Category Archives: Professional

career, outward projection of you and your works

Damage Control and the Anatomy of an Apology

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Text lacks tone, and it’s inevitable: you’re going to piss someone off on the Internet. It’s not a question of if but a question of when. If you’re reading this right now and saying “Surely not me, I won’t piss someone off, I’m really careful,” obviously you are new here. This is the Internet. Someone is always angry. The question is: what are you going to do when you piss someone off?

The Inciting Incident

First thing’s first: why are they angry? It’s not enough to say “Oh I said something offensive and now they’re mad.” You need to understand why they found what you said or did offensive. Without taking the time to comprehend why someone would find something you have said offensive, you won’t be able to progress towards a resolution. At least, not towards the kind of resolution that won’t damage your public persona.

Let’s say you make a blog post about a topic that is near and dear to you. And let’s say, in that blog post, you say something negative about a minority group (whether purposely or accidentally). And someone tweets about it, calling you, say, racist. And then someone else tweets it. And then it’s on tumblr. And then there’s three response-posts to your post, and it’s only been a half hour. What do you do?

(a) Double-down on the blog post and defend what you said.

(b) Call everybody oversensitive crybabies and bemoan the power of the PC-police.

(c) Ignore this and hope it goes away.

(d) Take a deep breath, read their criticism, and ask yourself “What if they’re right?”

If you didn’t find “D” to be the obvious answer, then I honestly don’t know what to say.

So once you’ve taken stock of the situation, and see that there is a possibly a very real reason as to why these people are now angry with what you have said, the next step is to rectify the situation. Note how I did not say that you agree that what you have said is offensive. Perhaps you do, but perhaps you don’t. The fact of the matter is: someone is hurt by the thing you have said. If you put it out there, you’re responsible for it, and you should feel bad that you’ve hurt someone with your words. If you’re a decent human being, anyway.

The Anatomy of an Apology

A proper apology first and foremost accepts blame for what has happened. It claims ownership over what happened. It is the difference between “I’m sorry you were offended” and “I’m sorry I offended you.” The former pushes responsibility on the other person for being offended, the latter takes responsibility for being the offending party.

A proper apology also indicates either an understanding of the wrong that was done, or that an attempt will be made to understand the wrong that was done. Perhaps you see the subtle racism in your blog post — own that. “What I said was offensive and unacceptable.” Perhaps you do not see the subtle racism in your post — if you can’t take the time to understand why it was offensive, then at least own that you don’t rather than lie. “I don’t yet see how what I said was offensive, but clearly it was, and for that I am sorry.”

Also, a proper apology contains some form of corrective action. Whether it is the modification of your original post (note: do not delete the offensive content, but add commentary that reveals you understand your ignorance) or the sacking of people who need to be sacked, you must somehow show that you will take steps to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again in the future.

Optionally, a proper apology can thank the offended party for bringing this issue to your attention. This is more of a bonus round, and not strictly necessary, but in the case of something offensive slipping past your editorial oversight, you should thank someone for being the whistleblower.

And Then… Let It Go

Once you’ve identified the issue, apologized to the public, and done your due diligence to ensure it won’t happen again, it’s important to let it go. There is literally nothing more you can do past giving a proper apology and working to guard against future incidents. Further action risks two things: one, it can cause the news to spread yet further, not allowing the fire to die down; and two, the longer you engage the issue, the more tired and emotional you will become, and the more likely you are to cause yet another Inciting Incident, looping this whole thing back to the start.

Studies have shown that corporations who, after error, have publicly apologized in an acceptable manner and offered recompense have actually gained favor in public opinion. People can forgive a screw-up, and people respect someone who is willing to openly take responsibility for their actions.

So in the future, if you find yourself at the center of an Internet shitstorm of your own making, remember: people actually don’t like to get angry for no stupid reason. Recognize their hurt is sincere, apologize for what you’ve done, and work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

And then? Get back to your art.

You Will Fall Off the Horse: Professionalism vs. Artistic Expression and More

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**Some warning for strong language**

It is hard to know what to say on the internet, how to balance honesty, personality and humor with respect, tact and professionalism. It’s challenging enough for most people, but creatives have an additional skill-level to maintain.

Most professionals have a business face and a personal face. They take one off at the end of the work day and put the other one on. Creatives seldom wear just one face. Our personalities are part of our brands, our business is an integral part of our life.

This can be wonderful, as it allows us a freedom and dimension of expression not often found in business or personal lives.

It is also sometimes deadly, when the two are not kept distinct enough.

Because, while we always wear both faces, they cannot be the same thing. We’re artists—from the project manager at the multi-national corporation to the editor/developer/author/artist who just produced a game all by themselves. We’re also business people, and that must come first if we are to succeed personally, and as an industry.

Balancing Art and Business and Life

The toughest part of the entire equation is the initial balance. Where do you draw the line between funny and offensive, between expressing yourself and being an ass? When does it stop being free speech and become bullying? How do you separate friendship and professional obligation? At what point do you stop shrugging off someone’s faults because they are your friend and admit that they are genuinely problematic?

That is something every creative individual will have to figure out for themselves. It isn’t an easy battle plan, it’s definitely going to hurt some feelings, and you’ll make some mistakes doing it, but you’ve got to establish those boundaries and expectations fairly early on.

Perhaps more importantly, you’ll have to let them grow and change along with you and your career. That requires constantly revisiting those standards.

If you’re part of a small company, that balance gets trickier. When it’s just you, there’s some leeway. When other people become involved, the mixture can become explosive. You’re not just looking out for your own welfare anymore, and you’re not just dealing with your own issues.

Suddenly you’re not just balancing a ball on your nose, you’re juggling half a dozen of them. What happens when you start dropping them?

Everyone Can Fail, Everyone Will Fail

There’s an old horseman’s saying: “If you ain’t been throwed, you ain’t rode”. Grammatical color aside, it’s true. Every time I get on a horse, I risk being thrown off, whether from a lack of attention, a mistake in communication, or something outside my control. It’s a calculated risk I take, but I do everything possible to make it a lower probability.

More importantly, I know how to react when I fall. I know to protect my head, to roll, to go boneless, to suspend time and make sure that I’ve got various body parts untangled and am falling away from powerful hooves, to use hands and feet to steer my roll, and so on. I’ve acknowledged the possibility, double-checked all my gear, and planned for the worst.

Failure in other endeavors isn’t much different. You’ll fall. Get used to that idea. Accept it. Plan for it. Admit that you’re human, come up laughing and apologizing for scaring people. Be graceful and dignified so that even a nasty mistake can become a benefit.

But don’t set yourself up for it. Don’t become someone who falls off for the attention, because sooner or later, you’ll break your neck, and no one will be around to see it.

Censoring Is Not What You Might Think It Is and Assholes Are Not Awesome

Some people make a very viable persona out of outrageous behavior and a nasty attitude. I don’t need to name names here, they’re some of the most visible figures in the industry. Some of them are genuinely nice people, others appear nice while they quietly plan how to spin the situation to cast themselves as the victim.

Don’t do that. You’re throwing yourself off the horse now. See the last sentence above for why that’s a bad idea. Some people can get away with it. Those people are usually well-known, quite talented, and already established. But even they miss out sometimes. A newer author who makes the choice to present themselves this way will, most likely, wind up regretting it.

There’s another angle, too: don’t be the victim. Don’t post something offensive, call it a joke when someone gets offended, and then cry ‘censorship!’ when they don’t laugh it off with you.

“It’s a joke” does not absolve all your sins, and trying to hide behind that excuse just makes you a spineless dick.

If you have an opinion you want to state, make sure it’s backed up by knowledge and understanding. If you want to make a joke, make sure it doesn’t exist solely at the expense of or for the belittling of others. And if someone says ‘hey, that’s hurtful’, it’s not censorship. You might have fallen off the horse, and you’d damn well better acknowledge that and get up gracefully.

The internet has a long memory, and the long hours of BarCon are full of stories. Make sure the ones about you are good.

Tune in tomorrow for some tips on how to fall gracefully and manage a crisis.

Do Not Skip the Panels

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I could just leave it at the title, but seriously. If you go to a con, whether as an attendee or as a pro, don’t avoid panels. Programming exists for actual logical reasons.

  • To help you connect with people making work you love.
  • To provide you with information you might not know.
  • To expose you to the work of people you don’t know.
  • To explore things you’re intrigued about.

Panels are an opportunity to pick up new information, meet people, find out what many of your friends look like in person, and feed your imagination. With luck, you also pick up new professional information. When many of us were starting out as writers and editors or artists, or whatever role(s) we inhabit in publishing, lots of folks starting out devoured panels. Made the effort to meet people and introduce themselves. Raised hands even when anxiously awaiting some sort of verbal tongue lashing just for asking a question. When new to our craft, we put out incredible effort to build our skills and our networks.

I see a number of folks I know, myself included, not always carrying that same energy to cons further down the line in their careers. Cons lose all sense of joy, fun, mystery or appeal. They become a daunting chore, full of travel and meetings and an abundance of stress. You don’t have to try to approach cons again with a sense of childlike glee or even the flavor of newcomer’s terror. But getting more out of cons starts with something simple, like hitting some panels. Though the beginner panels may seem less interesting to you now, even panels for new writers and editors can be worth going to. So many problems we have in our careers are about that phase of our work, but some of them are eternal. Communication, getting past anxiety, becoming better at tracking our tax info.

You might not feel like you need a panel on getting out of a slush pile, but practical intro panels may hold information you never got the chance to learn. The people running those panels? Fellow publishing professionals, who are either in your peer group, or likely great people to meet if you’re unfamiliar. Attending those panels? It’s possible those bright, sometimes anxious faces are future writers, editors, agents and art directors. We’re a social industry, and it doesn’t hurt to mix with people at every phase of their career path, as well as yours. New friends, co-workers and audience members are inside those panel room doors. Information you don’t know yet is behind that long table, lined with microphones. We’re not wasting time if we go to panels, we’re spending our time in pursuit of new knowledge and experience, things we can’t grow our careers or our lives without. So don’t skip the panels, and consider being on some in the future. Whole new worlds might open for you if you open that conference room door.

Nailing it: Using Pinterest as a Writer

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Shanna Germain is a leximaven of the highest order, exploring her love of the written word through a multitude of formats and style. She also claims the titles of (in no particular order): girl, gamer geek, wanderluster, flower picker, tire kicker, knife licker, she-devil, vorpal blonde and Schrödinger’s brat. Her website is www.shannagermain.com and you really should check out her pinterest boards.

I’ve always used images as inspiration for my writing. For my first novel, I cut pictures out of magazines and collaged them together. For my second novel, I made DeviantArt pages. Eventually, I copy and pasted images into Scrivener.

Now, I’ve thrown all of that out the window for Pinterest. It gathers all of my images in one place. I can quickly pin them and forget them, at least until I’m ready to use them for a new piece of fiction. But more than that, Pinterest does something wholly new—it allows me to share my inspirations with collaborators, colleagues and even readers.

The way I use Pinterest is divided into three different (but often overlapping) elements:

  1. Inspiration
  2. Collaboration
  3. Promotion

 

Inspiration

When I started using Pinterest, it was all about “Ooh, shiny,” which I think is typical for most people. I was just adding images that inspired me in some way – potential characters or settings, ideas for plots. I thought it was all for me. But then other authors and artists (and even readers) liked the pins, or shared them on their own boards. Thus, inspiration suddenly became collaborative. As a solitary writer, this was pretty awesome.

 

Collaboration

An interesting feature of Pinterest is shared boards, where you can invite any number of people to pin to a single board. I’ve used shared boards to collaborate on at least two projects. For the first, Geek Love, we used a number of shared boards that allowed all of the members of the team to pin images. Thus, our inspiration boards quickly grew, all the while giving future readers (and our Kickstarter backers) a glimpse into both our planning process and our geekiness.

For Numenera, a tabletop roleplaying game that I’m working on, we have a private board of inspirational images just for our artists. Because the game is early in development, we’re not ready to share the images with the world yet, but it means that our artists can easily view and comment on the board.

Word of caution: Be careful inviting people to shared boards without asking; I get dozens of invites a week to shared boards that I have no interest in, from people I don’t know, which can be grumpy making.

 

Promotion

A lot of promotion on Pinterest seems to happen almost accidentally when you’re using it for inspiration and collaboration, but there are definitely ways to facilitate it. Here are some of my favorites:

Share Secrets: Create boards for your characters, your setting and anything else that inspired you (these are often the same boards as my inspiration boards, so they serve a dual purpose). Readers love to see behind the scenes and to get a glimpse into the writer’s mind. Be sure to tell them about the project. I use board titles like Novel: Published and Novel: Currently Writing so readers can see what I’m working on now and what they can purchase.

Show Off: Create boards that show your book covers, fan art, author photos, publicity events and more. Make sure you provide links so that people can find your books and your website.

Be Searchable: Use keywords in your description that are likely to get searched, title and describe your boards in ways that are both interesting and informative, and include links to purchasing sites where appropriate. Don’t re-pin with someone else’s description (unless it’s perfect); make your own.  If you want more information, check out sites like Repinly, which look at pinning stats like popular categories and searches.

Be Social: Follow people whose pins or products you like. (Tip: Look into following libraries, museums and galleries—many have a Pinterest page, and they’re often full of great book and art pins). Comment, like, or otherwise engage with other pinners.

Be Time-Savvy: This might be the hardest one, oddly enough. It’s very easy to get lost in the shiny world of Pinterest. Once you start clicking and linking, you may never return. However, it’s important to visit regularly, because when you pin items, they go to the top of the general Pinterest page, which increases the chance that people will see you. My goal is to visit once or twice a day, pin a few things that I really love—and then go back to writing.

Share the Wealth: Create boards of books you love, covers that make you drool and anything else that you can think of to support other writers, artists and creative people. Give artists linkbacks or credit when you can.

Spread the Word: Use Pinterest widgets, such as the Pin It Button, which lets readers pin images or follow you directly from your website or blog. You can also post your pinned images to Facebook and other social media (but I would use this sparingly, because people can find it off-putting).

 

The Downside of Pinterest

Of course, Pinterest isn’t without its flaws:

  • There are some potentially serious copyright issues because most images are posted without permission from or credit to the creator. (Solution: include a link to the source or ask/credit the artist)
     
  • You can’t pin from Facebook. I have no idea why. (Solution: Download the image, then upload).
     
  • You can’t upload multiple images, as I discovered when I tried to upload all of my cover images (Solution: Sit there and do them one-by-one or pick only the best).
     
  • Pinterest’s terms of service are clearly written, but often poorly enforced. I’ve had pins removed for “nudity” because they showed someone’s stomach, while many explicit “adult” sites continue to thrive. (Solution: Read the TOS and post carefully, but expect surprises).
     
  • There is a new business Pinterest but it’s just out of the gate and it’s hard what the benefits are. (Solution: I’m trying it out. I’ll let you know).

 

Putting it All Together

If you’re just starting with Pinterest, now would be a good time to think about all of the above and ask yourself what your goal is. This will allow you to organize your boards in a way that’s most useful to you and to your followers (I organize mine in ways that are easiest for me to follow, and that are hopefully intuitive to readers. I use Inspiration: XX for general inspiration pictures; Novel: XX and Short Story: XX for novels I’ve written or am writing, and everything else has simple titles like Shanna Germain’s Books, How to Write, and Fan Art. Each board gets a short description as well).

If you’ve already started, but need to reorganize (the situation I found myself in), board titles and descriptions can be changed easily, and you can organize the boards (I put boards that are for promotion at the top, and more personal boards near the bottom).

Since its inception, Pinterest has grown in unexpected ways. It has already caught up with Twitter in terms of usage, especially among affluent women and hip urbanites. Whether you’re a beginning writer or already on your way, you can use Pinterest to your advantage by finding inspiration, collaboration, and a greater readership.