Buzz, Balls & Hype

Backstory

 Backstory where authors share the-  secrets, truths, logical and illogical moments that sparked thier fiction or memoirs is moving to Likefire - a great blog for readers.

If you have written a novel or memoirs tell us about your inspiration. Include your name, the book title, the pub date, a jpg of your book cover and a jpg of you. In the backstory be sure to include and your website address.  Send it all to Lisa at 

likefire.backstory at gmail.com

Linktopia

Linktopia with the help of Judge Page.

"...the most important button on the web," because of the enormous traffic-driving power it possesses. 

Find out who is doing the talking here

The Katalyst HQ series illuminates what Kutcher's production company wants to become: not just a home for his television and movie projects but also a go-to source for brands looking to deploy what's called "influencer marketing," a squishy hybrid of entertainment content, advertising, and online conversation that finds its audience via video, animation, Twitter, blogs, texts, and mobile.

You probably think of him as the face of camera consumer ads, but Ashton Kutcher is making money on the web. Continue reading here.

She debuts a new boutique at the Miami Design District: the Shop on Wheels, a former DHL shipping truck that has been transformed into a store.

Marketing means getting product and consumers together.  Read how this is working here.

u kidding me? Americans punched out more than 110 billion text messages last year, double the number in the previous year and growing, as the shorthand communication becomes a popular alternative to cell phone calls.

The story on less talk more text is here.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

If you will be in the NYC area this evening, please drop by the Bowery Poetry Club, where I will read along with other fiction writers published by Wising Up Press.

FAILURE!

This semester, we are scheduled for two performance voice classes, rather than the usual one. Monday night was the first, and we were each supposed to sing two of the four songs we had worked on during the semester.

I was prepared, but I wasn't ready. I had practiced my two songs into the ground, but I was tired and distracted. I've been fighting off a cold, and I've been overwhelmed with work and with welcome, but exhausting, social events. Even more dangerous, for me, I'd had an upsetting experience that I hadn't found (or taken) the time to process. My emotions fuel my singing (and my writing), and when I disconnect from them in order to plough through the tasks at hand, instead I tend to plough into a ditch.

Which is sort of what happened on Monday night. I've been doing this long enough now to be able to push the melody out automatically, but, as I told a friend afterwards, I might as well have been singing about paper clips and shoelaces for all the focus and passion I brought to my songs. This was especially disastrous in the case of "Night and Day," which demands concentrated heat. It just wasn't on tap. Everything felt off.

So I panicked, and started doing all the things we're drilled not to do. I winced when I wobbled on a note. I turned to the accompanist when I forgot a word. I shifted idly from one foot to the other, detached from my body.

About halfway through the song--at the point when I heard myself sing "the roaring traffic's boom" as "the boring traffic's gloom" (my unconscious is no fool)--I realized that I was living out my worst fear about taking this class. I was letting myself down, looking foolish in front of an audience.

And I thought, so what? I hadn't robbed a bank, or punched someone out. Cole Porter might be turning in his grave, but that probably happens a lot. What was the big deal? I messed up a song. There was no big deal.

Suddenly it struck me funny. When I reached the climax, I faced down the audience, lifted my arms, and belted out, "And this torment won't be through!" in a clear reference to my own singing,  and everyone cracked up, including the teacher. Then I was able to finish the song with the energy and force it deserves.

I plan on doing much better this Monday, but it is good to know I can die up there and still live.

A few editors have given my novel "rave rejections" and offered to look at it again after I've made certain revisions. I've noticed lately that I'm much calmer about it all. My main source of angst is cordoning off the time to work, but when I am writing, I'm writing well, and when I think maybe I'm going off in a wrong direction, I remind myself, There is no big deal. I'm doing my best with what I have right now. As a classmate sang on Monday night,

Sometimes your dreams get broken in pieces,
But that doesn't alter a thing--
Take it from me, there's still gonna be
A summer, a winter, a fall and a spring.

And I, for one, am grateful. I've got enough to contend with. I don't need the added worry that I've altered the seasons by screwing up in my work. I'm human, I make mistakes, and the world goes round and round.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Linktopia

Advertising Age offers some interesting research in a white paper on the new female consumer.  You can read about what your biggest customer is up to here.

... Five big names in ink-and-paper magazine and newspaper publishing have ganged up in a joint venture. It's aim, despite grandiose PR? Outsmart Apple, and side-step Amazon.

Get the view from Fast Company here.

Tired of Twitter?  Looking for what might be next in your social/marketing connections?  Take a look here.

Love this Quote

BEST QUOTE I'VE SEEN IN WEEKS - think about it regarding publishing- 

 The first sign of failure is the emergence of blame. -  Jonathan Fields

THE DOCTOR IS IN

If you will be in the NYC area on Friday, December 11, please drop by the Bowery Poetry Club, where I will read along with other fiction writers published by Wising Up Press.

 

WRITING FOR THE AGES

Last week I toured an exhibit on Yeats at the National Library of Ireland. (I promise I'm not converting this column into a travelogue of exhibitions. Though I also visited the James Joyce Centre, and may need to say a few things about that at a later date. And have you seen this?)

Even aside from the beauty and power of his poetry (assuming we can know the dancer from the dance), Yeats's life story is compelling because of both his complex personal dramas and his deep commitment to the struggle for Irish independence. The artifacts of his creative process, his romantic and spiritual involvements, and his political activity were all compelling and affecting.

What moved me most, though, was a recording of Auden reciting an excerpt from his eulogy poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats."

 I am not someone who ordinarily thinks a lot about immortality, or legacies. I have trouble figuring out why I'm supposed to worry about the opinions of people who don't know me right now, and the idea that it should matter how critics or "the public" will evaluate my work after I'm dead seems laughable to me. How would I know; why would I care? Perhaps for this reason, I generally find poetry or prose that prods me to draw inspiration from another's legacy annoying.

But:

  Follow, poet, follow right
  To the bottom of the night,
  With your unconstraining voice
  Still persuade us to rejoice;

  With the farming of a verse
  Make a vineyard of the curse,
  Sing of human unsuccess
  In a rapture of distress;

  In the deserts of the heart
  Let the healing fountain start,
  In the prison of his days
  Teach the free man how to praise.

Hearing one great poet praise another this way, across warring cultures at the time and across decades into the present, opened my heart with gratitude for this weird human phenomenon, the written word, and for all the writers who have been so generous in leaving their work to us, to inspire us. And so I thought I'd pass this on to you.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself, she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity (Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog , and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Linktopia - are you 8 of 10?

They made car journeys pass faster, more interestingly. And you knew you had a good one when nobody wanted to get out of the car at the end of the journey.  NPR has the story on audio  here.

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.  

Keep reading to find out  why so few words carry so much weight. The story is here.

...very good burgers and even better applied neuromarketing.

Five Guys know burgers and marketing.  Keep reading  here.

50 Things Not To Do If You Are A Publisher

Over at Nervous Breakdown a great great list of what not to do. If all publishers followed these suggestions the business would change a lot and possibly get very healthy.

THE DOCTOR IS OUT

(Hope you are enjoying the holiday weekend. See you next week.)

Linktopia

Linktopia with the help of Judge Page.  

But one of the publishers' biggest problems, he says, is that their selling strategies are built around book formats, and not about the interests of the people reading those books.

Find out who is doing the talking here.

With a sluggish year almost behind us, many are interested in what will make women--who buy 85% of what is sold in the U.S.--open their wallets.

Continue reading the story from Forbes here.

The special issue is editor-in-chief David Granger's latest ambitious attempt to produce the modern magazine, a product that marries the best of print and digital.

Is Esquire giving us a taste of how publishing will look sooner than we think?  The story is here.