Day in the Life of an Idiot

If I were in a beauty-type pagent right now, I'd be Ms. Confrontational.

I think my mood took a nose-dive this morning when I got a semi-angry/semi-panicked e-mail from the people who are running a Writers' Festival that I agreed to give a workshop at in March 2011. Apparently, the internet ate some of the messages that this group tried to send me (to my Hotmail account, so, yeah, that's actually very possible...) and, anyway, they were in a tizzy because they have a printing deadline and hadn't received any information from me at all. The concern was very reasonable, but the way that the organizer wrote to me, TOTALLY rubbed me the wrong way. Especially when it looked like they'd only sent me the request for stuff yesterday. And, before it was clear that the ether had eatten some of the earlier requests they'd sent, we had a very strange/strained back and forth which ended with a very weird exchange that still kind of baffles me. I'd explained that I have dial-up and so I'm not on-line very often (this was when I was apologizing, yet a bit snippy because I thought they'd only first tried to get this information from me yesterday), and the organizer's response was, "Don't you live in the city?"

I still don't understand that reaction. I *do* live in the city. In fact, I live in the capitol city. But, what does that have to do with my ability to afford high-speed internet?

Luckily, the whole conversation got shunted to another person involved in the event, and everything got resolved, but the whole thing left me feeling sort of on EDGE.

Then, I went over to check to see if anyone had updated the Wyrdsmiths blog, and discovered a whole bunch of responses from fellow Wyrdsmiths to a re-direct post I'd put up on Saturday about author self-promotion. Of course, I was already irritated, so the thing that struck me was how insular the conversation was. Here we were talking about whether or not author self-promotion worked or not, and it seemed mightly clear to me that not one of us knew a damn thing about self-promotion... since it seemed like we were the only ones who read our own blog. So I posted that observation.

No one has responded.

The more I think about this, the more our blog becomes a really interesting experiment/testament to our ability to self-promote. We set up the Wyrdsmiths blog specifically as a promotional tool for the group as a whole. From the comments I got to my re-direct post, it's pretty clear that the majority of the Wyrdsmiths don't think web/self-promotion works. But is that circular logic? Or a self-fufilling prophecy? Or... are they right?

Would the blog be more popular if we all thought that web promotion worked? Would we spend more time/effort making the blog more effective/interesting if more of us believed in self-promotion? Or is it simply true that an author comes with a certain amount of "it" factor, and there's really nothing you can do to change that?

Interestingly, if you look at the number of people "following" Wyrdsmiths vs. the number of people "following" Tate (via subscriptions or RSS feeds or whatever it is that blogspot tracks,) Tate has almost double the number of followers. And Tate almost NEVER posts on her blog.

Which would seem to imply the latter.

Yet, I can't shake the feeling that by expecting nothing, we get nothing. Which, I think, just ended up making me more cranky/confrontational. :-)

Also, Wyrdsmiths is supposed to have a presence at the St. Paul Art Crawl this weekend. We have almost completely dropped the ball on this (which also made me cranky and confrontational), but it looks like we will be staffing a table in the lobby of the Cosmopolitan on Sunday, October 10. If you are so inclined, please feel free to stop by. We will have chapbooks for sale, and I'll have some free promotional material out, including magnets!

Whoot.

Grumble.

Sorry I haven't kept up with the ol' blog. Mason is out of school and more often than not that means I go off the grid. Though lately, the biggest thing keeping me away from my computer is the damn heat. If we're at home, I'm laying like a complete slug melting in a pool of my own sweat. If we're out in a/c, we're, well, out... and it's not always convenient to sit in one place.

Ah, but I'm just complaining. I've been in a complaining mood all week.

Because, honestly, I couldn't even tell you what's been keeping me busy. I've been trying to get housework done in the morning before the heat rolls in. So, instead of sitting with Mason at the coffeeshop, I've been hurrying us home so I can do dishes, recycling, etc., and set up something for dinner (last night I thought ahead and had something going in the crockpot, so the house didn't get all heated up with any cooking. Tonight: cold chicken and salad!)

Then, usually, Mason and I do something. Lately, it's been a lot of lying really still as the fans blow hot air over us and reading HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. Though, yesterday, we did do our usual thing and went to the Coffee Grounds to meet up with Eleanor and Naomi and then my dear, old friend Harry LeBlanc joined us. It was really pleasant, though I didn't get the one project I need to get done finished. I've got about 500 words to write to finish up an article I'm writing for an anthology, and I know what I want/need to say, but finding not-hot time to write has been a bear.

Plus, I'm just plain cranky.

Last night I wanted to go out to hang out with some friends at the Writer's Night Out, but things just didn't work out. Which has also added to the cranky that is today.

A couple of fans have written into Tate's blog to tell me that my link to an excerpt to ALMOST TO DIE FOR is broken. It's actually not built yet, and I need to do that too. It doesn't take long, but it's picky work and, well, let's see.... I'm cranky.

Do you ever have days when you just want to sit in a corner and sneer? That's me today. I'm hoping caffeine and some a/c will clear that up. For now it's all snarl, snarl, snap, snap!!