T.M. Camp » Facebook

Enemies and Friends

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:51:36 +0000

“The enemy of most authors is not piracy but obscurity.”

A few days back, Dave Charest posted that on Twitter, perfectly encapsulating a line of thought that’s been haunting me for the past nine months or so.

More on this a bit lower down in the post…

* * * * * *

In all honesty, I didn’t plan on taking a Summer Hiatus — and, really, given the amount of work I’ve gotten done over the past few months, I still could use a vacation. But if I went off somewhere for a week, you can bet I’d spend most of it writing.

Once the dust settled after moving earlier in the summer, I got sidetracked by the aforementioned secret science fiction project. If you’ve been following along on Twitter or Facebook, then you already know that the project is a comic book treatment/proposal called “Chimera” and that it’s been sent off to my friends in Singapore. So we’ll see where that goes.

(Speaking of which, let me offer a belated “Welcome to the World” to the lovely and perfect Ms. Prudence. And congratulations to her excellent parents, Gavin and WeeNee. Nice work.)

Interestingly enough, since completing the preliminary outline and scripts for this project, I’ve found a handful of upcoming movies and comics that share some of the same elements. There’s no direct correlation, just some interesting thematic parallels and plot points. But I gave up on getting frustrated by that sort of thing a long time ago. We’re all tapped into the same frequencies, so it’s no surprise when we resonate along similar lines.

In the documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore, this is referred to as “Idea Space” and that’s just as good a way to think about it as anything else.

(For certain kinds of brains, that movie is a mind-stretching experience. I recommend it.)

Any time I didn’t spend on “Chimera” over the past few months was spent working on a poem.

That’s right. One poem.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this particular poem. And all I have to show for it are about twenty-three pages of handwritten gibberish, incomplete villanelle rhyming schemes, and no poem.

I am mad at this poem. It is in a time-out right now and if it’s very good, I might let it out someday.

Bah.

I also finally finished a new play that had been languishing on the back burner for what I thought would only be a few months but which, surprisingly, turned out to be a few years. But it’s done now and once I tweak some formatting, I’ll be posting it here for one and all to enjoy.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that it isn’t actually a new play at all. Truth be told, it’s actually a complete reworking of the first play I ever wrote. Hard to believe, but that was over twenty years ago. And the idea/premise for the play is even older, going back almost thirty years.

I always felt like that premise deserved somewhat better than what my nineteen-year-old self was able to do with it. A few years back something shifted inside my head and I said “Yeah… that could work.” So I threw out most of the story and characters, retooled everything, kept the bits that worked, and put it all into the hands of a girl named Elizabeth to see what she would do with it. As a character, Liz surprised the hell out of me and I’ve grown as fond of her as anyone I’ve ever written.

Most surprisingly, the things that didn’t work in the first version of the script — all those things I wanted to resolve and repair — are still present and problematic in this latest version. I’d blame Liz, but it’s obviously the writer’s fault.

At any rate, the name of the play is “Drawing Away” and I’ll be posting it sometime this coming weekend. Stay tuned for details.

In the midst of all of this, an old acquaintance from college got in touch via Facebook. Usually getting pinged by someone from the past is a bit of a mixed bag (I’ve whined about this before) but, for many reasons, that wasn’t the case this time. And, in a surprising degree of coincidence and convergence, twenty years ago this acquaintance had played the lead in the original version of the play that I’d just finished retooling. Coincidence? Alan Moore probably has something to say about that sort of thing as well.

Somewhere, I’ve got a VHS of that play floating around. I’ll try to pull a scene or two and post them here. If nothing else, there’s a high degree of nostalgia for me. That was at the beginning of it all, one of a very few specific milestones that I can point to and say “There. That’s when I felt my life shift on its axis.”

But, for once, I didn’t resent Facebook for reconnecting me with someone from the past.

As many of you know, I have a day job working in Advertising. Most of my time is spent helping my clients navigate the thorny paths of various online mechanisms for connecting with their audiences, customers, and so on. I’m reasonably competent at what I do, fortunately. And it’s a fairly enjoyable way to earn a living.

In the past month or so, I’ve had the opportunity to help one of my clients take their first little baby steps into social networking. What this means is that, for all intents and purposes, I’m spending a couple of hours a day on Twitter and Facebook as my client. Actually, there are three different and distinct brands that I’m managing, across two different networks (that’s six accounts total). I’ve got seven different browser tabs open at all times, a 3×3 TweetGrid that runs real time searches on related terms, and an ever-evolving strategy for helping my client participate in these conversations in a way that’s meaningful, human, and worthwhile.

It is, as you might imagine, a hell of a lot to keep straight onscreen — to say nothing of inside my chronically porous little Gemini brain. And I still have difficulty coming to terms with the concept that I get paid to do this sort of thing.

Fortunately, they haven’t heard about “Stripper Friday”.

Not a bad gig, really — at least, it’ll do until that whole “Writer” thing ramps up.

Although it does remind me of the old “First you do it for love…” thing.

And on that note, back to the beginning…

I have a couple of semi-announcements to share.

First off, I recently put together a portable sound studio similar to this one. Which means that, over time, I’m going to (a) Re-record both “Assam & Darjeeling” and “Matters of Mortology” to improve the overall production quality and clean up the rough edges in the original recordings; and (b) Begin a new podcast with an open format more suited to conversation, interviews, and shorter pieces. The re-recording could take a few months, of course. But I expect the new podcast to kick off sometime in October.

Second, if you’re one of the many people who’s written to me about getting ahold of a copy of either “Matters of Mortology” or “Assam & Darjeeling” that you can hold in your hands and read with your whaddyacall actual eyes, then good news is on the way. Starting with “Mortology” in a few weeks, both books will be released in a variety of formats: Softcover, Hardcover, PDF, and a few of the eBook readers (Amazon’s Kindle is for sure, the Sony Reader is a possibility as well).

It’s an . . . experiment, of a sort. I’m very interested to see how it goes.

Watch this space for details.

* * * * * *

Speaking of which, it’s time now for something I really should do more often…

I met author Tony Delgrosso on Twitter some long while back. Not sure how we connected but he’s clever and funny, so I bet that had something to do with it. Sometime last year, Tony began publishing his novel “Mr. Abernathy” online in installments. It’s a fun yarn and Delgrosso does a good job taking some of the classic thriller elements (Secret Nazi research, time travel, and [maybe?] UFO technology) and crafts an enjoyable, engaging book out of them. I wrote a review for it on GoodReads, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here as well.

Another reason I like this book is that it’s from an author taking steps to promote his work outside of the traditional (and increasingly, frustratingly hermetically-sealed) publishing industry. It’s a bit inspiring and, like the man said, “it is a comfort to the unfortunate to have companions in woe.”

You can pick up a copy of Tony Delgrosso’s “Mr. Abernathy” online.

Twitterati, Plurkers, and Other Odd People I Know

admin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:43:57 +0000

I had the opportunity earlier this week to give my colleagues an overview of the various social networking sites out there and how one of our clients might make use of them. Most of the conversation was focused on explaining, conceptually, how social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are being used — and the differences between how a teenager uses them compared to, say, how a thirty-nine year old author does.

All of this coincided with a comment from an offline friend/acquaintance who recently visited my website for the first time and expressed a friendly (albeit curmudgeonly) skepticism of all things online: “I worry (but not much) that we’re creating a generation of alienated loners and social misfits that substitute ‘linking’ for relationships.”

Well… thanks for stopping by.

Explaining things to other people often helps me understand them on a deeper level of my own. Apart from the strategic objectives we have for our client, I came away from the meeting with a clearer understanding of how and why I participate in these various networks. It also forced me to reevaluate my own internal rules and guidelines for that participation. I wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that I’d strayed a bit from my initial intentions, but it did give me cause to step back and think through whether or not I wanted to be where I was at now.

Twitter
Originally, this micro-blogging/streaming chat site started as a way for people to stay connected through mobile devices, by answering the question “What are you doing?” Since then, it’s evolved into an interesting little community of interconnected, micro-networks.

On Twitter, you “follow” people and people follow you. It isn’t, however, reciprocal; I can follow you but you aren’t required to follow me. And if you don’t want someone to follow you, you can “block” them (effectively rendering yourself invisible to them). You can also set your status to “private” which means you have to approve anyone before they can follow you or view your posts.

Users post single line “tweets” to the site, no more than 140 characters long. These tweets are streamed in a timeline, showing all of your activity and interaction on the site as a streaming conversation. So if I’m following you, I can see yours. And you can respond to someone else’s tweet by entering their user name preceded by the @ symbol, which adds your tweet into their timeline. You can also send a private message to someone as well, called a DM (or “direct message”).

Make sense?

I was introduced to Twitter by my friends at Fusionary a few years ago, and it seemed like a good place to lay a foundation to promote my writing and podcasting. But it wasn’t long before I was participating on a different level. The evolution from my self-serving intentions to being an active member of a community was due in no small part to the kind of connections I made on my first visit to Twitter.

I can remember picking out a few tweets from the public timeline, checking out a page or so of what those users had posted, looking at their related websites, and hitting the follow button. The first one I followed was probably Akelaa or DarkGracie. And I’m fairly certain that the first person to follow me was Mercy. It was the luck of the draw on those timeline picks, but it paid off. These are all people I follow even now, a few years after the fact, and I consider them to be friends.

One of the rules I’ve made for myself is that I can’t more than 100 people at a time on Twitter. This is more for logistical reasons than anything else. I just can’t keep track of that many other people — or, I can get way too distracted by chatting with all of them to get any real work done.

I’ve followed upwards of 200 people in the past, but I found that I continued to interact with the same core group no matter how many I was following. So I went through and distilled my list down. I find that the numbers can creep back up on me from time to time, so I try to clean it up again every few months.

It’s difficult to explain what that core group is to me. Many of them are readers/listeners who have taken the time to seek me out and chat with me about Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology — which pretty much makes my day every single time it happens.

Others are people who I think are funny or interesting… other writers that I enjoy eavesdropping on and interacting with… a few professional colleagues… some newswire alert organizations… and so on. I should mention that there are a few I follow who don’t follow me, and I’m fine with that. The list of people following me is somewhat high, edging closer towards 500. It isn’t uncommon for people on the big list to catch my attention and get added to my core list.

But the real core are those handful of people that say Good Morning every day, who share encouragement and support, who aren’t afraid to laugh or cry or rage at the sky in front of the rest of us. As such: A few nights ago I was up late and posted that I was feeling a little low, a little blue. It didn’t take long for a whole bunch of people to jump in to lend a hand — Dayngr, Mousewords, and Yvonner to name but a few. That was my core, taking care of me. Just like we all do for each other, now and again.

All in all, my interaction with Twitter is a mix of connections between a couple of overlapping mini-networks: My readers/listeners, the people I follow, and the people who are my friends. While it’s difficult to explain how that works to people “outside” of Twitter, it’s all genuine and I’m grateful for the people there… so much so, that I dedicated The Winter Chap to them.

Plurk
I found Plurk during one of many of Twitter’s “Fail Whale” moments. Plurk is a suitable alternative; consider it a variation on a theme. It’s a different kind of tool, a different kind of network than Twitter and there are some similarities, but it’s also got a number of features that are really quite nifty (inline image/video display and threaded conversations, for instance). The interactions there have a distinct quality to them, different than what’s on Twitter.

Although a lot of people have become factionalized, picking one over the other, I’m not too bothered by having a presence on both sites. I’ve got a few crossover friends who show up in both places — like Alousionist and Devyl — but Plurk is actually quite nice because it’s a point of contact with a number of my overseas friends/listeners/readers who don’t use Twitter — like Tenebrous Pau and Dakota Blackwater in England and Tere in Indonesia.

Over time, I’ve found that Plurk is a lot more work to keep up with. The conversations are longer and can go on for days. Oddly enough, my list of friends there is much shorter. But those few connections are what keeps me connected to that system.

Facebook
Facebook is a lot of things, to be sure. The use of “friend” to define connections in your network is a clever one. However, a lot of people on Facebook seem to be in a competition to collect as many “friends” as they can, as though the value of their online persona is measured by quantity.

That goes somewhat against my nature. I don’t have many friends, but the few I do have are very close to me. Thirteen years ago, moving from the West Coast to the Midwest, I lost a few of those connections that were important to me. And there are people I’ve known for years, going all the way back to middle school who are scattered all around the country. Facebook is one of many ways to renew and maintain some of those relationships.

As such, it’s the place where I’m perhaps most selective about who I accept invitation requests from. But it’s also a place where I’ve ended up adding a few of the people I’ve come to know on some of the other sites because, somewhat to my surprise, they’re people that I can call “friends” as well.

I never would have ended up on Facebook — or, at least, not so soon — if I didn’t have a teenage son. As a parent, you have to keep pace with where your kids are at and pay attention to what they’re doing, who they’re interacting with, and even engage with them in “their” world. I’m extremely fortunate that I have a very cool son with some very cool friends, who don’t get into too much trouble and don’t mind “friending” the old guy.

MySpace, Bebo, Pownce, Identi.ca, BrightKite, et al
There are lots of other systems and networking sites out there. I have a profile page on a fair number of them and I use Ping.fm to post updates to them all at the same time, but I don’t really consider them a part of my online community. First off, there’s just too damn many of them. And a lot of them don’t do it as well as the few I’ve mentioned above.

The one exception is LinkedIn. This is a networking site geared towards business professionals and that’s chiefly what I use it for. I have a profile there and actively make and maintain connections with people — mostly folks I’ve I’ve worked with — but I don’t stream my Ping.fm to it, for reasons which are obvious if you follow me on any of the other networks.

“What are you doing?”

Well, that went on a bit longer than expected.

But to come full circle, my discussion earlier this week made me take a step back and look again at my presence on all of these sites and networks. In my media ethics and mass communication classes in college, there was sometimes an underlying, McLuhan-esque concern about the dehumanization that came about from the adoption of technology.

Looking back, it does seem odd that someone teaching media classes made it a point to not watch television (he even had a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker). This was almost twenty years ago, before personal computers were so common and certainly before the advent of Internet in society, so perhaps things have changed.

It certainly left me with an uneasy distrust (and even scorn) for popular culture and technology. But I got over it. Obviously.

And yet… there’s an echo of it in the comments my site visitor made earlier, and I have to admit that I slip back into that border-line Luddite mentality when I go through periodic reassessments like the one I did earlier this week. But if you’ve stuck with this so far, it’s obvious that there’s a lot of things happening in these places that are interesting and valuable to me on a variety of levels. If anything, the chief result of my self-audit was a validation of all of the good things I mentioned above. However, it did cause me to reassess and revise my friend/follower/following lists on the various sites.

In all honesty, there was just too much to keep connected to. The bigger those lists got, the less I enjoyed the interaction. The more of an obligation or chore it became. And there’s really only two solutions to that problem.

Since I wasn’t going to unplug entirely, I had to take a closer look at my lists.

This is a touchy subject. Lots of people feel bad on one level or another if their friend/follow request isn’t reciprocated. And being removed from someone’s list is often viewed as a personal rejection. Some people feel it, deeply. I admit, I’ve felt it myself from time to time. Which is why I’ve take the time to formalize my interaction along all these different channels, operating at a level appropriate to my relationship with people I know (and with people I don’t).

If you got filtered out on one of them, it’s possible that we’re still connected on another one. If that’s not the case, I can only say that it wasn’t personal. Most likely, we just didn’t share a whole lot of interaction, activity, or connection.

Who know? Maybe we’ll reconnect down the road.