Ninety Degrees Media

At the September meeting of awcsb.org Amber Sims Hinterplattner, Michael Kramer, and Cindy Faith Swain spoke about how to enhance your business through effective online communications.

Women in Communicatons: Social Media Literacy – Part 2 from dolphingal805 on Vimeo.

It is rumored that James Joyce worked on one sentence in Finnegan’s Wake for fourteen years. We don’t need to go that far, but a polished story is the editor’s best friend and is more likely to be published. So if you want to sell your writing, a little revision will make a nice improvement.

If you don’t think you need to do any rewriting, you have a problem and might want to consider working the 12 Steps for Writers.

First, set your story aside for a while so it will be fresh to you when you pick it up again. Then, here are some questions to ask yourself when you do your rewrite.

• Can you sum up the story in one sentence?
• Have you taken out every unnecessary word?
• Have you used the features in your word processor such as find/replace, Thesaurus, spell check, and grammar check?
• Where does the story begin?
• Does it hook the reader?
• Where does the story end?
• Does it say what you want it to say, or does it take a sidetrack?
• Is there any extraneous stuff at the beginning or end?
• Did the characters achieve anything?
• Is the point of view (first person, third person, omniscient) consistent?
• Is every character important to the story?
• Do the characters have an agenda—their own, not yours?
• Are the characters revealed through the choices and actions they make under pressure?
• Does the dialogue have attitude, with each character having his own agenda?
• Is there any “reader-feeder” where you are TELLING the reader something you want them to know? If it’s important to the story SHOW it, if not cut it.
• Is there tension? Unanswered questions? Conflict such as two characters with opposing agendas?
• Does each scene have a beginning, middle, and end?
• Does each scene have a emotion, force, drive?
• Does it flow, build and have transitions?
• Do the readers see wide-angle shots as well as being drawn in with close ups?
• Does each scene play out an emotion that no other scene does?
• Is it of interest to other people and will others understand it?

Before your final draft take it to your writers group, or another experienced writer/editor, for feedback.

Host Fred Klein converses with Diana Raab about her long career as a writer, memoirist, essayist, poet and teacher, and about her new book Healing With Words.

Literary Gumbo: Diana Raab from Literary Gumbo on Vimeo.

Whether you’ve published books or write a column, interacting with your fans is important and will keep them interested. Twitter is just one integral part of marketing strategies for authors. Those 140 characters can be used to hook your readers and spur them to want more. Here are some tips for using Twitter to sell your writing.

1. Choose a good Username and Account Name, they’re different, wisely. You can use your own name or the name of your book or column for the Account Name. Your Username should be catchy and short. The shorter the Username the easier it is for your tweeps to RT and @ you—remember, they only have 140 characters.
2. Your bio can only be 160 characters but search engine robots consistently check Twitter bios, so make the most out of those characters because it can help your readers find you, and not just on Twitter, but on the Web as well.
3. Don’t forget your web address because it adds credibility. When I go to a Twitter profile without a bio or a web address, I usually won’t follow the user.
4. Pimp up your profile with a customized background image. You could just go to the Design tab under Settings and upload the cover of your book, but that might not be exactly the feel you’re looking for. Browse the templates at twitterbacks.com and see if you find something you can tweak with Photoshop to create your own design with a bit of information to boot.
5. A tweet a day brings the tweeps (followers) your way. Of course you’ll tweet about what you’ve written yourself, but don’t stop there. If you find something you like on the Web, tweet about it. If somebody you follow offers a cool post, retweet (RT) it.
6. If you want a message to be forwarded, it’s ideal to keep it under120 characters so your followers can easily add RT @YourHandle in front of the tweet. The more your post is retweeted, the more readers will see it.
7. Your tweets are more likely to be found by search engines if you select your first 42 characters carefully, write keyword-rich tweets, and use # tags. Search tags on sites like tweetag.com, and watch the right-hand column on Twitter to find Trends, which are the topics a lot of people are tweeting about at the time.
8. Make a list of keywords describing what you tweet about or the people you want to attract as tweeps. Then use these keywords when you sign up for Twitter directories like Twellow, WeFollow, and Twitfind.
9. Visitors to your website are great potential followers so integrate Twitter into your website with badges and widgets. A Twitter feed on your site gives your visitors fresh content on a regular basis and search engines like that, and so do readers.
10. Many tools like Tweetdeck can help you manage your tweets. For instance, if you want to tweet about an article with a really long web address, you can use a URL shortener. I like Bit.ly because it tracks click-throughs. I also use Hootsuite to schedule tweets so I can post them all at once but have them appear on my profile throughout several days.

Oh, and don’t forget to have a Facebook fan page for you and your book as well.

Learn about the California Condor and its fight for survival. Condor Country is part of the new Santa Barbara Zoo’s California Trails exhibit complex.

Finnegan is the Channel Islands Fox ambassador at the Santa Barbara Zoo’s California Trails exhibit complex.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History offered a butterfly enclosure with thousands of the winged beauties in the Summer of 2009.

Michelle Berman of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History shows the plastinated dolphin model at the grand opening of the Ty Warner Sea Center, April 2005.

Marcia Meier, author of Navigating the Rough Waters of Today’s Publishing World, spoke to the Screenwriters Association of Santa Barbara on June 10, 2010.

Marcia Meier: Author and Journalist from dolphingal805 on Vimeo.

The Association of Women in Communications Santa Barbara chapter honors Publisher, author, and philanthropist Sara Miller McCune and journalist, author, and former SBWC Director Marcia Meier on Friday, June 4, 2010 at the Women of Achievement Awards “Writing Truth, Empowering Women.”

Women of Achievement Awards Luncheon 2010 from dolphingal805 on Vimeo.