Enrichment, Recovery and Twitter

I spent Saturday at the RSA South West conference in Taunton. The RSA (or the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce to give it its full title) is a charity with the strapline of ‘21st Century Enlightenment’. On the website, it describes itself as: “committed to finding innovative practical solutions to today’s social challenges. Through its ideas, research and 27,000-strong Fellowship it seeks to understand and enhance human capability so we can close the gap between today’s reality and people’s hopes for a better world.” I’ve been a Fellow of the RSA for more than twenty years, have used ‘The House’ in John Adams Street as my London office to hold meetings with clients; dined in the elegant restaurant in the vaults; and listened to interesting lectures in the state rooms, including a memorable one by management guru, Charles Handy. And, like millions of others, I have marvelled at, been entertained by and educated by the Animate presentations, (developed by the RSA with Cognitive Media), particularly the brilliant discussion on Changing Education Paradigms from Sir Ken Robinson. If you've ever thought there was something wrong with how we educate our kids (and who hasn't at some point?), then do take a look at this presentation next time you have a spare 10 minutes.

 

 

 

But until now, I haven’t managed to really get a handle on what the organisation does — or why I am involved in it. At the conference we met the new Chairman of the RSA, Vikki Heywood, who gave me exactly what I was hoping for. In addition to the strapline, I now have an elevator speech I can remember: enriching society with ideas and action. The RSA is the only organisation with which I’ve been involved which doesn’t really provide benefits for the members; it’s more a case of what the members can do for others. And yes, I know there are lots of other organisations which have the same focus, from Rotary and Round Table to the Mothers’ Union, but this is the only one to which I have belonged. So it's nice to finally understand what it's all about.

 

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One RSA project which is dear to my heart as a former production manager is The Great Recovery. The idea is to work with designers and manufacturers to develop products which at the end of their life-cycle can either be repaired (remember when we used to repair things that broke, rather than throwing them away?) or recycled. Someone described it as ‘Cradle to Cradle’ approach to manufacturing, rather than ‘Cradle to Grave’. In a week where we have just bought a new printer and discovered a full set of replacement ink cartridges is more or less the same price as a new printer (complete with cartridges), this is music to my ears.

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One of the perennial problems for any organisation of people from disparate locations is how to communicate effectively. Our region covers the three counties of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset and we only get together physically once or twice a year. Someone suggested we might use Twitter to hold regular discussions or get-togethers. Putting aside the fact that many of the people in the room are not Tweeps and have no wish to be, this raised the question in my mind, and not for the first time, what is Twitter for? Do we use it effectively? And is it really an appropriate medium for bringing large groups of people together?

 

(Yes, I know hens don't go tweet, but these were the only birds I could get close to all weekend!)

At the Winchester Conference forWriters in June, Eden Sharpe from Independent Author Resources described Twitter as a cocktail party for the world, at which one could listen in on all sorts of conversations, and, if invited, even join in on some of them. At the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in August, someone described it as being in a large dining room with a huge buzz of many conversations going on, some of which you could plug into, but most of which you missed. It’s certainly a crowded arena with lots going on, most of which gets missed and is so transitory, it doesn’t matter.

There is a growing body of work on Twitter etiquette. Molly Greene publishes some wonderful articles on the subject. A recent posting on ‘10 tweets you should never send’ was so popular that it has garnered more 100 comments to date, is still receiving feedback several weeks later - and some of her readers, myself included, have taken to Tweeting a link to the article to anyone who spams us with those awful automatic direct messages: thanks for following me; now ‘like’ my Facebook page/link with me on LinkedIn/buy my book.

Writers who are building their ‘platforms’ are told they need to be on Twitter to market their books. Jonathan Gunson writes great articles on effective marketing via Twitter. I'm a relative novice when it comes to Twitter, so whether I can make it work as a marketing tool remains to be seen.

 

I occasionally take part in ‘Devon Hour’ a manic scramble to chat to, follow and retweet local businesses, which takes place at 8pm on Wednesday evenings. It’s great fun and I have made some useful connections, especially with the local press; but I don’t kid myself that I have developed a real relationship with any of the other businesses to whom I’m ‘talking’. To do that, I believe one needs to be in the same room; to look into someone’s eyes; to be able, sometimes, to read what they are thinking behind the words they are saying. That’s not possible from one keyboard to another and certainly not possible in 140 characters!

 

So, do you use Twitter and, if so, what do you think of its effectiveness as a method of communication?

Swanwick65: The Third Degree

There's been a lot of questions, not to say interrogations, one way and another today - more of which later.

 

But first, let's pop back into Day 2 for a moment, to acknowledge what is rapidly becoming yet another Swanwick tradition: Buskers' Night. Too late to make it into yesterday's instalment, the third annual BN was only for night owls, starting as it did after 11pm and not finishing until half past midnight. (OK, I know that's an early night for some hardened Swanwickers, but if you're a lark pretending to be an owl, it's really late!).

The audience was treated to a great mix of music, from Connie Francis to The Stranglers, by way of a lament by the wife of a trumpet-playing folk singer and a beautiful guitar duet from a 1950s French film. But for me, the star turns of the show were John and Zana, Swanwick's answer to The Proclaimers, with the appropriately-named '500 Words', followed by John's solo performance of 'Patricia the Stripper'. Many thanks to Mark and the Gang for putting it all together.

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This afternoon  saw the first ever Swanwick Tweet-Up, followed by Twitter101 which, as I predicted yesterday, attracted a large crowd. There were quite a few novices, who took the opportunity to grill the more experienced Tweeps on everything from how to sign up; what exactly is a hash tag; and how to block an unwanted follower. The session became quite interactive, with occasional side-meetings to deal with immediate issues (usually with phones) and although it's probably fair to say that not everyone's questions were answered, there are now more Swanwickers on Twitter than there were at the start of the week. Whether they all know why - or what to do next, is another question.

 

And if anyone hears a rumour that I've been blocked from Twitter for spamming, it's just the accidental consequence of a demonstration that went slightly astray.

 

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Another full house today heard Meg Davis give an agent's view of 'Editing Your Manuscript'.  I'm sure I wasn't the only person in the room to realise that maybe I'm not quite as far down the road as I thought I was - but certainly left with lots of hints on the next step in the journey. Meg also showed that she has a great (if slightly child-centred) taste in movies.

 

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Tonight's speaker was a Swanwick regular, Michael O'Byrne, a former Chief Constable whose anecdotes on 'thirty odd years of policing' had us roaring with laughter, while the crime writers among us heard some home truths. We learnt that writers deal with bodies very badly in general; policemen do not throw up at the sight of a dead body, whatever its state; and that the best way to recreate the smell of a corpse (should one wish to do so in the interest of research and authenticity) involves fish, plastic bags and sunshine. Frankly, I'm glad I'm not a crime writer.



Swanwick65: Seconds Out...

Well, we've not got to the stage of fisticuffs yet, but we've virtually had a real fight in the world of Swanwick (do you see what I've done there?). I've been coming here since 2007 and even in that relatively short period of time (in Swanwick terms) things have changed a lot.

In my first year, everyone used paper and pens to take copious notes of all the speakers' pearls of wisdom. Today, we had almost as many keyboards in use as writing implements - and in fact many of us are taking fewer notes as everything will be available online after the week is over.

 

But it's not so much the issue of paper versus electronic notebooks that is causing (sometimes heated) debate, so much as the question of social media: Facebook, Twitter - even blogs. It is a topic which seems to polarise opinions. There are many who believe absolutely that having an online presence (or a 'platform' in the marketing jargon) is essential, especially for those of us who are 'independently published'. On the other hand, there are still a lot of people who refuse categorically to 'get involved in any of that stuff'. And although there are obviously some generational influences on this, it's not completely youngsters versus oldies (as I hope I am demonstrating right here). I believe it's more a case of fear of the unknown versus willingness to have a go.

 

In today's session on 'Promoting Your Work', our workshop leader, the wonderful Marion Hough, told us she didn't 'do social media' and had no interest in it. By the end of the session, after talking about some of the benefits that can be gained, I think we may have persuaded her to change her mind or at least consider it. It will be interesting to see how many people turn up for Fiona's Twitter 101 tomorrow afternoon. I suspect it might be a full house!

 

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Today was a full working day for me. The two sessions on the Business Skills Toolbox seemed to go well (although I suppose I would say that. wouldn't I?). I had a small, select group (but then I was up against three other excellent courses, including one by last night's speaker James Moran). However, what my group lacked in numbers, they more than made up for in enthusiasm. We stuck to the time schedule (well, we were covering time management, so we had to) but also managed to deal with a wide range of questions around the subjects of increasing productivity and setting up appropriate financial records.

 

 

But my favourite session of the day has to be the Write Around with which we finished the afternoon. Around a dozen White Badgers (where was everyone else?) examined the assorted items I provided as a trigger for 'Write a Life'. As you can see, it was a real cocktail - and the eight brave souls who read their pieces out for us showed great skill in concocting finished pieces of flash fiction; the beginnings of short stories; and one wonderful poem.  As always happens with this sort of exercise, there were as many interpretations and ideas as there were writers in the room. A huge thanks to all of you for making this session such fun. I hope to see you all again tomorrow evening, when someone else will be providing the trigger and I shall be on the same side of the table as the rest of you.

 

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Tonight's speaker was Syd Moore, author of The Drowning Pool and Witch Hunt. I have to admit to being what my sister calls 'a real scaredy cat' when it comes to anything touching on the supernatural and so two novels written as ghost stories are never going to make it on to my To Be Read list (sorry Syd!) However, she was a brilliant speaker and particularly moving when talking of her research into the dreadful stories of how so-called witches were treated in the seventeenth century. 

 

Syd is also a great reader and the passages from her books had us all on the edge of our seats. I'm not sure whether Ian's defibrillator was needed at the end of the session, but the effect of a flicked switch on two hundred plus writers was electrifying. And I have to admit I'm typing this in my room with the curtains tightly closed and every single lamp lit. If anyone has bad dreams tonight, we'll know who to blame in the morning, won't we?

 

Titantic Tweets and Furious Facebooking

Well, it’s been a strange day and a long one. It started with a (virtual) Welsh Male Voice Choir in ‘Lift Up Your Hearts’ and finished with Elvis and family going to see Oliver in Jean Sutton’s traditional Monday night quiz.

In between we learned from Meg Davis (and yes, I have checked that her name is spelt correctly) how to go about getting an agent — and what we can expect that agent to do for us once we have that magic contract. We learned about tricks that don’t work (so I might as well cancel the wine and chocolates); how some writers end up writing totally different books from the ones they are contracted to write; and why an animal narrator is not a good idea. But most of all, I learned that I need to go back home and get on with the writing — Meg advised strongly us against starting the search until the novel is complete.

As a Swanwick veteran (well, a five-yearer anyway), I now allow myself some time away from the formal timetable — the second biggest mistake of white badgers is trying to go to everything, every day, leading to lack of concentration, if not exhaustion by Tuesday! I took some time out this morning and revamped the Chudleigh Phoenix website for the 2013 short story competition that has just been launched. There are flyers in the information room and full details can be found here: http://www.chudleighphoenix.co.uk/2013comp.html.

The main event today has to be the Twitter vs. Facebook debate. Della Galton proposed that tweeting was the most effective form of social media while Peter Jones fought strongly in support of FB. Despite (or maybe because of) some strong lobbying on Della’s behalf by Jane Wenham Jones, it was a close run thing. Having settled the contentious question of secret ballot vs. show of hands, the first vote was a dead heat at sixteen each. In a move reminiscent of the factory audits I used to do in my previous day-job, ‘when you don’t like the answer, you change the question’. The second vote, on the question of which is the most useful to us as writers, the score was twenty-one to twelve in favour of Twitter. In the true spirit of the age, I provided a live commentary during the debate on both Twitter and Facebook for friends unable to be with us today (and anyone who forgot to in person). I went into the room expecting to vote for FB, but at the end of the session, I was completely convinced that Twitter was faster and easier to use.

Today’s Write About was led by Eileen West who set us the task of writing about the sea in a playful non-threatening way, but also with the inclusion of the word ‘Titanic’. There were some very creative interpretations of the word, both as a noun and as an adjective. As always, I was amazed by how much can be written in a short space of time — and by the huge number of variations around a single theme or trigger.

Oh, and if anyone's wondering: the biggest mistake of white badgers is to sit at the business end of the table at mealtimes. It's my theory that the queues outside the dining hall each day are not so much about getting a table with one's friends as getting a seat away from the serving spoons. Or is that only me?