Writer's Cramp Welcome
Written by Robert Bacal | 
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| Writer's Cramp - General |
I'd like to welcome you to Writer's Cramp, the place to talk about the joys, trials and tribulations of writing for a living (or wanting to), online or offline. Whether you are an unpaid blogger, or a well published book author I'd like to say hello.
I've (I'm Robert Bacal) wanted, for many years, to have the time to converse with other writers, and actually to share my experiences as a non-fiction writer (fiction comes when I retire), because I think that writing for a living is a fascinating life that really does push all of us to explore ourselves, if only to discover how our brains work, our rhythms, and how we can best write effectively.
I know it's been that way for me. As I've aged, my brain functions differently, and what worked when I was 35 years old, no longer works now that I'm 56. I have actually written complete full length books in about 4 weeks, including formating, at least when I was younger. I can no longer work in the same way, and what worked before ends up in a mess. In order for me to keep writing somewhat effectively, I have had to change, and look at myself, use different schedules and tricks.
I'll share some of those with you. I hope you folks will jump in with questions and additions regardless of your experience levels. Let's have fun.
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Social Media Peril
MicroThoughts
The biggest peril facing social media users and businesses has to do with trust. Anyone can be anybody they choose in social media since there are no even close to adequate methods to verify identities. The peril lies with users who, after interacting with someone they think they know, will believe they know them well enough to trust them as if they had known them for a long time. It's a dangerous situation on many levels, and I wish social media proponents would start educating people as to the dangers. Even if a person is who they say, we have no idea of the vested interests and agendas, and that's one reason to verify anything important heard via social media.
No Social Media Experts
There's no such thing as a social media expert. Anyone who claims that is lying, so hide your wallet. First, it's all changing almost daily for anyone to be on top of all of it. Second, there are literally hundreds of social media platforms, and nobody is conversant with all of them. Third, it's still all too new. Fourth, there's lots of opinions around, but very little good data to support the opinions. There are people who know a lot about one thing (like Twitter), or a little about a lot of things, but nobody knows a lot about a lot of things in social media. Yet!
Alice
In the sixties "You could get anything you want (at Alice's Restaurant). Things change. Now, in the age of social media, you can BE anybody you want, and if that's not a huge shift, what is?
Usexploitation
Mashable no-no
In response to a Mashable article about how Starbucks supposedly used social media to bring one million people into their stores in a day:
This is just terrible "journalism". First, the giveaways brought the people in. Second, we have no idea how many people came for the freebies hearing on it from Twitter or not. Third, They could have pulled people into their stores with this promotion in any of a number of ways. This is not a social media success, anymore than having sandwich board guys outside of each store would constitute a success for loitering.
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