As a librarian, I'm pretty well versed in social networking, and the possibilities for creating different persona for different pursuits. Until now, I've made the choice to essentially blur everything together - professional libraryland life, personal life, and writing life. As the newest book releases approach, however, and as I succumb to the draw of drowning in web 2.0-ness and alienating all of my audiences (though everyone is relatively good natured about seeing posts they care not much about) as well as cross-postnig to the point of ridiculousness, I've decided to try to separate things a little bit.
As ever, this is the writing - mostly creative writing, though I'm bound to mention my professional nonfiction stuff occasionally - blog. However, if you were following me as "warmaiden" on twitter but would rather just see tweets about writing, you can follow me as colleensharris there.
And because I was feeling froggy, I set up an author's page on Facebook. You can become a fan and get the latest announcements about publications, book progress, and more if you go here.
Thanks for your patience as I experiment with unraveling the threads of myself!
9 comments:
I applaud your energy at all your web 2.0-ness. For as techy as I am, I can't stand social media beyond blogging, despite all my trying. Maybe when Diaspora launches things will change, but largely, I think I'm just too lazy.
Thanks :) I decided not to separate identities awhile back because I'm terrible at keeping up one blog, one twitter account, one facebook account, etc, much less three of each. Feeling like a need a bit more definition to the blobbiness of my life lately.
I have been wrestling with many of the same issues - to date I haven't made much effort to separate anything. My blog is mostly writing-ish, but my Twitter account is a little of everything: library stuff, poetry/writing stuff, Springsteen fan stuff (those are the main threads anyway). Have thought seriously about setting up a second Twitter account for the professional/library stuff, but so far I haven't. I do make some use of friend lists on Facebook as well as Twitter lists (and I use Tweetdeck to sort those out sometimes).
It's enough to make a person dizzy :)
@Anne - I think it'll be interesting to see if I can do it - by nature I prefer to be everything I am in one spot, but that, of course, is considered poor marketing. I figure I'll see how long I can maintain multiple accounts before I throw my hands up and go back to glomming it all together, and my writing, librarystuff, and random life observations are all back in one spot.
I've only just discovered you (thanks for the Twitter follow!) and it all looks fine to me — except that a couple of the blogs have no posts yet, and I'm eager to read what you might write there.
Oh yes, and there is that *shudder* word 'poetess'. Do you hafta? The old feminist in me cringes; we in my generation insisted on being given equal status, arguing that one doesn't, for instance, say 'doctoress;' or lawyeress'. You are SUCH a briliant poet, why not claim it? Self-denigration is inappropriate for your talent, believe me.
As for me, I have carried multiple blogging to ridiculous extremes! But somehow lumping it all together got to seem messy. (More than one twitter profile, though - oh no, that would be TOO much.)
Rosemary - thanks again for coming to read me :) Yep, a few of the blogs are placeholders - the primary ones I post to are this one and the Guardienne of the Tomes, where I keep all my librarianship posting.
I hadn't considered the word "poetess" as at all denigrating - hardly anyone uses it anymore, truth be told. I don't consider it an unequal term - perhaps an antiquated one. No, we don't say "doctoress" or "lawyeress" - everything is sexless nowadays. But I had many, many years of romance language training, and I'm rather enamored of the richness of a language that allows you to gender nouns. I don't mind being gendered - I'm a woman, I'm happy to claim that, despite whatever judgment comes with it.
I understand that a large part of this is that I missed the years of struggle for the measure of equality I *do* have, which it sounds like you were engaged in. I certainly don't take it for granted, and I do know there's still a long way to go. If a woman poet is going to be considered unequal, in my opinion, it's not the word "poetess" that does that.
And in general, I do refer to myself as a neuter "poet" (see my colleensharris Twitter profile).
I feel a blog post coming on; I hadn't considered the impact of using "poetess" - thanks for poking my brain into action!
Thanks for taking the trouble to explain in detail. The romance language aspect certainly puts a different spin on it.
Yes, we old 'Women's Lib' feminists did tend to get very hung up on languaging, even though it was Germaine Greer herself who said that was a trivial issue compared with such things as domestic violence. Perhaps I'll just have to work on curing my twitchy response to certain words!
I'll be interested to read that blog post. :)
Rosemary - no, I very much believe language has a great deal of power. However, after wandering through circles (both writing & non-writing), the word "poet" doesn't exactly engender a whole lot of respect in and of itself many places :)
Ha ha! (Wryly.) Too true. Something to do with it not being 'real' work because even the most successful of us don't make a lot of money from that pursuit.
You're quite right of course about words having power. But I'm also wont to say that poets aren't afraid of that power because we think we own it!
Poetically, I must concede, 'Peripatetic Poetess' has a more aesthetically pleasing rhythm, with that in-more-ways-than-one 'feminine' ending.
Com to think of it, I believe that these days women poets are in fact regarded as equal with the men.
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