I’ve been doing something that’s really scary for me: learning more technology. I’ve been attending Twitter Spaces audio-chats, and I’ve been at four so far! It’s really interesting to listen to people you’ve only met online before. I’ll be attending more audio-chats since #SexAbuseChat and #BookMarketingChat, both of which I help co-host, are going to have Twitter Spaces audio-chats right after their regularly scheduled online-chats.
I don’t want to be someone who’s afraid of this ever-changing technology, because, as an author, I’ve almost always been dependent on the computer and its technology (once it was made affordably available). In fact, I was told that my first novel, The Kommandant’s Mistress, after it was accepted in 1992 by HarperCollins, was one of the first “experiments” with some of the new technologies. I’m not sure of everything that was involved, but I was told to proofread really carefully each time one of the editors finished the book because everything was being done digitally, i.e., without hard copies and hand-written notes.
As email became more reliable and secure, any traditional publishers and agents who were considering my work wanted queries and manuscripts through email instead of as hard copies through postal mail. By the time my first agent took extended leave to care for her new baby daughter and I had to seek a new agent, everything in traditional publishing seemed to be done by phone and email. About a decade later, when print-on-demand and ebooks came along, the self-publishing revolution allowed many authors, including me, to put their out-of-print books back into print so they were available to readers. And that was more technology that I had to learn to get my own books back into print, and then out into the market as ebooks.
I don’t mind technology… once I’ve learned it. New technology always makes me feel like I’ve been thrown into a foreign country whose language and culture are completely unfamiliar to me. That’s what makes Twitter Spaces audio-chats stressful for me (though not as anxiety-producing as Zoom talks/conferences). I’m already feeling a little more confident about attending Twitter Spaces; I don’t expect I’ll ever host one, but I like getting to know people better.
What about you? What technology are you comfortable or uncomfortable with? Have you ever been to any Twitter Spaces, and if you have, what did you think of the audio-chats?
Here are a few of the articles I’ve been reading this week. As always, the best place to reach me is
Twitter, but you can also contact me via my blog/website:
The Alexandria Papers. I’m on
Facebook,
Pinterest, and
Instagram, too, but not as often as I’m on Twitter (I’m there every day). Talk to you next week.
Tweet
Share