Social-media marketing is horrifying

I was sitting on the couch last week, watching an episode of the PBS series Frontline because I’m a geek, when my flatmate walked in the door.

“Hi!” Flatmate said, hanging up her keys. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Having an existential crisis,” I replied. “Wanna join me?”

“Sure!”

This exchange alone should tell you everything you need to know about Flatmate. But this blog entry is about the existential crisis.

The Frontline episode is called “Generation Like”, and you can watch it here. I highly recommend it. It’s a terrific in-depth look at social-media marketing, and how successful YouTube vloggers and the like do it ... and what major corporations do with the data, which is of course quite creepy.

The DVD, which I did not buy.

But the existential crisis had nothing to do with Big Data. No, the existential crisis came about because of a girl interviewed in the documentary. Caeli, she’s called, and she is approximately the 59^th biggest Hunger Games fan on Earth. Seriously. There’s a website that ranks them. She got this title by spending four or five hours a day obsessively clicking, tweeting, liking, reblogging, and generally spreading all things Hunger Games across the internet. She promotes The Hunger Games until her hands are sore, but it’s all worth it, she says, because she gets little electronic pips called “sparks” that advance her in the rankings of Hunger Games fandom.

She’s about sixteen years old.

This is her.

So here’s the existential crisis. My first thought when I met Caeli, via the Frontline crew, was, “Wow, I wish I had fans this dedicated. That would be cool, and it would make my job as a self-promoting writer much easier.”

My second thought was, “Holy crap, I would never ever EVER want my fans to be this obsessed! I want to hug this poor girl and tell her to go play outside! And I want to strangle the Lions Gate marketing team that’s using her as free child labor!”

Now, I’m not actually going to try to dissuade any fan from being a fan. If anybody ever decides they want to be a Caeli-level superfan for Masks or Teh Novel or Street of Bakers or even a new project I’ve working-titled The God at the Back of the Bus, I will not try to talk them out of it. If people want to geek out, about my work or somebody else’s, that’s aces by me. Hey, I’ve probably spent an unhealthy amount of time already geeking out over the upcoming Winter Soldier movie, and I spent five days last week dissecting the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. My glass house would not withstand any stone-throwing.

But I can’t help feeling there’s a difference between geeking out because you genuinely love something and geeking out because a huge marketing corporation has manipulated you into doing their job for them. I’m okay with the first one, and I will always encourage my fans--whether there’s two of them or two million—to do that. It’s the second one that bothers me.

Yes, I am a Winter Soldier geek. Possibly even a megageek. I am planning to attend a midnight screening. I designed a Bucky Cap T-shirt just so I could wear one. I am helping a friend out with a Winter Soldier cosplay. I am so excited about this movie that I periodically find myself making little happy “eeee!” noises under my breath for no apparent reason. But honestly, all Marvel had to do to get that reaction out of me was make a movie out of one of my favorite comics, and not put any sucky bits in the trailer. I’m excited because I love the character, and I loved the character long before the marketing people got involved.

Say it with me anyway: Eeeeeeeeee!

I was a fan of the character back when he was just part of a batshit-crazy storyline running in Captain America comics in 2004, and everybody assumed it would end with the Winter Soldier getting killed off because he was one of those characters who always died. I followed the character’s adventures as he adjusted to life as a free man in the twenty-first century, and I thrilled to his every rise and fall because I connected with him on a deep emotional level. The reasons for that affection are complicated and very personal, but they boil down to this—I liked this character before he was a billion-dollar franchise, for reasons of my own, and I will go on liking him whether the movie’s any good or not, for the same reasons. It’s pretty much independent of the marketing. All the marketing has to do is tell me that this thing I already love exists, and I will buy it. Hell, I still own the Daredevil movie on DVD, and I knew it sucked when I bought it.

IT STILL SUCKS.

But I’m not reblogging stuff four to five hours a day. I have no interest whatsoever in being the  fifty-ninth biggest Winter Soldier or Daredevil fan on the planet. I’m actually fairly careful about that; my family has a big, nasty history of addiction, so I watch for signs of addictive behavior in myself. I switch off the computer before it gets creepy. I will never be the kind of viral marketer Lions Gate is looking for. I am not Caeli.

And that, I think, is at the heart of my discomfort. For all I know, Caeli loves The Hunger Games and obsessively reblogs all things Katniss because she connects to Suzanne Collins’ novels the way I connect to my favorite comics. But I think there’s something terribly sinister about a multi-billion-dollar media machine feeding Caeli’s enthusiasm to the point of addiction. The marketing plan for Mockingjay Part One includes on-the-hour scheduling of things like when set photos will be released, what production tidbits will be dropped when, and so on. I would never tell Caeli to stop being a Hunger Games geek, or stop doing things online that she’d probably do whether Lions Gate were involved or not. But I’m massively creeped out by the idea that the Hunger Games marketing crew is trying to create as many Caelis as possible ... and that this is, no pun intended, the object of the game.

I don’t like the idea that something I make--out of love, because there’s no other reason to spend years making up stories for people I’ll never meet--might be used to encourage addict behavior. I don’t like the idea of exploiting kids. It bothers me on a fundamental level. It’s creepy enough that I can legitimately say that I wouldn’t want to be Suzanne Collins, even though I know it’s not her doing it.

Not even for this much money.

I worked a marketing job once ... for all of one month. I discovered that while I was great at spinning yarns--I was a fantastic liar when I had the motivation--I was absolutely wretched at selling things I didn’t like, and didn’t believe in. That job ended because I was supposed to be hyping a suite of software that supposedly did everything its competitor did, and more--but the software didn’t actually work, according to the engineers who were building it. I couldn’t write promo copy for something that was never going to work. I all but stopped sleeping, my grad-school coursework took a nosedive, and in general I hope I never have to work a job that awful again. I still remember watching my stressed-out boss claw compulsively at his own skin, scratching until he bled, because he couldn’t take the pressure. And he had it easy. He thought the software worked.

I like my job now. I have a tiny, tiny fanbase and I love them. I don’t have a Caeli, but I wouldn’t want a Caeli who didn’t volunteer for the job, and I wouldn’t want a Caeli who was reblogging until her fingers hurt. I think I’d cry. Even if Caeli said she loved it and wanted to be doing it, I would cry.

She said it during this interview, and I still cried a little.

Much as I love interacting with my favorite artists and understand the desire to do it even more, I love my fans. I want them to be happy and well.

I’d like to have a larger fanbase. I’m trying to get better about posting stuff and interacting with my fans and all the good social-media things I’m supposed to be doing in this age of self-promotion. But my marketing staff consists of me and my laptop, and I can only control the message as long as I’m the only one sending it out. If Teh Novel takes off, and people other than me get involved in promoting my work, I am fairly certain that my biggest worry will be that somewhere out there, a Caeli is getting hurt because of something I created out of love.

Look at this picture again. She's like me at twelve, but cooler.

So here and now, before any actual money or marketing people can possibly come into the equation, is my promise to you. On this blog, on Pocket Coyote, on Facebook and Twitter and whatever other platforms come along, I will share as much of my life with you as seems prudent and interesting, and whatever I share will be true and will be me. If it shows up on this blog and it’s not signed with somebody else’s name, I wrote it. If I post a photo, I took it. If I say it, I thought it. No calculation, no hyperscheduling, no pressure. Just me and my keyboard, with ink on my fingertips and graphite smudges on my arm. That seems to be what you guys want, and it’s something I’m quite willing to give.

And in return for all that--however much or little it’s worth to you--this is all I ask, and all I will ever ask.

I drew this in a coffee shop because I was bored.

First, take joy in what I make. Have fun. I make this stuff because I love it, and I share it because I want you to enjoy it as much as I do. If you’re not having fun, go do something else. Seriously.

Second, share your joy with others simply because shared joy is increased. Go ahead and tell all your friends how wonderful my stories are--but only do it if you think your friends will enjoy them, too. There’s a reason I make the Masks chapters available for free, and it’s not because I don’t think I can get you to pay for them. Some of you do (and thanks for that, by the way). I make the chapters available for free because I never want to have to work a horrible marketing job again, selling software that will never work. I make the chapters available for free because it’s the ultimate truth in advertising--because I will never feel like I’m selling you a pig in a poke when there is no poke. I don’t post free chapters because it’s good marketing, or because I’m so confident that you’ll buy my stories if I give you a free sample. I’m not confident at all. But if I know you can read before you buy, and you do buy, I know you’re buying because it makes you happy. I know I’ve shared joy. And that’s worth more to me than any number of dollars in the tip jar.

Third and finally, I do ask you to pay for my work--to pay what you can, when you can, where you can. I’d like to pay my bills with this stuff, it’s true. One of my great dreams in life, second to writing the kind of stories I love best, is to own a home of my very own so I never have to worry about where I’m sleeping next month. I would be over the moon if enough people bought my stories that I could do that. So yes, if you enjoy my work, I’d like you to pay a reasonable price to support it. I’d certainly produce more if I could do it full-time. But I know that life happens and money gets tight and sometimes you can’t put a dollar in the tip jar. And that’s okay. The joy comes first. Money is on my wish list, but joy is a lot higher up.

And that’s it. Those three things, in that order, are all I will ever ask of you, my readers and electronic friends. Enjoy the art, share the art if you enjoy it, and pay for the art if it’s worth it and you can afford it. Have joy, share joy, and tip your server if you can. If by some bizarre twist of fate you ever encounter a multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign for my art, please don’t be Caeli. Take care of yourselves instead.

Story starter: Mystery Object #1

Hello, all!

If you’d like to see how Teh Novel is coming along, scroll down for a photo of the binder. I’m just shy of the halfway mark—not where I wanted to be at this point, but making progress. Yaaayyy me.

Meanwhile, since many of you are writers or would-be writers as well, I thought I’d share a little exercise that I like to use with my students and that might get your creative juices flowing. Sometimes the hardest part of writing—especially when you have to do it for a class, or for a deadline—is coming up with an idea. If there’s anything harder than that, it’s having a dozen kids asking you for an idea because you’re supposed to be good at this writing thing. So, not having any real inspiration one Wednesday, I randomly brought in an interesting object I had found while cleaning out an old box. To my surprise, the kids wrote a wide range of highly imaginative stories and poems about it. No two works were alike. Hell, no two were even vaguely similar. And the kids had a great time.

I eventually started putting together a collection of vaguely intriguing objects for this purpose, and to this day students and former students come up to me to ask whether they can “do a mystery object” today. Maybe it’ll help you too; I’ll post pictures of them from time to time and see what happens. If you get some good writing out of it, be sure to tell me in the comments.

The rules of the game are as follows:

1. You must include the mystery object in your writing. It can be central to the plot; it can be incidental. You might mention it literally; you might just use it as a metaphor. But you have to use it.

2. Your writing can take any form you choose—story, poem, essay—but you’ve got to stick with that form once you’ve chosen it. No bouncing around between them within a single piece. Take an idea and run with it. See where it goes.

3. You must write to a time limit. The goal of this exercise is to get you to sit your butt in the chair and just write something—anything—so use that ticking clock to get your pen moving. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Half an hour. Whatever it takes, and whatever you’re comfortable with. Don’t give yourself so much time that you’ll get bored; don’t give yourself so little that you won’t hit your stride. I generally use either ten minutes (just to get the ideas flowing) or thirty minutes (for a more fully developed story), depending on the needs of the day.

Ready? Here’s the very first mystery object I ever used, photographed for your writing pleasure:

Aaaaaaand GO!

All right, now that everyone’s off and scribbling, here’s how Teh Novel is looking these days:

Today I'm rewriting Chapter 18 of 38. The shorter pages at the back are blank paper.

See you next week!

Superheroes to the rescue: A bonus MASKS story!

That’s right, junior superheroes, you’re getting a chapter and a short story this week … but only if you help me help some kids in need.

I’m friends with a lot of teachers. Actually, it worries me how many teachers I’m friends with, even considering that I dabble in teaching. I pal around with teachers from kindergarten through college and beyond, so I hear a lot of teaching horror stories. But this one really upset me, and it dovetailed nicely with something I want to do anyway.

I have been working on a bonus short story to include in the collected edition of Masks (out sometime before Christmas, probably November, thanks for asking). I had a great idea for a Trevor story, one that really stuck in my head and wouldn’t leave me alone—but I wanted a story that featured both my heroes, set after the main plot of the book, and this other tale is all about Trevor and actually takes place before Masks begins. It started with an offhand comment in one of the later chapters, where Trevor mentions that he hasn’t set foot in a church since his parents’ funeral, “unless he counted the two weeks he’d spent healing up in a Buddhist shrine toward the end of the Night Lords’ War when he was twelve.” It was originally a throwaway line, just a way to show the kind of crazy stuff Trevor got into as a sidekick. But it just wouldn’t leave me alone. I wanted to know who the Night Lords were, and why they were having a War, and why Trevor was so badly injured that he needed two whole weeks to heal, and why he had to do it in a Buddhist shrine. I had a hazy mental image of twelve-year-old Trevor, lying on a cot in the back room of some run-down old temple, with some kind of supernatural war going on all around him—and I just knew he wouldn’t want to sit still. Once I got a picture of him crawling off to go fight monsters, I knew I had to write the story, so I found myself sitting on a curb yesterday, scribbling frantically in a notebook to get the idea down before it could fly away. I knew I couldn’t use the tale, but I just had to get it out of my system.

Then I had dinner with one of my teacher friends, who told me about a local family that had hit a rough patch and was having trouble affording back-to-school expenses for their children—you know, that binge of shopping all our moms went on every August and September to make sure our clothes all fit and our backpacks didn’t have holes. Speaking as someone who started second grade at a new school with a nylon backpack, a pee-chee folder, a Lunchable, and nothing else, I can tell you that stuff really makes a difference. Anyway, my friend asked me if I knew anyone who might be able to donate any of the items on a shopping list so these kids—good students all, great kids—wouldn’t have to go without. I didn’t have any of the stuff lying around, so I suggested just raising some money so the family could buy whatever they needed. My friend gave me a funny look and said, “I’m a teacher and you’re a writer. What are we going to sell?”

And I remembered the story I wanted to write anyway.

So here’s the deal. I’m going to write that little story about the Night Lords’ War this week. It won’t be long—I’m aiming for about 3,000 words, about as long as a Masks chapter—but it will be packed with action and emotion and freaky weird stuff and all the goodies you’ve come to expect from an R.M. Hendershot extravaganza. You’ll get to see Trevor in his sidekick days, and his mysterious mentor, and God knows what else because I swear I’m making this up as I type. I’ve figured out how Trevor got injured and why he can’t sit still and how his mentor fits in, and the rest is probably going to be improv. I’ll see if I can dragoon Nicole or somebody into drawing an illustration. And I will throw the whole thing up for sale on Friday, for two dollars.

That’s right. Two bucks. Half the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee. I’ll try to set up a donation system so you can toss in more money if you want, but for two bucks, you get a PDF of the story. And every cent I collect, minus PayPal’s cut, will go directly to that family to buy essential supplies for those kids.

I don’t have big ambitions for this project. If I collect a hundred bucks before PayPal, I’ll be over the moon. That’ll be fifty people buying the story. I happen to know Pocket Coyote gets 70 hits on a good day right now, maybe 20 of those reading the newest chapter. Imagine what would happen if those 20 people each invited one friend to chip in a couple of bucks for an extra story … heck, imagine what would happen if those 20 people each invited two friends.

I can’t use the family’s name or personal details here, because I don’t have their permission. If they give permission later, I’ll tell you all about the kids and how awesome they are and how big a difference your donations have made. For now, I’ll just say they’re the kind of kids a teacher doesn’t forget easily, the kind she’d hit up a penniless author for. The kind I can’t say no to. And so, in honor of some great kids and a great teacher, I’m writing a story about a great kid and his great teacher.

Oh, and there will be ninjas. Not sure how yet, but there will totally be ninjas of some description. I’m excited. NINJAS!!!

Watch this blog on Friday for a link to the story and instructions on how to donate. There will be announcements on Facebook and Twitter, too, so be sure to get on board with those. I’ll keep you posted.

And now, I think it’s time to set a new land speed record for keyboarding …