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All the cool kids like Viki have retrospectives and I've had retrospective-envy for a few weeks. But I didn't have anything useful or intelligent to say.
Then I remembered I never let that stop me before. If I had would I have written 200 stories?:)
But seriously, I've had a few thoughts, moments of self-doubt, questions about Newsvine community norms, etc in the last 24 hours so I thought I'd jot them down
3 (well, 3.5) Thoughts/Questions Upon Reaching My Two-Month/200 Article Mark
1) I know from reading through older stories (yes, I read those in my spare time) that many have had the same frustration as me, namely that the articles you put the most time and energy get no votes or comments (excepting your obligatory tracking comment which I address as #2) while the light piece with a topic like "What are you reading?" gets 100 votes and comments.
My guess/concern is some see topics like the more recent "What Are You Watching" and think, "Oh, god, another fluffylight piece by Scott." And just in case anyone thinks that I want to say that
a) I like to think topics like that work as fun community-building articles and
b) I try to make sure that for every light piece like that I write something serious like Reflecting On Car Crashes, as a form of, say, Newsvine penance. Not sure if that makes sense but that's how I rationalize it.
2) I realize I have a problem. A writing problem, to be precise. Some people drink too much - I think I write too much. Accepting you have a problem, they say, is an important first step. My name is Scott and I'm writing too many articles for people to keep up with, let alone leave comments.
So I hereby vow I am going to write at a bit of a slower pace, seed more and comment even more. (it's amazing how many good things I found to seed when reading the weekends newspapers today)
And yes I recognize the irony of writing an article in which I state I will write less articles.
2.5 - I fear that the number of articles I've already posted is both an accomplishment and a problem, an attraction and a deterrent, a yin and a yang, a Cash and a hot-chick, etc..
Here's the glitch: I came in here to this community, all fired up after reading about Killfile and Newsvine and, with
Newsvine admin's blessing, re-posting in my first few weeks about 50 interviews and reviews I'd previously written
for a site that shall not be named. And those articles collected a grand total of about...oh..maybe 8 responses. I was distraught, at first. Does this group have some kind of antipathy toward books?
No, gradually I realized two things:
First, if you don't write good tags not only will it be hard for others to find your pieces but it can even become hard to find your own pieces. Thus I began putting and as tags and (in the last week) writing an index
So that was my own fault for not understanding the importance and value of tags and suffering for it.
Second, if you don't have what I've seen some call "an obligatory tracking comment" it's like your article doesn't exist. If this was told to me as I joined Newsvine I missed it. Even if it was it needs to be stated with more prominence
because if you write something and others don't know it's there it is sort of pointless. So if there is one thing I'd like to tell Newsvine staff it is is to emphasize that point as people join.
I learned all this AFTER I wrote those 50 stories, thus sparking a dilemma: Do I leave those 50 articles without comment in place? Do I delete them, with plans to re-publish them one day during a dry writing spell, complete with
proper tags and a comment? I don't know whether that second option is proper, ethical, against community norms or what which is one reason I mention it. I do know, from trying it, that if you delete it the number of articles you write drops and so that at least eases my concern that I'd be artificially inflating my stats as suggesting I wrote more than I did. So it was that I watched my articles published number go down from 205 to 195 and back to 200 in recent days.
3) Links, it seems to me, are a gray area. Obviously spamming is bad. And it doesn't make sense to say no linking
from one article to another. But am I alone in hesitating when, say, linking from something someone else wrote to something I wrote, knowing I may see the connection but someone else may not?
Let me give two examples:
Last week, amid all of his excellent seeding and writing about the Virginia Tech shooting, Killfile seeded this link about crazy hate-filled Fred Phelps and his plans to disrupt the Virginia Tech funerals. I had written a long thoughtful piece about Phelps and so as I watched the number of comments go past 100 I had two thoughts. One, obviously, selfishly, I admit was jealousy but I'm sure people have that all the time. The second, related thought was "I wonder if the people reading this article realize I wrote a related article?" This then was the dilemma - is it appropriate to post a link, explaining how it's related, from Killfile's article to mine? Or is that too self-promotional? I did post the link but later thought maybe that was bad.
I ended up addressing it another way, linking to my Phelps piece as I wrote a piece about death and grief, where I tried - with limited success - to tie together thoughts about my dad's death, my uncle's brain tumor and surgery, the Virginia tech shootings and how Fred Phelps hate seems to be making life more unbearable for everyone." For the record I received no more comments to my Phelps piece and I then, being a former Catholic who thinks too much, felt selfish for pimping my Phelps piece in the first place.
Incidentally I just went to Killfile's author page to find a link to the Phelps piece and found myself distracted by an article he seeded about Al Gore where I started making a comment and found myself - uh oh - about to link to something else I've written and the irony hit me.
So do me a favor please and look at the two pieces and tell me if I did wrong. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't know when it is and isn't ok to pimp link (with explanation) from someone else's article to one of your own.
An argument could be made that it all comes down to intent. When I posted the link was my intent to contribute to
the conversation and/or to draw people to my article to which I'd answer both.
A comparatively easier issue is when one links from something you wrote, say, my fictional piece about the conservative clan taking Killfile hostage to a more recent fictional attempt like the gong show one. Is that appropriate? Is that self-promotional? Spamming? I started to refer to it earlier as self-spamming but concluded that it sounded like something illegal in Texas.
So, anyway, those are a few thoughts I have at this point.
I just want to close - cue the mushy music - by saying I love this place. I've been in a number of communities, some public, some private - and this is my favorite so far. I was a little concerned when I posted a few fictional works that I was doing something inappropriate but when given positive feedback I wrote more.
And when people will ask, as they inevitably will, where were you when you heard about the Virginia Tech shooting I will try to figure out how to explain that I was in a computer lab, oblivious to the news (or at least trying to block
it out until I finished my story) on a green-tea-and-chocolate binge, writing a zany story about Cash et al kidnapping and torturing Killfile. At some point mid-story I think I heard others talking about the shootings and I knew that if I focused on the news I would probably break down and cry and I didn't want that, at least not yet. What I wanted was to try to make a few people laugh, or at least smile.
It was with some hesitancy that I posted that story. Minutes later I realized that the main character in my story, Killfile, was busy writing about the terrible events in Virginia Tech and I worried I'd just done the most tacky thing ever by trying to write humor during such a bad time. But gradually people started to read what I wrote and write positive things and I felt a bit better. That's why, you might notice, I wrote a bunch of apologies at the end of that story. It was a pre-emptive strike against anyone offended.
Anyway, thanks for everything so far and I hope the rest of my time here is as enjoyable and intellectually stimulating as these first two months. Now go out there and write, seed, think and laugh.
And with that I bid you good night.
And remember, when thinking about jerks like Phelps and the Virginia Tech shooter, "Don't let the bastards get you down."
