Amanda S. Green

Sigh. It seems like this time every year or so writers lose their minds. Not all of us. But those who do, do it very loudly and without caring who they tick off. They go off on facebook and twitter and in their blogs about things we were taught as kids not to discuss around the dinner table — religion and politics. All I can say is that there are times our mothers were right. . . and this is one of them.

Let this serve are your rant warning.

As writers, especially those of us who publish through small presses or who are self-published, we rely on sites like facebook and twitter to promote our books. These sites are easy ways to connect with our fans and give them an insight into us and our work. The problem comes when we don’t separate the private from the personal. With the latest rule changes from facebook, that is especially dangerous.

Let’s look at it like this: if you have a “real” job, do you want your co-workers or your boss seeing those photos of you from your weekend away where you are obviously impaired and doing something you probably shouldn’t be doing? Or do you want them reading the rant about how your cubical mate is a slob who needs to learn how to use deodorant and your boss is a douche who couldn’t find his head with both hands, a map and a seeing eye dog? Do you want your priest knowing about your one-night stand?

No? Then ask yourself if your readers want to know these things? Do they want to know you get foaming at the mouth stupid — at least in their minds — over politics? I didn’t think so.

The solution is to think before you post. It’s okay to post how you are going to support a candidate. It’s okay to say why you aren’t supporting a candidate — if you give a well-reasoned response. Don’t froth at the mouth. Don’t call names. Don’t follow the herd mentality. (If you don’t know what I mean, just go to facebook and look around. You’ll soon see what I mean.)

But ask yourself this: do my fans really need to know all this?

My response is a simple “no”. Your fans want to know what you are working on. They want to discuss your previous work. They want amusing anecdotes about your life. They want to discuss things with you but not, necessarily, incendiary topics such as politics and religion. So, once again, repeat after me, “think before hitting enter.”

The same goes for blog posts. If you have done nothing but writer about your current work in progress, don’t suddenly ambush your readers with a rant on politics or the sermon your priest/pastor/minister/whoever gave last Sunday. If you just can’t hold it back, warn your readers that you are about to rant on something and it might be offensive to some and then put it behind a cut. That way, if they don’t want to read it, they don’t have to and it isn’t there for all the world to see without actually clicking on the link.

More troubling to me is the trend of writers, usually newbies or those who just know they are so much more qualified or intelligent or whatever than everyone else, to hijack a blog in the comments. This can happen in a number of different ways. It can be a thread drift away from the original point of the post or it can be a badgering of other commenters that is nothing short of hitting. Or it can be the continual hawking of your own book/blog/whatever on that other person’s blog without their permission.

Hitting another commenter is the quickest way to start a flame war. The only folks who enjoy flame wars are the trolls who started them. There really is a reason for the phrase, “don’t feed the troll.” The more you try to discuss the topic with them, the angrier you get, the happier they are. You see, that’s when they know they’ve done their jobs. They’ve not only steered the discussion away from the original topic of the post, but they have now made themselves the center of attention.

So, don’t feed the trolls.

The next worse, in my opinion, is continually using the comments section of someone else’s blog to promote your own work without permission. Saying, “I know what I’m talking about here and you can read more about it if you buy my book” and then link to the book is bad. Saying “I know what I’m talking about, but let me explain it to you” is good. Think about it like this: do you want your company in the middle of the championship game to suddenly start trying to sell you a life insurance policy or funeral plan or new electric service provider? No. You want to watch the game. It’s the same principle with blogs. You are a guest of the blogger and folks are there to carry on a conversation with the blogger, not hear your sales pitch.

Now, before anyone gets paranoid, I’m not talking about linking to your work in your signature line. Although, that will get you in trouble on the Kindle boards. Nor am I talking about those times when someone has touted their latest work in comments that are on topic to what our posts are about — Mad Genius Club is a blog about writing. We are pretty lax about the link policy because we know how hard it is to promote yourself. Besides, none of you have been drive-by promoters. Which is probably good since most of us love to have target practice. 😉

So, as we get closer to the elections, as we stress more and more about sales numbers and how to increase them, remember this adage from Jim Baen: Don’t be a butthead.