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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Sunday, December 23, 2018

NON WRITING Work Sharing Guidelines

The rules They're more what you might call "guidelines"

The golden....uh.....guideline here is to remember that lots of people are going to be posting and that this is for all of you. I may add to or amend this list as we iron out what works and what is sub-optimal.


  1. Limit yourself to sharing one piece. I'll do this "event" every other week or so if it stays popular. You'll have other chances to promote other stuff. I'm not going to dig through dozens or hundreds of comments to check that everyone only posted once, but if I notice, I'll remove all of them.
  2. I will remove links that go to crap. (Consequently, PM me if you find one because I won't have time to check them all.) I don't mean a blog you wrote where a pop up asks you to be a subscriber–though that is annoying on the very first visit, justsoyaknow. But anything that goes to a subscription site, a pop-up fest, an obvious marketing scheme of some kind, a completely non-art site, or any kind of bad-faith crap will be removed. If it really looks like someone decided to just be Spammy McSpamkins, I'll ban them as well. 
  3. This is a post to share things that are NOT WRITING. (Films you've made. Visual art. Music. Your etsy page.)  I do a post just like this for writing. Keep your eyes peeled for it if you want to share your poetry, stories, or excerpts of longer works. Mixed media is okay if there's writing involved. 
  4. You can post any art you want to share--even a link to a an Amazon page selling your wares or your own Facebook page or Etsy page or whatever. But this post will likely get dozens, maybe hundreds of replies. You might want to link to your best "sales pitch" page instead of deep in the bowels of the monetization maze. Thinking of this more as a place to share your work than a place to find new customers is probably key. If they like your work, they'll dig deeper. 
  5. If your link has a preview image, that can't be helped, but please don't put huge images directly as Facebook comments. That will make the comments very hard to navigate. If you absolutely can't link your work for some reason, describe it in the first comment you make, and then reply to yourself with the text of your work (so that the reply "threads"). But best just to link something to your opening page.
  6. Tell people what they're getting into! There will be a lot of folks posting, and unless they recognize your name, a mere title (or worse, just a URL) will not grab their attention long enough to even give a click. However...a description might entice them: ("My Etsy store where I sell ceramic casts of my O face" or whatever.) 
  7. If you give feedback, remember that the person is a human being with feelings who has put themselves "out there," and that is a hard thing to do. These are completed works. The author may not necessarily be asking for your input–certainly not of the "here's what I would change" or "this is why it sucks" variety. It might be nice to ask if they want criticism before giving it unsolicited. You don't have to limit yourself to only praise, but for fuck's sake play nice. Other artists, of all people, should know how hard this can be.
  8. Though I can't enforce this in any way, and no one will even know, it is considered rude in any artistic environment to take without giving back. You won't get invited back if you read at literary events but leave without listening to others (or if you only come on nights when you're reading). You won't be given good feedback in review groups if you take feedback and give none (or don't give as good as you get). And so if you post a link, for the sake of your artistic celestial balance in the universe, please try to find someone else's art to at least click the link on and poke around.
  9. Since this is happening on Facebook, if you read something (and like it) consider giving it a like. I may feature post the ones that do the best if they're appropriate for the page.
  10. Be excellent to each other.


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