Wednesday
CNN recently highlighted (or is it highlit?) The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers, and their list included "The Friend-Padder":
The average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site. Schmoozers and social butterflies--you know, the ones who make lifelong pals on the subway--might reasonably have 300 or 400. But 1,000 'friends?' Unless you're George Clooney or just won the lottery, no one has that many. That's just showing off.
Being found out by CNN made me even more nervous about my crimes against the writing community, and I imagined my picture going up wherever writers congregate--free internet cafes, beret stands, bongo concerts, and the like.
Just as blogs get defined by the number of visitors, page views, hits, so too, I've begun to fear, do virtual writers. In other words, my fear is that quantity (the number of stories published) has become a defining feature of one's "value" as a writer. Writers, as do most of us, now exist both virtually and really--and one hears of literary agents immediately doing internet searches of writers to see if they truly exist. Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I've gotten more than a few publications and editors interested me mainly through my appearing often enough during their searches for them to assume I must matter in the tiny world of flash.
These above ideas came to the forefront of my thoughts this summer while teaching a class on blog publishing. Chapters and chapters, article after article focused on all the ways you can bring traffic to your site, get found by search engines, linkbait, trackback, ping--and so few words seemed devoted to the quality of the writing. Becoming a "somebody" in the saturated blogosphere and driving traffic to one's site in each case dominated the discussion of blog publishing. Even though most articles eventually mentioned that the top reason people return to sites was the "quality of the content," these articles for the most part gave very generic advice on how to create quality content: stay focused, write small, proofread. A lot of the choices, for example the wording of the headline, had more to do with getting search engines to find you than with any writerly concern.
That led me to think that I, as a writer, have become something of a blog, something that exists online, something that can be Googled and thus discovered, something that appears to be (somewhat) important because I can appear in enough places, because a search brings me up, because (as my own endless Googling of self assures me)
I am the number one Randall Brown in the world, closely followed by "Indian Fighting" Randall Brown who teaches "Indian Fighting Skills" because "the most feared... most respected... and most hyper-skilled fighter who ever walked this earth... was the American Indian." (I would've included a link here, but that might give him the edge he needs to overtake me for the top spot).
In other words, I am known as a flash writer, and that being known by just "being" is what gets the self-doubt wondering if "padding" has become the be-all and end-all of my writerly pursuits.
As I write this, I'm thinking that maybe the worth of a writer has always been in some way associated with the number of people reading him or her, the number of books or stories published, and I'm struck now by a deep uncertainty about exactly what I'm whining about here. I think it has to do with my being a bit concerned about the internet's focus on "visitors" and "page views"--on being found (and found often) rather than on being great (or even good). I know that I've not consciously tried to be a publishing-padder, but I do wonder if, a bit unknowingly, I've bought into this idea that being a writer in today's environment means making a name for one's self through visibility rather than talent.
Of course, I hope that I'm just being a bit hard on my self. As Frost found earth to be the "right place for love," I've found the blogosphere to be the right place for unfinished thoughts. This is such a thought, more a wondering than anything definitive. I'm curious what others think about how the focus on becoming "known" in virtual reality has any particular effect on writers, writing, or anything else for that matter. I look forward to seeing your thoughts. Comment and exist!
Previous Therapy Sessions:
9 Songs To Get You Up & Writing
"To Write or Not Write" from SmokeLong Quarterly
What To Make of a Diminished Thing?
From david erlewine
August 26, 2009 at 11:06 am
Ha, I’m a publication and friend padder. To counter that, in conversations on subways I reduce the time I say it takes me to run long distances.
From Randall Brown
August 28, 2009 at 10:43 am
Do you feel a great weight lifted off you now that you’ve confessed, David?
From Tim Jones-Yelvington
August 26, 2009 at 11:35 am
I agree this is a danger.
But… at their best, I think the networking tools (and I recognize you’re talking about publications, not social networking, but the way you’ve intertwined them in your post I think makes them difficult to fully separate) allow us to build community as writers and draw attention to one another’s work. It might be a bit Pollyannaish, but I think if we use these tools mindfully, with the goal of supporting others more than self-promoting, and with a focus on quality of work and not just personalities, this hopefully offsets some of the danger.
Did you see Darby Larson’s blog post about the lack of a developed criticism of online writing and his worry that dumbs down our content? I think it adds a valuable wrinkle to the conversation.
From Randall Brown
August 28, 2009 at 10:43 am
Darby’s post is interesting, Tim. Thanks for pointing my attention there. I’ve been thinking of similar ideas, though I’m not sure Darby and I would come to the exact same conclusion.
From Erin
August 27, 2009 at 8:47 am
On one hand, I’m a writer who completely gets where the hesitancy comes from. Self-promotion never feels noble, and I cringe a little every time it’s necessary.
On the other hand, I’m also a reader who likes to know when writers I’ve enjoyed in the past have new work available for me to read. The world of publication possibilities is so big that it’s MUCH easier to find that when a writer points me to it her/himself. I don’t want to wait for another writer to find it and deem it postworthy. (That said, I love good recommendations. It’s how I find out about new writers!)
I think it’s reasonable to say that a writer and a reader serve different purposes when drawing attention to work. I suspect that the real problem lies in logrolling for the sake of logrolling, but that’s probably a matter for another day entirely.
From Randall Brown
August 28, 2009 at 10:41 am
It is a strange world these days, where writer must be self-promoter. I guess all writers (maybe all people) feel a bit strange being put in such a position.
From Ben White
August 27, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I think, in your defense Randall, that short story writers (especially flash writers) can’t really avoid adding notches to ye ‘ole publication belt. It’s relatively easy to write a good number of flashes, and if you want to see them all in print, they are inevitably going to appear in a variety of publications (unless you save them for a personal compilation). Such is life.
Even if you wrote only one flash a month, you’d have 12 stories a year. If you spread the love around, that could be 60 stories in 60 publications in 5 years. Quality is important. It’s the most important. But at the end of the day, if writing flash is what you do, quantity can be hard to avoid.
Our obsession with metrics is disheartening. But, writers and editors want to know they matter, and because most readers don’t write you a personal email saying they love your story or your publication, we use a messy proxy like hits. I suppose it’s the only way to scratch that itch, unfulfilling as it is.
From Randall Brown
August 28, 2009 at 10:38 am
I hadn’t thought of that, Ben, how the shortened form might dictate the # of publications. I’m feelin’ a bit better about myself, and so maybe greater quantity doesn’t necessarily meaning lesser quality. A good thing for me to remember.