful Tool

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After taking a creative writing class last quarter, I was introduced to an interesting website that I think many people will find helpful.

It’s called Duotrope’s Digest.

It’s free to sign up and you can essentially shop around your story for mainly online publications, I think. It allows you to shop by genre (really specific genres, too). You can also track your submissions, when you submit, where and when you get a reply (you, of course, have to input that all yourself). It also gives you details on the publication, such as when/how often they publish, their acceptance to rejection ratio, what type of stories they accept and average length of stories they publish.

I think it’s very useful for the aspiring writer. And someone could probably just use it to find stories within a specific genre they enjoy using the search tools, as well.

Keeping the Faith

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I recently finished reading an m/m book from the “Heaven Sent” series by Jet Mykles. I really enjoyed “Faith”, the story of Heaven Sent drummer Darien and his burgeoning relationship with the lawyer who finalized his divorce. Attorney Chris Faith is not only every bit as likeable as members of the band, his believable flaws make him very approachable to the reader. My kudos to Ms. Mykles.

For his realism, the character actually inspired this blog post with what I consider an interesting dimension. In short, Ms. Mykles created Mr. Faith as a rather stuffy but consummate lawyer with a passion for acting. The Englishman went so far as to have Shakespearian training! This understandably impresses Darien, who wonders what it would be like to watch his new lover on stage. Alas, he seems to keep this admission to himself.

Meanwhile, the lawyer’s reason for staying out of the limelight as legal counsel to actors and musicians stems from a dislike of auditions. His career puts him in touch with people he admires without the potential risks inherent in artistic performance. That sounds exactly like fear sabotaging Chris Faith’s inner creativity.

In my humble opinion, Chris Faith has lost faith in himself. He needs to follow at least one course in Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”. I’m even half tempted to contact Jet Mykles to ask that she evolve this character into a man living his artistic potential. Do you think she’d be amused or think I’m crazy? Maybe I should just keep this fan girl notion to myself. What do you think?

Natural Inspiration

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This week I spent Thursday night at the Oregon coast. I live about 90 minutes away, but still only manage to make it to the beach two or three times a year. This trip the weather wasn’t particularly warm, but even fifteen minutes in front of the Pacific ocean still managed to make an impact.

I don’t think I can adequately explain how much peace I find when I get into nature. Red Rock Canyon, the beach at Lincoln City, Multnomah Falls in the Columbia Gorge – it doesn’t matter where. When I let it in, something inside me just opens up. My morning pages become full of descriptions and images where wind and water and rock are living beings that interact with me.

Even if that’s all it was – just fleeting moments when I feel connected to the world around me – it would be worth it. But it’s more than that. Making that connection stays with me, helps repair and restore the bridge that allows the words in my head to flow onto keyboard or paper.

When was the last time you touched nature? Did you put your hands in the earth of your garden? Walk barefoot in the city park? Watch the sun on the water and listen to it rush against the shore? Feel the wind on your face while you packed a snowball?
It doesn’t have to be a major event. Just get outside, and really open your senses to what’s around you. You’ll be glad you did.

Wiley Wednesday: In Defense of the Pen

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How many of you use a pen and paper to write? A handwritten journal? Post-it notes??

Yeah, I thought so. Not very many of you. I’ve learned in doing Prompt Group meetings for the last couple years that modern Americans don’t seem to write much anymore. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, I am a Technorati of the first order, a modern-day “power user.”

Yet, philosophically, I have a lot in common with Luddites.

What’s a Luddite? They were a sect that shunned technology and modern contrivances. As I type this on a laptop in a friend’s home whilst using her wireless, for use on a group blog the authors of which reside all over the planet, I can’t in all honesty claim to be a Luddite, but still. I love me a pen and paper!

And here is something I’ve learned: there’s something alchemical that happens when one sits down to write that doesn’t happen in the same way when one sits down at the keyboard. I believe that it’s the kinesthetic process of one-handedness.

Say wha?

Bear with me. Kinesiology is the study of muscles and how they work. “Kinesthetic learners” learn, literally, by doing: by working with their hands or bodies. When we write, we do so one-handed – even if we are the rare ambidextrous person, when writing, we’re not doing so with a pen in each hand. We write with one hand, one pen, on one surface. When we type, we do so either with one finger of each hand, or we know how to touch type and use all ten fingers.

We know from the treatment of Epilepsy and cognitive developmental theory that things that bridge the left/right brain hemispheres helps, literally, to teach the brain to think. That’s good, right?

I believe, though, that writing with one hand can, if done for long enough, help us to bridge the hemispheres in another way: by literally giving one “side” voice to the other side. We can, over time, get to know ourselves better and to even start to communicate with our own subconscious minds. This happens more easily, I’ve observed, by the tool of handwriting and not the tool of typing. I don’t know why this is so, but I’ve seen it happen so consistently that I’ve accepted its reality even if I don’t understand all of the methodology.

My long-time readers have heard my arguments on Morning Pages, an idea put forth by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way and others. Three pages of longhand writing, done in the morning, can alter our waking reality. I have seen this to be true in my own life as well as others that I’ve known that have used the tool. What’s more, at the end of a Prompt Group, where we write to prompts for two hours, I see it happen in the writers who attend. (For more information on the Prompt Group, please visit our website.)

I urge you to try it for yourself: try writing three pages a day, or hand write a letter or card to an absent friend. Postcards are good, too. Try writing the response to a story prompt (if you don’t have one, just Google “writing prompt” and pick one). See if you can unlock the magic of the pen for yourself.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream – My NaNoWriMo Revisit

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The year is half over and I just realized that I never went back and revisited my National Novel Writing Month project from November. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed! So this past weekend seemed the perfect time to look at that material and consider revisions.

The interesting part about this NaNoWriMo product is that I changed both point of view and gender of the main character from an older, shorter piece. Fellow writers can probably imagine what a difference those alterations caused. Like trying to recall a dream, I don’t really remember what I’d written, which makes this whole reading experience all the more interesting.

A part of me knows that I should just do a quick read through and then go back and consider changes. However, resisting rewrites just isn’t happening. I’ve decided not to worry about my irresistible temptation as long as the inner critic doesn’t rear its ugly head.

What about you? Did you participate in NaNoWriMo or have another project collecting dust? I’ll hope you’ll join me in rediscovering a rough gem. Happy writing!