Sorry Darling, Must Dash. Ta Ta....

Maybe it's a leap, but this water-skiing squirrel reminds me of the busy mobile professional I used to be, assisted by bluetooth, wireless, cable, and cellular. I'm not quite a technophobe now, but I did figure out that spending all day juggling twelve things simultaneously keeps me from sleeping at night.

I'm sure I'm not the first. Oprah's bound to have had guest speakers on the subject. But...duh...it's only just occurred to me that bedtime is the only time my brain isn't otherwise occupied. So - because I haven't yet entirely fried them - my brain cells work double time to squeeze out a couple of epiphanies before I succumb to slumber. Which I never do, of course, because epiphanies are way too exciting. (I should have known it was Colonel Mustard. The candlestick's in his camera bag....)

To wean myself off Ambien, I've resolved to do one thing at a time and keep head-noise to a minimum. No more turning pages while eating lunch. I've tossed the headphones. Shut off the phone. Walk right past my silent PC on the way to bed. On my hour-long commutes by car, I no longer listen to Mozart's Requiem. Nor to audio books and Garrison Keillor. Instead I let my mind wander, and wander it does.

The only problem - a significant one - is that my memory's shot. How to record stunning revelations doing 75 on the Thruway?

While I confess to having written the occasional note on the back of an envelope (I now welcome traffic jams) I've been trying to figure out a safer way to recall brainstorms. Which brings me right back to technology. Get a recorder, friends enthuse. With Dragon Naturally Speaking you can digitize your musings. Voice-write entire manuscripts.

Forget that. Characters continue to live in my keyboard. But since plot twists come at desperately inconvenient moments - in the wee hours and on wheels - I've done two things. For those middle-of-the-night ponderings, I put a notebook and pen under the bed. For the car, I use Jott with my cell phone (yes, with headset) to send myself text emails of my own, spoken, ideas. Yeah, yeah, I'm still an egghead.

Jott's free. Conversion to text is spookily accurate. I can speed-dial Jott's toll-free number, discuss my inspirations, and get a near-perfect text version by email. (See The Washington Post or Network World.)

I suppose that talking to myself while driving - even with the headset, officer - makes two things I'm doing at once. But then, I never could keep a resolution.

- Lois

Don't Go Changing...

Just a brief note:

The changes to the blog's color and layout weren't intentional. Somehow, our template became corrupt, and when I wanted to put the Agatha nominations in the sidebar, I couldn't edit the layout...at all. When I started over, I got what we have now. I'm not in love with it...I have to figure out how to change a couple of things, and the color we had seems to be lost in the ether. But at least now the sidebar is functional again!

And if anyone wanted to know what I do when I am stuck in hotel rooms the night before trade shows, well, now you know.

Happy Birthday To Us

[image courtesy of Wessex Catering]
The Women of Mystery are officially a year old today. (Coincidentally, one of our most frequent commenters, Travis Erwin, celebrated his blog's first anniversary yesterday.)

I realized in the process of sending out queries, attending conferences, etc, that I needed a professional home on the web. I didn't have credentials to support a full on web page, but I figured a blog would be a way for all those agents and editors who Googled me to be shocked and awed by my writing skills. (Or not. Most likely not.) I'd kept a personal blog for years, but I knew I couldn't keep up a professional one on my own, so I reached out to the NY/Tri-State chapter of the Sisters in Crime, hoping someone--anyone--would want to join the fun.

And I found a wonderful, talented group of women. Our membership has changed a bit in the last twelve months, as was to be expected. We've had some people leave because life got in the way, while others joined. Membership is...fluid...here at WoM, and I remain hopeful that some of those who've faded out will return to full strength at some point.

Managing a group blog is wildly different from maintaining a personal one. We have a Yahoo mail group where we discuss such fascinating topics as:
- who doesn't have computer access this week (or month or six months) and won't be able to post
- who's going to post for My Town Monday
- whether we feel it necessary to post on a schedule
- whether something should go in the sidebar (moot for months now, since Blogger won't let me edit the page, and I'm too chicken to delete the template and start over)
. . . and other things that probably don't occur to anyone. When we started out, our one "rule" was that everything we wrote had to have some connection--no matter how tenuous--to the writing life. I think we've generally stuck to that.

I recently looked back at a post where I talked about how people had found us. That was seven months ago, and our traffic has basically doubled since then, but some things seem to hold steady. We still get an outsized number of hits for some posts that don't really relate to what I assume people want to know when they do their Google searches and for things that...don't apply to us. We still can't track how the majority of people come to us because they're coming directly, without following a link, or they are coming from mail programs where we have no idea what horrid things people are saying about us in their links! On the other hand, we do have a fair amount of information about contests, and people do seem to like to come to our site for that info. I think that's great...even if those very same people are our competition!

And it's been an exciting year for the Women of Mystery. In the past year, we've had members published, nominated for awards, find agents, finish a NaNoWriMo novel, gain the courage to send out queries, go on book tours...and always, grind away writing, writing, writing. Not bad.

Keeping Up With The Joneses...Or At Least Their Blogs

This post was originally written as an email response to a question on the Sisters in Crime group about why blog "hit counters" often don't reflect the actual number of a blog's readers. Someone on the list asked about "feed readers". It occurred to me that having the information here, on a blog, wouldn't be a bad thing.

A "feed reader" essentially compiles/aggregates information from any number of sources. They were originally all "RSS" readers. RSS stands for "really simple syndication," which explains the intent of "feeds" quite nicely--it was a protocol designed to make it really easy for you to get your information without flitting from one place to another all over the web every day. Now you'll see them called Atom Feed, XML Feed, Blog Feed, all kinds of things. You'll see "Technorati Feed" or "FeedBurner Feed" because those are two very popular readers. (The Wickipedia definition is more detailed and less personal than what I'll say below.)

There are two main categories of feed readers:
- standalone
- through your web browser

I use a standalone feed reader, which means there's a program that runs on my computer all the time collecting whatever is new from however many sources I may have added. Whenever I want to see what's new in the world, I look in that program. It collects not only blogs, but newspapers, alerts, all kinds of stuff. I use the standalone because I subscribe to some outrageous number of sources, and I haven't found a web-based reader that conveniently shows me the full text of that many sources without clutter.

As an example, however, I set up a little NetVibes page of feeds to give you an idea of what I mean. (Readers of this blog may note I've mentioned NetVibes before. What can I say? I am a creature of habit.)

NetVibes is a very cool web-based reader because it allows you to add gadgets like the weather one and the Craigslist one I have on that page as well as feeds, so a lot of people use it for a home page. If you look in the address bar (where the URL is), you'll see a little orange box over on the right that looks like it has radio waves coming out of it. That's a "syndication" icon. If you click that, it will ask you whether you want to "subscribe to Laura K Curtis' activities". Any Blogger blog, Wordpress blog, TypePad blog will have that icon in the menu bar. If you use a feed reader, clicking that little orange icon will add the blog to your subscription list for your preferred program. (I am sure others also have it, but those are the ones that come to mind immediately.)

The standalone programs I've tried look a lot like mail programs. (In fact, many mail programs function as feed readers if you want them to, including the newest version of Mac Mail.)

Clicking the picture above will give you a bigger image, so you can see what a non-browser-based feed reader looks like. I've marked all the items as "unread" so you can get a sense of what it would look like if I didn't keep up with it!

Some blog sites allow you to set your "syndication" so that only a small portion of a post is broadcast to a feed reader, forcing anyone interested to actually go to the site for the rest, but that peeves a lot of my more geeky friends, so I don't recommend it, even though it may make the hit count higher on the blog. (The subject of "the numbers game" is one I've addressed here in the past.) Mind you, I don't read the full text of the articles from all the newspapers and blogs in my feed reader, but the headlines give me a sense of things, and I can pick and choose which ones I do want to read.

But the thing is, as I mentioned earlier, when my feed reader goes around every half hour automatically checking to see "what's new" and collecting its data, it doesn't leave a "footprint" for the site tracker. And it only picks up the "news," not the general page changes, so it won't "see" polls or sidebar items. To make sure your feed-reader-using fans see the cool stuff you put in your sidebars, don't forget to put up a post about what you've changed.

Anti-Social Networking

Network By Design
Most of you have probably gleaned from my various posts that I am not a big fan of "social networking" in the mode of MySpace or Facebook, especially not for authors who are trying to sell their books. I was, therefore, fascinated by this article in the Register, and this one on Creative Capital, both based on the same set of numbers, which indicate that the biggies in the social networking arena are growing slowly in the areas in which they are not actively shrinking. From Creative Capital:

Since December 2006, when MySpace engagement peaked at about 234 minutes spent per visitor, time spent on the site has dropped consistently throughout the year. In December, time spent per visitor saw its biggest month-to-month drop, of about 8.5%, to 179 minutes per visitor per month, down from 196 minutes in November. That equates to a 24% year-over-year drop.

Both MySpace and FaceBook are non-targeted networks. That is, people join them for general stuff. Members may self-select into groups based on hobbies, favorite activities, whatever, but the larger "network" is general.

Then there are the targeted networks. Daniel Hatadi created the targeted social network CrimeSpace on the general social networking site Ning. Crimespace is for those who like to read--and write--crime fiction. It has 1233 members, all of whom, presumably, are interested in the kinds of things we Women of Mystery like, too.

Targeted even more specifically are sites like Redroom, where in order to get your page "activated", you have to be a published author. Anyone can sign up for an account, though, so I suppose the "social network" aspect could be for readers as well, though I can't see how it would have a lot of appeal.

Network As Side-Benefit
For myself, I infinitely prefer sites where "social networking" takes place as a by-product. That is, the site is designed for some other purpose. For example, I belong to a number of forums for my day job like the Creative Wire Jewelry forum on Delphi. Long before the age of the "social networking site," there were bulletin board services, and these forums are holdovers from that style of communication. These are social networking at their most basic because they were really designed to be "social," not to help people "network."

You can't put your "author page" on a forum site the way you can on a social network site, but you don't need to. Why not? Because on a forum site, people know you by what you post. They learn who you are slowly. There's no Blatant Self-Promotion allowed, and although we all show our work and buy from each other, that's a side benefit of the forum, not its focus.

I also belong to LibraryThing. LibraryThing allows you to catalog your books online (and call your library from your cell phone in order to see whether you have already read that book you're pretty sure is a re-release....). You can rate books, review them, and--important to me--tag them. You can also subscribe to tag feeds. So whenever someone tags a book in their library as "cozy," my RSS reader lets me know, so I can see whether I've read it, might want to read it, whatever.

LibraryThing does have a section of forums, where people discuss all kinds of things. And you can search for people who have similar libraries to yours, make them your friends, etc. But mostly, it's about the books. The social network aspect is a sideline, so, no, it's not where you could put your author page. (Though if you are an author, you should become a "LibraryThing author" and tag your books so you know that geeks like me, who are getting the feeds, will be sure to know about your books! Since this takes all of two minutes--or five if you have a whole lot of books to pimp promote--you won't have put out a lot of effort for no measurable reward even if it doesn't sell a single book for you.)

And, of course, there's this blog. I didn't start blogging for promotion--I have nothing to promote--but it's certainly social, and we've created, I hope, a network. But a blog isn't a homepage, either. It's not enough for an author just to have a blog, s/he has to have a web page as well.

Home Salty Home
Why might you want to put your author page on a site like CrimeSpace, rather than just creating it out in the middle of the Web on its own? I'm probably the wrong person to ask. The idea is that if you put it up somewhere people are already going, they're more apt to see it. If they're already hanging out looking at author profiles, they'll be more receptive to yours.

Well, okay. That certainly worked for Wendy's, whose startup marketing strategy was to place a Wendy's near every McDonald's on the theory that if people wanted fast food, they wanted fast food.

Unfortunately, as every strip mall in existence illustrates, where there's a Wendy's and a McDonald's, there's also a Burger King, a Taco Bell.... The "noise" can become a bit overwhelming. How do you make yourself heard over the din, especially since most social networking sites strictly limit the alterations you can make on your page? The sites want a uniform look, like a housing development, in order to give visitors a sense of "place". Cruise around Redroom for a while. You may not know the author whose page you find yourself on, but you'll know you haven't left Redroom's site.

For many, many surfers, that sense of place is an important one. The question is, are your readers that kind of surfer? Are readers, in general, different from surfers of other types?

I think they probably are. I'm not at all sure how they differ, but I am pretty sure they do. Even genre-to-genre, I am willing to bet you'd find differences in the Internet habits of readers.

But as I struggle to figure out what to do for my own author page, I am more than willing to be educated--have you found success in formal social networking sites? What did it cost in terms of time, energy, upkeep? What do you like or dislike about your own site? I'd love to be proven wrong about social networking...there's an attractive aspect to the ease with which one can set up a page on those sites.

It's 10pm, Have You Backed Up Your Computer Today?

I've been mostly absent for a while due to a set of circumstances comprised of health, family and technology. Which reminded me to post, while I am thinking about it, a comment about backing up.

Do you back up? How often? Surveys say that something like 75% of computer users don't, or don't do it often enough to be effective. Me, I'm a geek. I back up to a separate drive at home, I synchronize my address book and calendar to a file on an online server, and I back up my writing to a thumb drive like the one pictured here, which I keep on my keychain so that when I am done with a writing session at Starbucks or Borders, I can put my work on the drive before I shut down the computer...just in case it won't start up again when I get home!

I use a Mac, so I don't worry much about viruses, though I'll scan things I download, particularly if they're Microsoft documents, as virus-writers love to hack MS products.

Unfortunately, this particular technological issue caught me off guard. The CD/DVD drive in my computer went bad, not bad enough to stop working, but just bad enough to corrupt everything I installed from it to some extent, including the operating system. Corruption I dutifully backed up.

Ooops.

This means my documents are just fine, thank goodness, (though once I reinstalled the word processing software, my formatting went seriously wonky) but I am going to be missing bits and pieces of stuff for a long time. My applications don't work right, so I have to dig up serial numbers (which is one thing I am really bad about keeping track of) so that I can download new copies of the apps and reinstall them. And I don't know what doesn't work until I need it, try it, and find out it's toast.

Ah, the joys of life in the techie age.

eBook Schizophrenia

I have very mixed feelings about the world moving toward eBooks. I know it’s going to happen. I’ve known it for years―ever since Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation carried around what was probably the device that gave the inventor of the PDA his revolutionary idea.

As a pleasure reader of novels, I think eBooks are great. Not having to lug around a clunky paper book would be wonderful. I used to buy hardcover books exclusively, even when I started commuting. At first it wasn’t a problem. I had a large pocketbook and I just stuffed the book inside. But then pocketbooks got smaller, and the means of my commute changed from my car to a Long Island Rail Road train and two subways, and I switched to paperbacks. Paperbacks are smaller, but they’re also flimsier. In addition, as a publishing professional, I felt tremendously guilty over not properly supporting the authors whose books I enjoyed so much.

Paper books also necessitate picking out just one book to take along. I carry around a decent-sized pocketbook once again, thanks both to fashion and to my reaching an age where I don’t slavishly follow Vogue anymore. But even with a larger bag, it’s difficult to dig out my wallet or cell phone when it's buried under a book. If I had to struggle with two or more books, I’d probably just skip hitting Starbucks when away from home and resign myself to being yelled at by my family for not answering their phone calls.

With an eBook reader, you can carry around a number of books and read whatever strikes your fancy at the moment. The unit is solid, not composed of pages that can part and gobble up the other contents of your bag. And it’s smaller than even a paperback, so takes up less space. This allows you to hear and answer your cell phone, buy lunch when hungry, and run through Penn Station without ending up all black-and-blue from your heavy pocketbook or carryall banging against your hip or thigh.

But that’s not all. Think of all the trees that fall victim to the publishing industry today. All the landfills that run out of room much quicker than they need to. All the chemicals that are dumped into the air and water as byproducts of the manufacture of paper, ink, and glue. Of course, the flip side is that many of the people who work in these support industries would lose their jobs. And libraries would become obsolete, with many torn down, displacing untold numbers of innocent pigeon and seagull families.

As a writer and editor, the thought of going to eBooks and away from paper books saddens me. There’s something about sitting at my desk surrounded by stacks of books that helps me to work. I use the Internet, too, but when it comes to dictionaries and style guides and reference books on the various subjects touched on in the manuscripts I edit or the book I’m writing, nothing beats being able to flip through a paper book, moving slowly toward my destination, skimming the pages leading up to it, savoring the nuggets of new or forgotten facts that lure my eyes. There’s also something about spatial memory. Looking at a reference book from the side, I so often remember exactly where to open the book. With an eBook, I usually end up scrolling and scrolling, passing what I need because it flies by in a blur. I also can’t imagine working in a room that doesn’t have bookcases filled to the brim with all types of books.

And what if a book ignites strong feelings? If we hate it, we can’t throw the eBook reader against the wall. It’ll break into a million little plastic pieces and computer chips and wires, and we’ll have to shell out some serious bucks to replace it. If a book inspires us, we can’t hug it against our heart (at least, not in the same way), display it on the coffee table, or buy a gift-quality copy, top it with a bow, and lovingly present it to our children. Yes, we can buy another copy of the download and forward the link, but it’s just not the same thing.

And where will we scribble notes? What will students underline and highlight? And the authors. Think of the authors! What will they sign? The printed-out download confirmation? Somehow, a download confirmation signing just isn’t what I’ve been picturing doing all these years when my first novel is finally published.

Kindle-ing

Recently, I got my hands on one of Amazon's new Kindles, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to review it here.

First let me address the primary complaint I see whenever I see it reviewed, on Amazon or elsewhere:

It's expensive.

Yeah, it is. No two ways about it. At $400, no one is ever going to make their money back saving by buying eBooks rather than printed ones. But it's right in line with the rest of the higher end eBook readers out there, so that's a non-starter as a complaint. (There's a well-maintained Mobile Reader Wiki on Wikipedia if you want to see what's out there, what it does, and what it costs.)

The only other eBook reader I've ever considered is Bookeen's Cybook. Why? Because I need a reader that uses "eInk" technology since I can't read with backlighting, and I want a reader I can hook up to my Mac. And the Cybook, while it won't autosync, can at least be used as a drive so I can download eBooks to my Mac and drag them over. The Cybook comes in at $350. Not a whole lot of price difference.

I've not used a Cybook reader yet, so I can't compare them. (I hope to try one out in person on 12/2--I'll post here if I do.) What I can do is tell you that I'd make up the $50 difference quickly if I read new release hardcovers. Because the Cybook uses MobiPocket as reading software, and a brief comparison shows that MobiPocket (a technology Amazon actually owns) eBooks run about $17-$18 for a new release hardcover, while the Kindle versions of the same books are $9.99.

In fact, Mobipocket books cost as much as their paper equivalents, which makes no sense whatsoever. And if you buy your books discounted, using coupons or whatever the way I always do, Mobipocket books cost more, because you're not getting those discounts.

But I said before that people who buy eBook readers aren't doing so to save money, and if I stick to that assertion, I can ignore the ridiculous pricing of Mobipocket books. (Why would someone want an eBook rather than a printed book? That's a whole post unto itself. For myself, the appeal is primarily in the idea of not having to take a whole separate carry-on bag on vacation with me just for my books since I read one a day on vacation, plus at least one, if not more, on each plane.)

The other major complaint about the Kindle is that it's ugly. But you knew that, right? You looked at the picture before you bought the product, so why whine now?

I am always going to have less sexy technology because I prefer hardware buttons to software ones. I don't want an iPhone, sexy and gorgeous as it is, because I want to push actual buttons on my phone rather than using a virtual keyboard. The same is true of the Kindle. It has a keyboard--an actual keyboard--for making notes and searching the Kindle store. And so far the keys work great. The little scroll wheel on the right allows you to click into whatever you're reading to make notes or bookmark. It's a solid feeling wheel, with a satisfying "click."

Would I have preferred it in black? Yeah, I would. Call me shallow. Would that stop me from using it, though? Nope.

The pages turn quickly, which is one complaint I have heard from people about other readers. It's easy to change the text size, which is one of the big advantages of eBooks. Tired? Increase the text size. Skimming? Decrease it.

The Kindle is set up to access Amazon's store using Sprint's cell network, which means it can only download remotely inside the US. You can download to your computer over the web and transfer to your Kindle if necessary, but for most people--me included, the US-only limitation isn't too much of a problem.

But the Kindle, functional as it is, is going back to Amazon next week.

It's not just that it's not a book. I knew it wouldn't be. I expected to have to make some adjustments.

What I didn't expect, the thing that's driven me crazy every time I put the thing down and pick it back up, is that the buttons for flipping pages are too freaking hard to avoid. So far, I've not once been able to turn the machine off or on or pick it up or put it down without accidentally changing pages. The Kindle comes with a cover, but you can't power it on or off with the cover on, and if the Kindle is on and you close the cover, and then pick it up, squeezing the cover, you click the flywheel.

Alas, the Kindle's design was not well thought out. (How hard would it have been to put the on/off switch on the front, where you could access it while it was still in the cover? Or put in a lock switch that would allow readers to prevent the pages from turning when they don't want them to?)

But I don't take vacation until March. Maybe by then someone will have come out with something I can take with me instead of a whole carry-on full of books.

Trafficking in Numbers

Four antihistamines, two steroids, three trips to the emergency room and--still--innumerable hives. But that's not actually what I meant.

It used to be that when authors talked about numbers, they meant the number of books they've sold, or the size of their first print run, or how much their advance was.

But, increasingly, what you'll hear is people talking about "website traffic." The old saw about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing applies very well here. Authors are told they should have web presences. They are told that they should use those presences to connect with readers, for marketing and publicity, etc. And that's all true. A website can be a powerful tool.

All too often, however, people (and this isn't just authors, it's anyone who's new to website management) believe that the number of "hits", the amount of traffic, on their site is important. They go out aggressively searching for people to link back and forth with because that way they can move up in the google rankings. But does that really matter? Not so much, as it turns out.

I have an online store. It's a vital part of my business so I have to check out both 1) how people find me and 2) how long they stay on the site. I do check on whether they buy anything, but it's very rare that people find me through google or links from other sites and buy things. Usually, my buyers are people who have met me at a trade show or know me from the several online forums I post to. That being the case, why do I care about the stats at all? Because they help me get a handle on what people are looking for, what I need to produce more of, what they find interesting. They may not buy anything from me online, but many of them will be my trade show customers down the line. (I don't have a blog or forum on my site because I maintain my community contacts in more general settings.)

I know why the numbers are important for my business. But those reasons just aren't valid for authors. Here are the last 5 ways people found us:
1) Linked from Marijke's latest blog post
2) Google search on "4 mystery addicts"
3) Google image search on "toadstool"
4) Google search on "short short fifties teens"
5) Google search on "rich women 1800s"

Does that help me particularly? Nope. Interesting, curious even, but not particularly helpful. We average 35 visitors a day, so for grins I checked the last 35 entries. In addition to the above 5:
16 "unknowns"--people who didn't follow a link, just came directly to us
Another Google.uk image search on "toadstool"
2 Google searches on Meg Ruley
1 Google search on Stephanie Kip Rostan
1 link from my.yahoo.com
3 links from blogger profiles
1 Google search on "what woman wrote the first mystery story"
1 Google search on "why are women late to dates"
1 link from http://seanachi.wordpress.com/
1 Google search on "descriptive passages on anger"
1 link from an email
1 link from The Cozy Chicks
1 self-referential link (they came to the front page via an older blog post)

Marijke, Sean and the Cozy Chicks all have links to us in their sidebars. But as you can see, the vast majority of our visitors come either out of the blue or from Google searches that don't much relate to our content. If I were using this blog as a tool to try to sell books, I might be worried about those numbers. But I don't post here in the hope that someone will buy my book. After all, I don't have a book to sell.

Writers will often buy a book even if it's not to their taste, just because they want to support the book's author. That's not true of the general public, though, so I wouldn't expect a reader of this blog to run out and buy my book just because I seemed like a good person. In fact, chances are better that I might offend someone, thereby causing them not to buy my book. (I try not to offend people, but it does happen.)

A while back, the Smart Bitches had a discussion of what works and what doesn't for promotion. Some promos were deemed more useful than others--canvas totes and nice pens being more useful than bookmarks--but no matter how useful the item was, it would never actually prompt someone to go out and buy a book they would not otherwise have bought. The same, I think, is true of a website.

Why, then bother having a website at all? I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, I like to connect with people. It's the same thing I enjoyed about working retail, the same thing I still enjoy about trade shows, and part of the reason I became a teacher. I got a lovely email yesterday from a woman who read an article I wrote for Art Jewelry Magazine. She had, as it turns out, not found me through the magazine at all, but through one of the online communities to which I belong, where I'd gone over some of the details that got lost in editorial translation for the original article and answered more complicated questions about the process I'd described. If I'd just had a stable website, my storefront, she might never have found me "approachable" enough to email.

I expect that several of the people in the community of beaders, beadmakers and jewelers to which I contribute will buy A Snake in the Glass when--yes, when, not if--it gets published, but that's not why I "hang out" there. If it were, pretty soon people would figure out what I was up to and I'd be cast out on my keister.

So what does all this rambling on mean for authors trying to figure out what their agents, editors, etc, mean when they say "you need a web presence?" It means "think before you act." Before you go out and put up a website, think about what you want from it and what kind of "internet person" you are. Do you enjoy going online? Are you the type to frequently update your own site? Can you commit to posting in a blog once a week--or more often? Do you want to hear from your readers, or would you rather they looked to your site for information rather than communication? Will you be posting excerpts from your books? Will you have contests?

There are an infinite number of ways in which you can use your web presence. Before you create your new "home", consider why you're moving.

Sorry, No Printing Allowed

Whenever I have the chance, I like to visit the blog of Marijke: nurse turned writer. Click here

Marijke is combining her long clinical experience as a registered nurse with her writing talent and now writes medical and health related material professionally, so her blog is always filled with interesting health related information. What I like best is that at the end of each blog she has links to the health and medical news for the day. Her side bar contains an ever changing list of links to what she calls “interesting and important health and safety info.”

So, right now you’re thinking: nice, Ter, but what has that got to do with us. We’re writers. The last thing we need is to make one more stop on the information superhighway when we should be WRITING.

Well, for one thing, the blog is a wealth of information and Marijke is a very nice lady, so perhaps she would point you in the right direction for research for the health issue in the story you’re going to write in October. (Didn’t think I knew about that did you?)

And for another, here’s a health link from Marijke’s blog that could be of great concern to writers. It's a report on a study that says laser printers can effect air quality. Click here

Well, I don’t know how ventilated your workspace is, but here in New York it’s summer. We’re having a ninety degree heat wave and I haven’t opened a window in my computer room since last weekend. I have my printer right on my desk top next to my monitor and what with writing and querying, I print lots of pages every day and whatever particulates spew forth, they spew right in my face and head for my lungs.

All these years I thought I saved my lungs when I gave up smoking. Will I have to give up printing next?

Terrie

Formatting Your Manuscript

No, I am not going to talk about how large your margins should be, etc, especially since Anne Mini has done such a great job with the subject on her blog. No, what I am going to do in this post is teach you how to get around the annoying fact that everyone wants something different from your manuscript. Agent 1 wants it in Courier. Agent 2 wants it in Times. Agent 3 wants all your blockquotes to be in a different font from the rest of the manuscript. Agent 4 wants your character's thoughts in italics. Agent 5 hates italics.

This lesson assumes you use Word, since it's the most popular word processing program (and the one I use). (The pictures in this post are from a Mac, but Word works the same way on both platforms.)

The first thing you need to understand is how Word deals with "Styles".
If you don't have a formatting toolbar at the top of your document, look under your "view" menu and select it. Now, up in the upper left of the picture you see something that says "normal." If you click on that, you'll see a drop-down menu of styles.

Each "style" has a format all its own and you can use separate styles throughout the manuscript for things like blockquotes, protagonists' thoughts, etc. When Agent A says "use underlines rather than italics," you change the parameters of the style you're using for protagonists' thoughts and *poof* all the parts of your manuscript tagged that way change automatically.

So, how is this magic accomplished? Let's take it step by step.

First, decide how you like to write. Me, I want the first line of each paragraph indented .5 and I like to read my text spaced 1.5 lines apart rather than double spaced. So I created a style called "Indented Normal", which is what I use for most of my manuscript. Here's how:

First, choose Style under the Format menu.
On the window that opens, choose "New". Another window will pop up asking you what you want to name your new style and some other questions. Name your style whatever you like but leave the rest of it alone for the moment.

Now you're going to tell Word what you want your style to look like as you type. You can always change your mind later. To do this, you want to click Paragraph under the Format drop down menu at the bottom of the window.


A new window will open asking what you want your paragraph to look like. This is where you can tell the program that you want your first line indented .5 inch and that you want to look at it double-spaced or whatever.

You can go back now and choose what font you want, whether you want it italicized, underlined, etc, by choosing font where you chose paragraph earlier.


To change the style of a piece of text, highlight it and choose the style you want from the dropdown menu at the top left. The style will automatically be applied to the highlighted text.



OK, so that looks really complicated. But you only have to do it once per style. So think about the styles you'll need. Me, I use Indented Normal, Blockquote, Chapter Heading, and Thoughts. (I have other styles for other kinds of documents, but those are the fiction ones.) When you find out that your new agent prefers Courier, all you have to do is go back to the "format style" option, change the font once, and your entire manuscript will change. Likewise, since you probably need to double-space every "normal" part of your manuscript, just go back and change that setting and only the normal parts will change, leaving the blockquotes, etc, alone.

There are lots of other options you can change for styles, but with luck this brief summary will provide you with what you need to get started. This is an incredibly powerful tool. If you have questions, please ask. I'm always trying to make things clearer.

Still to come: how to make your chapters fit together and how to put page numbers on all but the first page and how to switch your m-dashes to double n-dashes and back.