Blog #7

Social Media for Geezers?

 Writing has started to become a lot easier with practice. When I experienced writer's block, my friend Suzanne Shaw advised me to write three hundred words every day. "Write anything," she said. It worked. The neural passage from brain to fingers needs exercise in order to function. When I finished Kolea I sent letters and E-mails to publishers in Hawai'i but have never received even a blip of an acknowledgement. Pretty rude with all the auto-reply stuff on-line.

One weekend I spotted a notice on the wall of my favorite fish restaurant in Aberdeen, WA. The following weekend there was to be a writer's workshop at the old Tokeland Hotel. I wrote down the phone number, called for a reservation and next Friday showed up for my first writer's workshop with all the nice folks from South Beach Writers.

Jen Gilbert of Booktrope, a three year old publishing house in Seattle, was there and she scheduled fifteen minute interviews where we got to pitch our books. She liked my pitch and advised me to get a social media presence, get several readers to read the book and comment, and then to submit it to their web-site. Look up Booktrope, They are a new practitioner of "Hybrid" publishing.

Getting the readers was easy. Six people gave me great criticism and I wrote a new chapter and cleaned up some poor passages. The social media part dropped me into another dimension peopled by my grand children's cohorts. Being born three years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the language and processes of social media blew me away. I'd only taken one "selfie" and it was terrible. How could I fit in?

This blog was the first effort and it took me two days to figure out Blogger. It was supposed to be the easy one. Then Suzanne showed me how to go on Twitter. Suddenly people are trying to sell me aromatic soap and wedding photography specializing in Asian Weddings. Holy Crap! My seventy and eighty year old friends are laughing at me but if I get the book published they'll buy it anyway. We may be tech-ignoramuses but we're loyal as hell.

Maybe someone can develop a "Geezer social media site". You know, "Put your hand in this wired up glove and if you're not too shaky your lap-top will photograph you, smooth out the wrinkles and figure out all fifty five of the answers to website questionnaires." One can only hope. Thanks for reading my blog and get ready for Pi day 3/14/15.