The Artist Unleashed: FINDING A COMMUNITY, by Kate Tilton

With reminders of the holiday season all around I have been thinking a lot about community, a place where you belong. Growing up I spent years in private school and homeschooling leading to an interesting transition back into the public school system when I was in the 6th grade. I spent most of my first school year back in public school trying to fit in.

It didn’t work.

I quickly learned that I wasn’t a part of the community of my peers. They had grown up together and had been in the same classes for years. I just simply wasn’t able to compete with that. So I found my own community online.

My first experience with community was ...

Sorry for the interruption, but The Artist Unleashed posts have moved to a new domain. Please click HERE to read the rest of this post and for the opportunity to comment.

Want 1000+ views on a single post? Book yourself in as a guest on The Artist Unleashed.

Every Wednesday of every week is The Artist Unleashed. If you'd like to write a guest post to help promote your blog, website, service, or books, or anything else you want to draw attention to, please contact me via jessica.carmen.bell@gmail.com to book yourself in.

I have slots available from Wednesday, October 1, 2014.

All posts for this feature must be inspiring and/or motivating, and encourage discussion. I will not just post your book blurb, cover, and purchase links. One, because you are more likely to attract attention to your work if you have something interesting to say. And two, because I would like my blog to offer useful and interesting information for my readers, not blatant advertisements.

I will tweet and Facebook your posts several times during the week to get it as much exposure as possible. Highest views on a single post = 1000+. If you want to reach that 1000 views mark it means you need to provide interesting content and make an effort in sharing the post on various platforms as much as I do. This is a collaborative effort.

When you send me your post, please include:

• A title (you'd be surprised how many people forget!)
• A call to action at the end (A question related to your post to ask readers, which will make it easier for them to leave a comment.)
• A head shot (JPEG please, do NOT embed it into your Word Doc, I need it as a separate attachment)
• A 3rd person bio 50-100 words including all your web links
• Word count: 500-1000 words

It is your responsibility to send me your post on time. If I do not receive it two days before you are scheduled to post (i.e. Monday) at the latest, I will arrange for someone else to take your place, and your post will then be pushed back to the first available date. I will send you one reminder the weekend before, but that is it.

Also, please only book yourself in if you are serious about sending in a post. I realize that things can happen to cause delays, and I'm very understanding when life interferes with your good intentions, but the amount of people who cancel (multiple times, sometimes) at the last minute is rather astonishing, and I'm left to scramble for replacements. Please do your best to avoid this. A bit of respect is all I ask.

To view all past Artist Unleashed posts, CLICK HERE.

The earlier you secure a date the better. Whenever I publish announcements the slots disappear like hot cakes.

Please contact me via jessica.carmen.bell@gmail.com to book.

Have a great week!

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Do You Agree, Or Disagree? (#01) [TOPIC: Social Media = 15 mins of fame]

Happy New Year all!

Today I'm going to keep it short and sweet. I need to wean myself back into the regular posting groove. I've written one sentence and my fingers are complaining that they're experiencing muscle pain, and my brain is crying "What? This isn't Facebook or Twitter? Damn!"

Nah ... kidding. :-)

Before I get to my "point of the day," can I just quickly say that the WRITING IN A NUTSHELL All-In-One book is now out on Kindle!!! Paperback coming soon. Whoop! More info HERE.

Okay, now to the point I want to make today. This is going to become a regular thing on my blog this year: Do You Agree, Or Disagree? Due to our ever increasing poor concentration spans (What?! This post is more than 140 characters? How ever will I cope?) I've decided to post, on occasion, a short and sweet statement designed to get you thinking and responding with your thoughts. See that's kind of a trick, isn't it? Because you will probably end up using your brain a lot more on these posts than if you were simply reading an article. But that's cool. I'm all in for tricks.

If you're a lazy reader, just skip to this part of the post. Hopefully this large bold red text will attract your attention:

Being a popular face on social media is like being that piece of clothing someone thought they couldn't live without, until one day it got pushed to the rear of their cupboard, outta sight, and they didn't realize it was missing until they found it by accident one day.

Do you agree or disagree with this analogy? Why?

Have a great week, folks!

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Social media mania attack! Is this all really necessary?

I don't know about you but I'm starting to freak out a little about all the sites and cyber-crack I have to keep track of and update regularly ...

For my personal stuff:

Website

Blog

Twitter

Facebook

Facebook page

Goodreads

Amazon US & UK author page

AuthorSB page

Kindle Direct

Createspace

Kobo

YouTube

Email (personal)

Email (Show & Tell in a Nutshell support)

Email (day job)

There are more that i'm not listing, because I've abandoned them!

Vine Leaves Literary Journal:

Website

Twitter

Facebook page

Duotrope

NewPages.com

The ReviewReview

PW.org

EWR

email (submissions)

email (reviews)

email (editorial)

email (donations)

Mailchimp (thank dog that's Dawn's responsibility - yes, I said dog on purpose)

Homeric Writers' Retreat & Workshop:

Blog

Facebook page

NewPages

ShawGuides

And lots of other sites I need to advertise it on and I totally can't keep track ...

And you want me to sign up to Pinterest?!?!?

Have you ever suffered from a slight case of social media mania? Do we really need all this ... stuff?

How opinionated is TOO opinionated?

Yesterday, I got into a somewhat heated debate about THIS ARTICLE in a Facebook Writer's Group. The discussion was civil, but I could feel the frustrated undertones of the other commenter. I was also feeling frustrated myself. Because we strongly disagreed with each other. And I began to wonder ... am I too forward?

I asked a close friend of mine whether she thought I was too forward with my opinions before continuing the discussion and letting it evolve into something sticky. She told me that I wasn't. She said that there is overbearing and there is assertive, and that I was the latter. I was relieved. But then I also wanted to kick myself. I realized I was taking it all too personally. And so was the other commenter. (Funnily enough we both ended up admitting to this and cooled off each others' egos. I was so intrigued by her that I ended up purchasing her book! But that's not the point of this post.)

My questions to you are: How do you deal with conflicting opinions on the Internet? Do you hold back? Do you go too far? Do you pretend to be all cool and collected and swear at your screen? Or do you stay away all together because you're afraid of tarnishing your reputation? How do you know when you're straddling the line?

On another note, have you read the article I linked to above? What's your opinion about it?

PS: If you missed Monday's post, go check it out and contribute a question about the Homeric Writers' Retreat & Workshop, for a series of posts I'll be writing about it.

Don't EVER write anything online that you don't want thrown back in your face. Trust me. Here's why ...

Source

I wasn't intending on posting today, but something happened to me yesterday which I need to share with you all. I can't let the freshness of this experience dwindle before writing it down for you all to read.

This month there will be an article about my poetry collection published online. A very long and in-depth article focusing on a variety of things including my background AND the background of my parents' music career. I did NOT provide the critic with ANY of this background. NOTHING. He found it all online. ALL of it.

Thankfully he was kind enough to let me read it before publishing it. Boy am I glad he let me read it. It's not all praise. And this is totally fine with me. I'm not out looking for only praise, especially when the criticism is coming form an extremely educated mind and from someone who has done their homework. I really truly appreciate how close a reading this critic gave my book. I was in absolute awe. Now. I'm rambling a bit. My point here is, he found something I had said online a while ago that wasn't very nice. I'm not going to say what that something was. I removed it from my blog. And I kindly asked him to remove it from his article too because it could very well end up being read by someone closely related to that comment and jeopardize a future endeavor I have planned. Not to mention turn a whole community of people against me. Yes, it was that bad. I did not think anything of this comment when I wrote it. BUT the context it was in, in the article, made it sound just ABSOLUTELY awful.

So, if you want a career in writing, trust me when I advise you to NEVER write anything you don't want repeated. The smallest of an 'off' comment can bounce back up and bite you in the face. Even in people's comments. You may feel like you're just chatting to a friend, but you're not. It's very easy to forget that anything you put out there--here--in cyberland, is available to the world for scrutiny. I'm lucky. I'm very lucky the person who wrote this article allowed me to review it first. Imagine if he didn't. I think I might have had a heart attack. I've learned from my mistake now. And I want you to learn from it too.

I think I might sift through all my old posts soon and make sure there's nothing else I don't want repeated!

Anything like this happen to you? Are you careful about what you say online?

There's something really disturbing about LinkedIn writing discussions ...

I've been a member of LinkedIn for about the same time that I've been blogging. It's been useful in that I've found a few freelance jobs through it, but other than that, my profile sits undisturbed. About a year ago, I took part in some of the writing groups and discussions. One day I posted a query for some feedback and had members gang up on me. They were just plain nasty.

Despite me saying it was a rough draft and that I only needed feedback on the content, rather than grammar, etc, which I would fix up later (BIG MISTAKE), one woman battered me continuously, claiming that my spelling and grammar was so bad that she couldn't imagine how I thought of myself as a writer. There was one spelling mistake in the query, folks. Can't even remember what the grammar issue was. I got upset. I didn't say anything cruel in return, but I made it clear that I was offended. Then other contributors started taking her side and saying that if I couldn't handle a tiny bit of criticism, I wouldn't last. It wasn't tiny. It was an aggressive attack. Yikes! It wasn't called for. At all. So I stopped taking part. I still have a bitter taste in my mouth from that incident.

Anyway, I'm bringing this up now because over the weekend I had a browse through the discussion topics for the first time since then, and read a few comments, and found myself feeling quite insulted despite them not being directed toward me. I guess that bitter taste still lingers. I began to wonder why so many of the group members that take the time to get involved in LinkedIn writing discussions are so competitive, pushy, arrogant and rude, and seem to be on the hunt for an easy way to sell their books. It's really weird. (Not all are like this, there are some lovely people, too.) However, generally they're nothing like the blogging community. There's no mutual support system. It's as if they believe they have the expertise and background to act as a teacher rather than a classmate. Do they feel safer there to speak what's really on their mind, because LinkedIn is a lot more private than Facebook and blogger? I'm intrigued. I want to know the psychology behind it.

I'm not going to quote anything from the discussions, because the groups are private and it wouldn't be right of me, so you'll just have to take my word for it. But let me ask you ...

Could you imagine yourself behaving differently on a more secure network than you do on your blog, for example? Would you feel more comfortable telling someone that their work sucked without being polite about it? Why/Why not? If not, why do you think some people are? Do you think it might stem from the possibility that these people are in it for the business, rather than the pleasure? With LinkedIn being a 'business' network, do you think they feel they should assume the voice of someone with power?

REMINDER: Have you signed up for my String Bridge Book & Music Blog Tour yet? If not, and you'd like to, just click HERE.

PS: A friend of mine, Stephen Parrish, the author or The Tavernier Stones won an Independent Publisher (IPPY) gold medal earlier this month. (Congrats, Stephen!!!) His publisher, Llewellyn Worldwide, has lowered the price of the Kindle version of the book from $9.99 to $2.99. On June 2 & 3 Kindle Nation will sponsor the novel as "Ebook of the Day" and a generous number of Kindle copies will be available free to interested readers.

If you would like one of these copies, pop on over to Stephen's Blog and let him know  There are no strings, there is no obligation. If too many people respond, names will be drawn randomly. Despite this, Amazon has further discounted the price to $2.39, so if you're one of the unlucky ones I nevertheless encourage you to take advantage of the bargain price before it goes up again. Everyone who gets a free copy should have it by 4th June.

There are certain ways of marketing a book which I believe will stunt sales. (and a special announcement)

I'm going to make a very bold statement. But before you take it negatively, please hear me out first, because in actual fact, it's not negative at all, it's positive.

My statement:
I lose interest in social networkers who only ever blog, facebook, twitter about their books, sales figures and other people's reviews of their books.

Let's face it. We've all gotta market our work if we want to sell it. But there is a better way than just 'putting it out there'. People are going to be so much more interested in someone's book if it's not in their face all the time, and/or they do their plugging along side other, more interactive issues. Please be clear here, that I am not criticising anyone in particular. I'm just voicing an opinion I have come to realize greatly effects what I choose to read online, and I believe I'm not the only one who feels like this. I want to interact with authors. If I just wanted information about a new release, I'd read the newspaper. Get my drift?

For example, who would you consider buying a book from ...

This kind of social networker:
"My book titled 'blah' is available on blah, blah and blah. Please review it." (The real meaning = Please buy my book, pretty please, even though you know nothing about me. Why should you know anything about me to want to buy my book? Read the blurb, it's interesting! You just have to trust me on that, even though, really, I haven't given you any reason to trust me on that, because we've never interacted together online.)

Or, this kind of social networker:
"You'll never believe the week I've had and what I've discovered. I did this and this and this, and it made me feel like this and this and this. Does this kind of thing ever make you feel like this too? Please tell me I'm not alone. PS: My book is finally on Amazon! I'd love for you to check it out!" (The real meaning = I really appreciate my followers, and I also really want to know more about them and want to share all my ups and downs with them and discover if we have anything in common. And once we've established that, I hope that one day they'd like to purchase my book. And if they do - bonus! If not, I'm still going to interact with them anyway, because we've become such great friends.)

I don't know about you, but I choose option two. I don't feel like I'm being handed a press release in the street this way. And I feel like they actually want me to be there, to experience what they're experiencing with them. In my opinion, this is how we should network if we want people to take notice. And I don't think doing this is any more complex than the straightforward announcement.

In addition, never, ever, excuse my abruptness here, but never just tweet something like this: Title of book, great review #clickthislink. Because I won't click it. But I will click it, if you tweet: I'm so excited and thrilled about this review! Thank you so much, (name of person who wrote the review) #clickthislink. If you tweet that, I'll click it because you seem appreciative. Well, I would if I was on Twitter. ;o)

So, what kind of networking do you think works best? Do you agree with what I've said? Why/Why not?

Special Announcement!

Seeing as we're on the subject of plugging. Roland Yeomans has published his first book! Yay! Congratulations, Roland!Let's give him a little support and check it out, hey?

(See? Brief, to the point, and embedded in a post which should trigger INTERACTION. Interaction is the key, folks, and don't forget it!)