Blogging and Getting Out There
I have been reading some great books lately about growing your platform as an author and creating a social media base. I realize there is a certain irony, sitting in a remote cabin with no electricity, internet, running water, or indoor plumbing because you like to get away from people and social media; trying to learn about how to build a social media presence and get people to care about writing you’ve been tossing in the corner for years. But I digress. I have been reading and studying, in particular, Jane Friedman’s the Business of Being a Writer, and Rachel Thompson’s 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge. I have always enjoyed writing, and it only occurred to me recently, that I should try to get what I write published. When I decided to give it a try, I knew I needed to learn all I could about what it might take. There’s a lot of great advice and insight out there, but what strikes me as interesting or maybe odd, is the level of resistance to good advice. Especially on selling yourself. In particular, there’s an overarching fear that doing anything other than working on your art is somehow taking precious time away from what could be your masterpiece. This in turn could make you miss your magical window or muse and be shut out forever. I decided to write this blog on my thoughts on what didn’t realize until now was such a huge issue.
Video of phase III blow in the arctic, taken from the front door of camp
I work providing engineering support to an electrical power grid that sits on the Beaufort Sea, distributing power in one of the harshest climates on the planet. I have seen ambient temperatures in excess of -65 degrees with a wind chill of -80, when outside work comes to a complete halt because frost bite occurs in less than five minutes. At the same time, loss of electricity means loss of production which means loss of revenue. A key factor of my job is being able to eloquently state the technical aspects of a problem and why it needs to be solved to a person sitting 800 miles away in Anchorage or even thousands of miles away in London. This person may have no technical background whatsoever and has never donned a pair of steel toed boots or a hard hat in their life, but they control the purse strings. I must convince them that my problem is worth giving money to without losing them in the technical weeds or being so vague that they do not buy into my credibility on the subject matter.
Every time I sit down and create my argument, I refine my writing skills more. Sometimes it is just a smidge, learning to use a better word or phrase to express my full meaning. Sometimes it is learning to when to use better brevity when the situation calls for it. Other times it is learning how to read my audience and tailor my writing specifically to what they want and need from me. Then there are other times, it is admittedly nothing more than getting one more task off my plate, so that I can turn my full attention to what I really enjoy.
Refining my Argument
I can almost hear the can of worms crack open with a loud hiss as I write this, but I am going to give it a go. One of the things that we as women are often accused of in our writing and I will openly and freely admit that I am guilty of: rambling. In technical writing and making presentations to someone whom you are trying to convince to give you money for a problem, this can be detrimental. Think about it, when you are pitching your book, they want it short and sweet. It took me a long time to get to the point of learning how to get to the point, and just deliver the message. I can thank some great mentors for helping me refine my speech and my writing, so that eyes did not keep glazing over when I started to talk. My presentations became more effective, my technical papers and emails clearer and concise. I got what I wanted professionally and personally with far more ease. I was taken seriously as an engineer. I do my best to provide this same type of guidance to the engineers I currently mentor, who most of the time, hate writing.
Targeting your Audience
I am a geek. My husband is a geek. Get the two of us together, and we can sit for hours talking about our respective career fields. His career field is Corrosion and Ultra-sonics, specializing in Non-destructive testing. I have a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering with a Masters in Power Systems. Believe it or not, there is incredible overlap between the two fields due to the underlying principles of physics and magnetics. Get the two of us together and we can geek out for hours about hysteresis and ferro resonance in different materials. In fact, this sums up our first date. Right now, some of you are probably thinking, nerd, cough, nerd. And you’re not wrong. I embrace it proudly, and I thoroughly enjoy it. What’s the inherent problem with getting too technical? People outside your discipline don’t get it. And if you need them to understand it, at least enough to help fix a problem, you had better learn to write and speak in a way that will make them care. That is something both my fiction writing and my blog helps refine my technical writing. It is a constant process of improving my language skills and helping people to understand more about what I do and how electricity and energy are produced and distributed.
Every time I put my pen to paper or begin to type on this keyboard the feedback loop in my brain picks up, and my writing improves a little more. This is an undervalued area of the writing process that should get a lot more credit than it does. Sure, if you are blogging or twittering just to avoid writing your novel or magazine article, that’s a whole separate issue.
Thanks for reading, I would love to hear your thoughts.