Another Friday, another session in the digital classroom that is Author 101, the class for authors who love to learn and are learning to love Twitter.

If you did your homework last week, you’re already signed up for Twitter and have been observing some of the brilliant shenanigans that go on there. So tell us, how was your first day in school? Did you make any new friends? Did people ask you to join in their #KickballGame?

It’s okay if you’ve been a bit of a wallflower so far, don’t feel bad! Not everyone takes to Twitter as easily as Uncle Randy, #squirrels is a surprisingly popular hashtag!

Much like walking into a room full of strangers for the first time, being new to Twitter can be overwhelming with so many tweets popping up in all directions. It can feel like being in the middle of a town square with that one guy standing on the milk crate with a bullhorn shouting about his conspiracy theory that the Kardashians are really band of evil alien overlords sent to destroy us (pretty far-fetched…or IS IT?!).  But don’t be that guy! Use this opportunity to engage with people about your Kardashian Konspiracy Theories by talking to them using our very favorite applications on Twitter: the RT (or retweet) function and the @ (reply) function.  These two functions also have the benefit of being ways to participate in Twitter without having to generate content if you’re feeling uninspired.

Retweet (RT)

This is the easiest way to provide some content for your own followers and give someone else a digital high five without doing much of anything. Someone you’re following tweets something funny/ smart/ poignant? Retweet it and share it with your own followers. People love getting retweeted as it’s a sign that your Twitter followers are listening to you, rather than your tweets going out into the cold, dark void of the internets. You can also do this if you’re totally brain-dead.

Reply (@)

If you are slightly less brain-dead, you can reply to a Tweet and add something to the conversation. E.g. @UncleRandy I agree, taxidermy squirrels look much better in my Art Deco sitting room than I would have thought.

Go on then, talk amongst yourselves! Or better yet, talk to us @GirlFridayProd.

Because of the seeming inanity of much of what goes on on Twitter, it can be easy to dismiss it as so much noise. But Twitter is an amazing place. People organize whole revolutions there! Jennifer Egan (the only author who could ever pull off a chapter written in Power Point) wrote a novel just for the medium! Adorable tech nerdy poetry lovers use it to generate love poems!

It’s true that there is a lot of clutter on Twitter, but there also are fascinating conversations going on there, and it can give you the opportunity to interact with a much wider spectrum of potential readers than you would anywhere else.

Think of Twitter as a cocktail party with a whole bunch of people you’ve never met, you wouldn’t walk in and start yelling at people at the top of your lungs to buy your  book would you? (or maybe you would! If so, you are not invited to any of our cocktail parties until you think of something more entertaining to yell about). Your goal on Twitter is not to have it be a one-way bullhorn where you broadcast every thing you ate that day (people have this covered, don’t worry) but rather to engage in an intelligent conversation during which you gain the interest of a band of merry followers.

More than any other social media tool, Twitter can turn into an outrageous time suck if not used properly, so we suggest dipping your toe into the water slowly. With that in mind, we are going to give you only two-steps for this week.

Sign-up:

Open an account here: http://www.twitter.com

• Add a picture of yourself as your avatar. Your hair looks fine in that one, we promise.
• Choose something as close to your own name as possible for your handle and avoid dots and underscores for simplicity sake. @bubbles_7.McGee%$^ is very unique, but not recommended.
• You will need to create a bio in only, you guessed it, 140 characters. Make sure to include the (shortened) links to your blog, Amazon page etc.

Follow and observe:

• Who to follow? Start with some authors: @MargaretAtwood, @colsonwhitehead, @AnneRiceAuthor, @jenniferweiner, and @megcabot all have excellent Twitter presences.
• Look for conversations you might be interested in by searching hashtags; threads on Twitter denoted by the ‘#’ symbol. Try: #amwriting #publishing #booksonsquirrels

When you’re done, give us a shout out! @GirlFridayProd

Welcome back to Author 101, the author class for classy authors. Today, we’re talking about Goodreads, or as I like to think of it OMFGsomanybooksmyheadjustexploded.com.
In our quest to help authors find crafty ways to promote themselves, we thought Goodreads seemed like obvious territory since it’s a social media site that’s exclusively geared toward authors and readers. However there are SO many fun features on Goodreads for book nerds that we may or may not have found ourselves curled up in ball with our bendy straw in a wine bottle after a serious GR bender where we found and rated every book we’ve read since sixth grade. We just totally forgot how moved we were the first time we read The Giver okay?
So before you do that, here are some super useful ways to participate in Goodreads as an author:
• Claim your author page: You can submit a photo, biography, info about upcoming events, a list of your influencers, links to your blog and twitter, reviews of books by other authors etc. Simply sign up for Goodreads, search for your author name, click the ‘Is this you?’ tab and submit a request for an author page. You needed to do something with the outtakes from those Glamour Shots you took at the mall anyway.

• Add your book: Many books will be added automatically to Goodreads. Search for your title on Goodreads and if it doesn’t show up, click the link that says ‘Still can’t find the book? Add a new record.’ Add the details of the book here including the book cover and where it can be purchased. That way people on ratings benders can find you and give you all the stars!

• Listopia: One of the most popular features of Goodreads is Listopia where readers submit and vote on their own ‘best of’ lists. Searching and adding your book to relevant lists is a great way to bring your book to the attention of readers who might not otherwise find it. The more specific the list, the easier it will be to break into it. For instance, the ‘Memoirs’ list will be harder to get onto than the ‘Memoirs of Squirrel Taxidermists’ (Uncle Randy FTW!).

http://www.goodreads.com/list

• Giveaways: Goodreads features giveaways where the prize is a copy of your book. You describe the book, decide how many copies to give away and how long the contest will run, and Goodreads administers the contest for you and sends you the names of the winner(s) when the contest ends. The winner can give you all the stars and tell the members of their after-work kickball league to buy the book. The non-winners will hopefully decide that after the emotional rollercoaster of the contest, they simply must have the book and will go ahead and buy it.

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway

Questions? Suggestions? Tragic or triumphant tales of your own Goodreads benders? Leave ‘em in the comments or email us at moreinfo@girlfridayproductions.

Welcome to our new feature, Author 101 (Every Friday! See what we did there?)

We’re going to be starting with some social media questions. Oh, social media. So buzzy! So vast! So confusing! We understand why you might be reluctant, dear author, to jump into the pool. Here is an imagined conversation between you and us. (Preferably over vodka gimlets).

Reluctant Author: So, social media. Do I have to?

Girl Friday: No! Of course not. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. This is America. In fact, you don’t really have to write that book to begin with. I mean, writing a book is hard, there are so many pages. We don’t blame you at all if you want to take a nap instead. There are kind of a lot of books around these days; does the world really need any more?

RA: I probably didn’t need that much sarcasm.

GF: Sorry for the tough love, should we have waited for you to finish the second gimlet? Honestly though, yes. You really ought to be doing something on social media to promote your work, whether you’re being traditionally published or you’re self-publishing, stoking up marketing efforts with an online presence has become pretty much de rigueur. (That’s French for all the cool kids are doing it.)

RA: But doesn’t everyone have a blog these days? I mean, my Uncle Randy has a blog where he talks about canning and squirrel taxidermy…

GF: It’s true, there are many blogs out there. But there are also many people who would rather spend their time reading them than filling out those quarterly reports. It’s up to you to bring your blog, and hence your book, to the people using tools like Twitter and Goodreads. Also, we think your Uncle Randy sounds awesome.

RA: This sounds like it could be a huge time suck. Thinking about it makes me want to give up before I start.

GF: That’s why you need not just knowledge but strategy. It sounds like Uncle Randy has other hobbies and he fits it in! You need to know how to use which tools, how much and when. And guess what? That’s what we’re here for!

Did we convince you yet? Not quite? Well, keep checking back in every Friday and we’ll work on it. In the meantime, if you have a topic idea or question for Author 101, email us at moreinfo@girlfridayproductions.com and we’ll read it, just as soon as we tear ourselves away from canningandsquirrels.com.

Next week we’ll be covering Goodreads. Want to get a jump? Sign up at www.goodreads.com and friend us

Almost five years and another child later, I am constantly delighted with how ungrounded my fears were. No one has discounted me or thought less of me as a professional because of my motherhood. Even better, however, is my surprise at how advantageous being a mom has been to my career. I’ve connected with clients over stories about our children, even if their project has nothing whatsoever to do with parenthood. I’ve forged connections with far-flung colleagues because our kids were born around the same time, and a question like “Is Jack potty-trained? Because I’m having a tough time with Ellie” transitions organically into “So what projects are you working on these days?” In other words, networking has never felt more authentic. In editing a wonderful book about childbirth (Dr. Anne Lyerly’s A Good Birth), I found that what I’d learned as a parent brought a new kind of wisdom and insight to my edits that I never would have had if I’d not had children. And I’ve used my viewpoint as a parent constantly in the writing I’ve done for a nanny who is authoring a book of advice for parents. Never before has my work and family life fit together so synergistically.

Don’t misunderstand me—I don’t mean to say that if you don’t have kids, you are at a disadvantage as a writer or editor. That’s not the case at all. Rather, I’ve just been happy to see that wherever you are in your life, you can bring that to your work in a way that makes you better at both. And that seems like good news for everyone.

Posted by Jenna Land Free

It would be dreamy to start the day off at the divinely pretty La Durée on rue Jacob, surrounded by pastel-colored macaroons. After a little caffeine and some buttery indulgence, I’d browse my way down the Blvd. St Germain (shoe shopping being a favorite pastime of mine) to the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits (222, blvd. St. Germain). The museum recently expanded into this fabulous space and contains all kinds of wonderful historic paraphernalia—the letters of Balzac, drawings by St. Exupery, the manuscript pages of Hugo, Zola, Sand, and loads more stuff. As an editor, I love seeing the marked-up pages, the fountain-pen scrawl, the doodles and voyeuristic details that make these literary giants seem so much more human. After that, it would be time for a bit of fresh air so I’d likely double back and thread my way down through the labyrinthine streets near Odeon. I’d have to make a stop at my near-fave bookshop of all time, the Village Voice, on rue Princesse. I live in Portland, home to the greatest bookstore in the U.S., and I love getting lost in the massive maze of Powells. But the Village Voice is a close second for just the opposite reason—it’s an intimate place with a lovingly curated collection, and I always want everything in it. After inevitably making a couple of purchases, I’d grab a crepe to go at La Creperie du Comptoir and take it down to the Luxembourg Gardens. Then I’d follow in Hemingway’s footsteps south out of the gardens and then over and down through the Cimetiere du Montparnasse to see the latest photo exhibit at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. If nothing else, I’d plonk myself down on the top floor, surrounded by the master’s photos, and have a browse through his massive tomes of photographs. I’d probably then stroll north along rue de Rennes to St. Sulpice, indulge in a bit more window-shopping in St. Germain (so many shoe shops! So little time!). I might stop for a drink at George Sand and Victor Hugo’s regular haunt, Laperouse, or pop into Café Flore, Simone de Beauvoir’s preferred watering hole, for a kir. Another longtime personal fave is Au Sauvignon, which carries only tartines and wine (the perfect place to recover from a shopping spree at the massive Bon Marché nearby). Then I’d probably grab the metro back to the 9^th, grab a baguette, some cheese and a bottle of red wine on the rue des Martyrs, and head home to soak my tired, deserving feet.

What would you do with one day in Paris?

In her post a couple of weeks ago, Jen wrote about overcoming perfectionism and it got me thinking about all of my own not-quite-completed to-do lists.

I have a long list of goals for 2012 and I set a monthly reminder to myself to check back in on it. Have I done all of it? Good God, no. Have I done some of it? Well, yes, I have. So do I get a gold star or am I big fat failure?

I only got about half of the things on 30 before 30 list done before other things in my life took over my time, but that half included spending a month in Argentina, learning Spanish, reconciling with a friend I hadn’t talked to in years, getting in great shape and losing fifteen pounds, landing a column on my favorite website and publishing my book. Pretty great, right? It’s hard to look at it as anything but a wild success when I put it that way.

If you cross off all of the items on your to-do list with ease, the list probably wasn’t nearly ambitious enough.

So how does this apply to writers?

Never have there been so many options available to writers to build a platform and promote their work, but to say it’s overwhelming would be an understatement. I’ve seen some of the packets my friends get from their publishers about social media and online marketing, and while these packets contain no dearth of helpful information, the sheer scope of what they’re being asked to do is unreal.

I’d imagine most writers’ ideal to-do list would look something like this:

1. Write book

2. Go and talk to some fans and sign some copies and bask in the glow of nice reviews whilst showing admirable fortitude in the face of any criticism.

3. Repeat as needed.

In reality it goes something more like this (amended to include all you intrepid self-published types):

1. Write book

2. Revise book

3. Revise it again. Maybe once more.

4. Research agents and query/ hire fantastic editor and copy editor to polish book to a high sheen.

5. Find publisher / publish your damn self!

So far so good right? You’re now in therapy to cope with all the rejection and should maybe stop drinking all of the vodka and stop eating your feelings but, look at you! You’re an author! Time to bask in the glory right? Wrong! More steps:

6. Start a blog. Blog all the time. Be funny, be interesting.

7. Find other people’s blogs and try to get them to let you be funny and interesting on their blog.

8. Tweet. Follow. Hashtag! Learn what IMO, DH, LMFAO mean! Be clever, be informative. Be snarky but funny snarky, not mean snarky. Not one likes mean people on Twitter. Be self-promotional but not, you know, too self-promotional. No one likes that.

9. Facebook! Have a page, get some fans! Tell people to ‘like’ you and try not to feel weird about that.

10. Don’t forget about Google Plus, and Reddit and Digg it and…and….um, Pintrist? Isn’t that a thing now?

11. Something about Google analytics!

I could go on. Oh, could I go on but I’m guessing your brain when into Sad Mac somewhere between 8 and 9. And so this is what follows:

12. Decide you are a big fat failure who cannot adequately promote their work.

13. Throw mobile devices into the lake.

14. Maybe you join a monastery. Those monks look really calm.

So what’s an author to do?

It’s not just important for authors (even traditionally published ones) to maintain a presence online; it’s crucial.  So by all means set the bar high, but don’t freak out when you don’t quite reach it.

Repeat after me: I will never do everything I could have done to promote my work. Never. It is impossible. Choose a couple of things you can do to help support your work and focus on those; take time to keep refocusing as you go along. Didn’t blog for two weeks? Don’t waste time beating yourself up, just go write a killer post! Been neglecting your Twitter? Spend an hour on there re-tweeting people at the end of the day on Friday when you’re too tired to do anything else.

Take it from me: A dieter who resolves to eat nothing but kale and work out seven days a week will still see success if he works out three days a week and incorporates greens regularly; sometimes “close enough” is plenty.

-GF Andrea

But I digress. I was an idealist even then, and loved the idea that I’d joined a profession so weighty, so worthy. Not every book I’ve worked on since has filled me with altruistic pride, but I’ve worked on many that I think will make a difference to someone. Sometimes the ambition is quiet, like with Marie Tillman’s memoir about coping with grief. In the months
after Marie’s husband Pat was killed, her grief was hard to share with others. But she did find solace in books, which is what ultimately drove her to share her own story. Perhaps, she thought, a person in a similar circumstance might read about her experience and feel more connected. Sometimes the ambition of the book is large and loud– like investigative journalist Alicia Mundy’s desire to take down a pharmaceutical company and reform the FDA with her exposé about the diet drug fen-phen.

I believe Gail’s mantra that books change lives, and obviously being in the business of books has directed my life, but is there a particular book I can point to as influencing my choices, shaping my personality, altering my world view? Marie writes eloquently about the impact of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking and the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Author S.E. Hinton receives letters all the time from people claiming that The Outsiders changed the course of their lives. But for me the answer is no– there is no single book that has changed my life. And yet they all have: Dr. Richard Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems (don’t judge!) affects my daily well-being because my infant is sleeping well through the night; a cheesy-looking Sunset cookbook from the 70s has dictated my go-to meals over the past decade; Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation has
severely limited my intake of McDonald’s; and the Twilight series (again– no judging!) often reminds me how important it is to completely escape from reality every so often. Maybe one day a book will see me through a transformative time and will be easy to point to as “The Book.”  Until then, I’m curious: What book has changed your life?

-GF Jenna

This past Wednesday, I was grumpy. I had already had a hectic morning and now I had to traverse three freeways to pick up half a pig. I was supposed to meet Martin between 1:00 and 1:30 outside Seattle in an Embassy Suites parking lot. I couldn’t even get excited about the meat, which usually would have done it, because while I would soon have 60 pounds of delicious, local pork, I lacked a working kitchen in which to cook it. (Note to future
self: Remodeling your kitchen while writing a cookbook is a bit shy of bright.)
No, the very idea of tromping through drywall dust to fill my freezer with meat
I wouldn’t taste for months did little to feed my immediate-gratification-seeking spirit. As of this moment, it was getting late and I was lost. I drove in circles in a sea of strip development looking in vain for Martin’s van. If all this sounds like a drug deal gone bad well, it had started to feel like one.

I finally spotted him, pulled over, and opened up the back of my SUV. He hopped out of his truck smiling and holding out his hand. And you know what, he was lovely. We chatted as I nestled pig parts into my ice chest—about the book, about my brother who had picked up the other half of the pig at their farm, about their pigs and chickens and cows and the meat birds they planned to add to the mix. He told me how they were expanding the
operation to add thousands more chickens, but all in a huge solar-powered cold
frame so they could run around and eat grass year round. He gave me a complimentary dozen eggs to try. We talked meat. Knowing I was curious as to how his Berkshire pig would taste in comparison to plain ole pig, he said this pork should be especially tasty as the pigs had been fed apples from a place called Johnson’s Orchard near the farm. “Johnson’s!” I exclaimed, excited because the orchard is just minutes from where I grew up. Every year in late summer I still go and buy boxes of fruit to take home with me. I still had jam I’d made from their peaches. I felt less than six degrees now separated me from “Handsome Trotter,” the name my seven-year-old had bestowed upon the pig I was packing into my car.

I drove away smiling like I’d just scored some E, already planning how I would cook this apple-fed piggy and buoyed by Martin’s infectious positivity. Martin used to be an architect, he told me, but he loved working outside. More than that, he loved getting out there and talking to people about his farm’s products and how they were produced. He really did. And now, not only did I feel great about eating the meat, I was glad my dollars had gone directly to support their farm. People. They’re even better than pigs.

-GF Lam