WordPress and Censorship.

I have been on WordPress, and have blogged here ever since Blogger annoyed me enough to abandon my Blogger blog to start one on WordPress. 

I am a believer in free speech. Not because I want to swear at people— I DO swear, in my own barnyard, usually when I step in some ’S’ or see an animal F-ing with the wrong female. But I try to talk civilized around regular people. Nor because I want to talk about S-E-X in front of the public, including other people’s children. I have as dirty a mind as anyone, but honestly, why should I share? Everyone interested probably has a dirty mind of his own, why should I degrade myself to entertain others? You should all think up your OWN impure thoughts.

But we live in a world where anything can be worthy of censorship. Last election cycle in the US, asking the wrong things about the election results made the Facebook gods mad. Lately I got a link taken down because it gave explicit instructions on how to make healthy home-made baby formula. Oh, the horror!

I heard from a writer friend, Jon Del Arroz, about a woman who wrote a book with a ‘black’ main character. This woman, apparently, identifies as ‘white.’ So she got cancelled. 

When you can be censored for anything and everything even the possible color of your skin, real writers stand up for freedom. But, not so loud. We don’t want to be cancelled prematurely if we can help it.

I have some friends who use Substack, including authors Declan Finn and Rachel Nichols. When I went to the Substack site, I was afraid they might be kind of ‘woke,’ but I haven’t heard of anyone getting censored like they are on Facebook or Twitter.

I have never had a post taken down on WordPress. Once, when I wrote a post examining whether Mohammed was a false prophet, WordPress got a complaint which they passed on to me, suggesting I might like to modify my post. I did nothing, they did nothing.

But I don’t trust that will be true forever. After all, Twitter was once free enough that a certain US president had an account there. 

My new Substack newsletter, at the moment, is taking the place of my MailChimp newsletter which I didn’t use often enough. You can subscribe to my newsletter, get the posts there in your email inbox, and read or delete them at your leisure. 

I hope you will at least take a look at my Substack newsletter— it’s at  https://nissaannakindt.substack.com . And think about your own internet presence. Are you at the mercy of one big ‘woke’ corporation? If you are, no matter how compliant you are, you can be cancelled at any moment, for reasons that may not make sense, if you are even given a reason. Expand your reach a little. Be in more places than one. Until you get world famous, the censors won’t trouble to ban you everywhere at once. Dance between the raindrops. It’s a way to be a little more free.

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Follow me on Gab, a free-speech Facebook/Twitter alternative:  https://gab.com/nissalovescats

Why Go on MeWe? #freespeech #censorship

Why go on MeWe, an alternate and more free-speech-oriented social medium? Imagine this scenario.

You have a new book coming out and you are trying get the word out to your fans. You usually use Facebook. But, surprise! You’ve just got suspended from Facebook.

What did you do? You don’t have to do much. You said an ordinary think that half the people in the country might say, or shared a meme with it, or quoted the wrong Bible verse, or you commented the wrong comment on someone else’s post like the above. I have heard of grandmothers getting suspended or banned, even though Facebook is their main way of staying in touch with grandchildren and other relations.

That’s a good reason not to depend on the pro-censorship social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pintarest) and build up something up off the reservation.

My own chosen alternative media are MeWe and Gab. Both have their problems. And one major thing we writers have as a problem is that it’s hard to get some of our fans to follow us to an alternative social media. But Facebook, for one, seems to be out to chase away its user base with their constant attempts to control the conversation about a stolen election, a vaccine that doesn’t work, and about ‘extremism.’

Since many use their MeWe (or Gab) as a backup, I think we need a greater number of contacts on an alternate than on our pro-censorship media accounts.

I have:

431 Facebook friends.

1404 Twitter followers.

194 MeWe contacts.

172 Gab followers.

To get started on MeWe: open an account, using your real name or pen name— whichever you use for writing. Put up a profile picture and a cover photo like on on other social media.

Join groups. Most groups have the problem that people post stuff— often off-topic spam— and then run away. Don’t be like that. Interact with what other people post in a friendly way. Do that for a few days in each group. And when you make your first post, don’t make it a book spam! Instead, ask a question for other people to respond to. Be a group nurturer, not a group spammer.

Here are some groups I am in:

Heinlein’s Rules for Writers (I’m the admin)

Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

Christian Speculative Fiction Writers

Space Opera Writers (no promos)

MilSciFi

And you can always use ME for your first MeWe contact: https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

The biggest hint— use MeWe every single day that you use ANY social media. Use MeWe first. Post links to every blog post you make there. Post a little something every time you visit MeWe. Share memes, but also say stuff for yourself— and not all book spam. Have an ‘author persona’ that’s interesting to follow— or weird, or funny, or angry about crooked politicians or anti-Christian elements of society, or anti-semitism.

OK, as working writers does that mean we have to give up Facebook and Twitter in protest of censorship? Or boycott Kindle Direct Publishing even though it’s a major income source? No. We can still make our money off the pro-censorship forces. My own blog posts get posted automatically to my Twitter through a trick of WordPress. (They promise to do the same for Facebook, but that doesn’t work and I’d have to revive my almost-dead FB author page.)

What about you? Are you on MeWe? Please share your link so I can make a contact request to you. If you have other free-speech social media to recommend, let us know about it.

Switching from Scrivener to Evernote

In happier, less poverty stricken days I was a Scrivener user. I bought the Scrivener version for Windows, and when I bought a second-hand Mac, I bought the Mac version as well. I liked it, though I also liked the ‘YWriter’ I had used before I got Scrivener.

Then came last fall. My internet service for my computer was through Dishnet, and I didn’t have the money to pay the bill, so they cut me off, so I really couldn’t pay the bill because I paid online.

My Scrivener could not back up to Dropbox, so everything I wrote was subject to being lost forever in the event of computer death.

My only internet access was through the limited amount of data I had monthly on my cell phone.

I had downloaded Evernote to my computer and cell phone before. There were things I didn’t like about Evernote. I once composed a blog post on Evernote, and in the process of cutting and pasting it to WordPress there was a glitch and the whole blog post was lost. I had to write it again from memory.

But in this new age of universal censorship, I wasn’t happy about trusting my writing to WordPress alone. I wanted a backup copy. So, Evernote for cell phone.

The nice thing about Evernote is that there are versions for different devices, plus an online version that you can use on any computer as long as you remember your log in information.

Also, I can write into Evernote on my cell phone even when data is turned off. I presume it will just sync with the other versions when I get connected.

I created notebooks for blogging and writing, and I make tags so that each blog post or story part can be found.

It’s hard to type into a cell phone when you are used to using a keyboard, so I spent 12 dollars on a keyboard that links to my cell phone. I am typing with that keyboard right now. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works.

The monthly data on my cell plan is a limit. I want to go to the next most expensive cell plan which has unlimited data, but I couldn’t find out how to do that on my cell phone. I may have to use computers at the public library to do that— if they don’t discriminate against unmasked people.

For writing, I’m planning to post short stories on Wattpad. Wattpad is not a great community— I’ve been told that ‘Christian fiction’ is biased because it excludes Muslims— but I know some real writers there like Karina Fabian.

I can also use Canva from my cell phone, so my Wattpad stories will have covers, although those covers will suck.

Evernote is not as good a writing tool as Scrivener. Scrivener can even compile your work into an ebook file that Smashwords and Kindle will accept. But Evernote is what I have to work with right now.

The hard part is transcribing things from my Scrivener files to Evernote. I have to type these things into Evernote word for word. I keep thinking of ways to get my internet reactivated to spare me this chore. But I have to tough it out and type, type, type.

What about you? Have you used Evernote? What did you think of it? Have you had to make any adjustments to your writing practice because of lack of money? How have you powered on with your writing in spite of troubles?

Living In An Age of Horribly Bad Indie Fiction

Not so long ago, there was no internet and the only way to get a book published so the public could find it was to go through a traditional publisher who thought the book might sell. Some of those books didn’t, but they at least had sentences in readable English and some hint of a story.

Now with NaNoWriMo and eBook publishing, people who have never even read a book even when ordered to do so in school can participate in NaNo, throw enough word-shaped letter combos on a page to complete a word count goal, and run the result through Kindle Direct Publishing and have it appear as a book for sale without anyone having to read it first.

And that’s what the more competent Indie authors have to compete with. Scads of not-really-novels that make our potential readers wary of any fiction not vetted by a publishing house.

At the same time, traditionally published fiction is going down the crapper of wokeness/political correctness. I read one novel in which a male character who didn’t even need to exist for story reasons was given a ‘husband’ for non-virtue signalling reasons, and another in which a woman-of-action sci-fi character is fretting about what pronoun to use when thinking about (non-telepathic) asexual aliens, and decides to go with made up fake pronouns. Nonsense like this weakens stories, but major publishers seem to care less about that than they care about Leftist conformity.

The challenge for Indie authors today is to find a way to show potential readers that our works are actual, readable fiction with stories in them, not just word salad. It’s hard work. We have to learn about real book marketing methods from good sources, not just imitate a hopeless book spammer and hope for the best. You need to have samples of your work available to the questioning would-be reader. I have seen Indie authors of nonfiction use up the whole book sample on Amazon with a long intro telling what the book is about, so no one can check out any actual content for free. I never buy books like that.

You might post a short story or flash fiction piece on your author blog or elsewhere just to show evidence of your ability to actually write something a reader might enjoy. Or submit short stories to anthologies. Some writers who do novels in series like to make the first novel in a series available as a free eBook.

This is necessary, because people will not just trust you because you say you can write. You have to ‘audition’ for the role of author these days.

But the good news is that if you learn to tell an interesting story, even if you make mistakes along the way, you will start finding people who enjoy the kind of stories you want to tell.

Writing Book Promotions for Social Media

I admit it– I got started on social media all those years ago to have a way to promote books. Though what I’ve seen of most book promotions on social media make me reluctant to do it.

Promoting your books through promos on social media says some things about you as a writer. It says you are probably self-published or very-small-press published, that your books don’t sell as well as you’d like, and that you have money woes enough that you are trying to get ‘free advertising’ on social media.

If you post clumsy or cheesy book promos, the likely conclusion is that you are not a good writer. If you feel the need to do book promos, make them good ones!

Social media is for communicating in a personal way. If you are not James Patterson, don’t post something like an objective ad James Patterson’s publisher would spend money on.

When I have purchased books after having seen them mentioned on social media, I don’t pick any old books. I pick books of authors I have a personal connection with on a social medium. Be yourself, be relatable!

Another important point is to give specific details about the book in question. Posting your possibly not-so-great book cover plus a buy link is not enough.

Randy Ingermanson recommends that you come up with an appealing one-sentence description of your book. I’d suggest writing many, and keeping the best.

Your book description must be specific. If you are not sure what ‘specific’ is, look that word up in a dictionary. You don’t want a book description that fits hundreds of other books.

Your book description should give a reader a clue about what genre or subgenre a book is. But don’t be afraid to add the specific words. Some people won’t consider your book if they mistakenly think it is a murder mystery and not a paranormal romance.

Book price matters are much less of a draw these days. It doesn’t matter if your eBook is free this week if you are a poor writer.

Your social media accounts shouldn’t be about you advertising at people. It should be a way for you to make connections with other people. You should be posting loads of non-book-promo things on your social media accounts, if you want to draw enough of a following to sell a book or two that way.

First steps on MeWe, Parler and Gab

Since Twitter &Facebook have gone into full-fascist mode to influence a US election, many writers, bloggers and influencers have lost trust and sought for backup social media, if only in case of an emergency– like getting banned for no apparent reason when you have a new book out.

Step one is to open an account. MeWe, Parler and Gab are all free. Choose your user name with care. If you have a day job in a sensitive environment, you may not be able to use your real name. A pen name works for writers. A nom du guerre works for others. Something memorable, anyway.

Next, you need a photo of yourself or avatar. I like something with a face for a profile picture. When I joined Parler, I used a picture of my kitten Kos before I figured out how to change it.

I use an old, black & white photo of myself at age 4. I’m weird that way. It doesn’t reveal my current age or weight.

I used to use different profile pictures for different accounts or FB pages, but now I’m unifying to the one picture everywhere. It helps people find me.

Your self description should mention that you are a writer, blogger, Martian ambassador, whatever you are.

Should you hint at things like your political or religious affiliations? It can attract like-minded people, but repel others. If your politics or faith are mentioned a lot in your work, it’s probably best. But if your work is neutral on these controversial things, you may keep your social media neutral as well.

Next, friends/contacts. You need lots. Remember, lots of people don’t check out their alt social media accounts every day.

You might ask on FB or Twitter if your friends there are on the alt medium. Once you find a few, check out your friends’ contact list and send friend requests to anyone you recognize.

Also, post something. Almost anything except naked pictures or death threats. People will check out what you have posted before they accept your contact request.

I participate in #MeWeMondays where I do stuff on MeWe on Mondays and mostly stay off the fascist social media. I may be doing that on Thursdays as well, because of a suggestion from a friend.

Be faithful. It took us years to build up FB and Twitter accounts. Success won’t come on the although social media right away. I’m concentrating on my MeWe at the moment, but intend to build up my Parler and Gab also. Look for me under NissaAnnakindt on MeWe and Parler, and @nissalovescats on Gab.

Please drop a comment with your social media handles— let’s follow each other.

The Great Facebook Exodus

Facebook has done itself in. In September they made a dreadful new Facebook that you can’t get away from, and forced it on everyone. In October, there are rumors that they will retroactively ban people. My guess is that my conservative or libertarian friends are more likely to get banned than my foul-mouthed stalkers. 

I’ve been annoyed by Facebook for a while because they use what I post on Facebook to pick which ads to throw at me. When I mention my diabetes, I get flooded with ads for diabetes gimmicks. When I mention my low-carb, ketogenic diet, I get flooded with keto gimmicks. You don’t want to know what happened when I mentioned I had an appointment with a kidney doctor.

I’ve never been banned by FB even though I’ve expressed opinions I hate. I only had one post taken down, and that was because I mentioned my stalker, asking people to pray for him. FB likes my stalker more than it likes me, I guess.

I’ve had MeWe and Gab accounts for some time now. I did Gab when a lot of people from the Conservative/Libertarian Fiction Alliance recommended it, and I started on MeWe when the CLFA group migrated there from MeWe.

MeWe seems dull, but I have fewer friends there and a lot of the friends I have there are only there part-time. I have found when I do more things, like comment on posts from pages, I get more interactions. Posting on MeWe is important. I try to post my blog posts onto my timeline, or in some cases in an appropriate group.

Gab has strong free speech policies, but it has a minority of troublesome troll users. Many of the trolls are political extremists of one type or another. Others are ‘88s’— they use the code 88 to signal their sympathies with the NeoNazis or KKK. I dislike it when trolls try to bully me. Which is why it is good that you can block people.

For writers and bloggers, I think it’s important to look into Facebook alternatives. What if FB takes down YOUR page or account overnight? It is only prudent to have a backup. Though I think FB is catching wise. Today a number of people posted links to their MeWe profiles or groups. And when I clicked on the links on my cell phone, MeWe wanted me to sign in again. Even though I have the MeWe app and used it earlier in the day. That didn’t used to happen. 

Join me on MeWe: : https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

Be sure and add a link to your own MeWe profile in a comment, if you want more MeWe friends.

Preaching To or At Catholics Online

Jesus. He’s a Friend of mine.

I am a former Protestant (Presbyterian, Lutheran) who is now a convert to the Catholic church. And lately I’ve noticed something that bothers me. There are Protestant/Evangelical preachers or would-be evangelists who troll Catholics in the comments section of various posts on Facebook and MeWe, and I have also noticed at least 2 who have joined Catholic groups under false pretenses, don’t interact with the group, and post long, long sermons, clearly Evangelical, in those forums. In one group a guy was posting sermon-videos at a rate of one a minute for a while. Another fellow posted the exact same sermons in two groups, one Catholic, one about Christians who support Israel. That sermon mentioned neither Catholicism nor Israel.

I am a firm believer in the idea that throwing sermons at the unwilling is not a way to win over hearts and minds. Nor is calling Catholics or other non-you Christians ‘hell-bound’ going to do the trick. Other Christians are mostly as convinced of the truth of their branch of Christianity as the online-preacher is about his.

And being insulting isn’t too convincing. Since I have a controversial, pro-man/woman-marriage page on Facebook, I have a lot of ‘athiests’ calling me a crazy liar and calling my disabled kitten ugly, and somehow those insults never made me doubt my faith. Nor want to become that kind of ‘athiest.’ If I lost my faith I would be an atheist— properly spelled— and I would still be civil to other human beings, because that approach is better. I can’t imagine the beloved writer C. S. Lewis, during his atheist youth, insulting other people’s disabled kittens to spread the atheist nonfaith.

What if these fire-breathing Protestant/Evangelicals had instead joined the Catholic group, made 10 encouraging and denomination-neutral comments for every one that might be perceived as being a bit non-Catholic, and had never posted any long sermons at all but just done a little ‘seed-planting?’

I believe in is seed planting. You can plant seeds of faith, and trust the Lord to bring the harvest. Yes, I know, Jesus preached long sermons like the sermon on the mount. But you are not Jesus. Jesus also spoke in parables— short illustrations— and we don’t know for sure how often He used the one method rather than the other. 

If you honestly think Catholics are ‘hell-bound,’ using an approach that will give the Catholic in question one more story about how Evangelicals/Protestants are hateful of Catholics is not effective. That’s how you get Catholics who question whether Evangelicals/Protestants can even be saved enough to get to heaven.

You want to save some Catholics? Do this: Buy a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a Bible with the Deuterocanonical books (Apocrypha), and get the little leaflet from CHResources on how to read through the whole Bible and Catechism in a year, and do it in a year. Next step: get a good book by a Catholic apologist that explains why Catholics believe the things we do, such as ‘The Catholic Verses’ by former Protestant Dave Armstrong, and read it. 

Then you will be equipped to go out amongst Catholics, knowing what they really believe, and plant seeds of what you think are the essentials of the Christian faith. Be encouraging, kind and loving. You may find after your studies that you no longer believe that getting Catholics to doubt their faith and leave their Church is your goal. Perhaps you will think it’s enough to lovingly encourage Catholics to draw closer to Christ and to the Bible, even if they stay Catholic. 

My personal belief— and I’m just a laywoman not a priest, pastor or bishop— is that God wants us to follow Jesus in the best way we know how, and even if we are in the ‘wrong’ church and believe false doctrines God still wants us in heaven if at all possible. I do believe my Catholic church has the correct and Biblical teachings, but I know there are also people who don’t believe like I do and who love the Lord. Let’s ignore the sad Christian divisions and recognize one another as fellow believers when we can. 

 

The ‘Cult’ of Imposing Writing Rules on Others, IWSG

One thing insecure writers so often do is get on a mad search for absolute writing rules and then proceed to impose those rules on other insecure writers— whether asked for feedback or not.

This is a post in the Insecure Writers’ Support Group blog hop. Learn more at: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

Some people support the rule about ‘no clichés’ by condemning every actual fantasy element in a fantasy novel as ‘cliché.’ No dragons, no elves, no vampires, no magic rings… no readers, because fantasy novel readers like books with fantasy elements in them, even though they have seen these things before. 

Some people like to complain about ‘head-hopping,’ or shifting the point-of-view during the scene. It IS an amateur move to shift point-of-view accidentally or in a confusing way. But author Stephen King wrote a scene where the reader starts off in the head of a bad guy on a shooting spree, shifts to a frightened observer who is the next to get shot dead, and then moves back to the point-of-view of the shooter. Does this make Stephen King an amateur hack-writer who will never be published? No, it makes him a skilled writer who is too experienced to bow to a lot of absolute amateur-writer rules.

Our need for rules dates back to our very early days of being able to read or write. When teacher admonished us that the word ‘cats’ must not be spelled ‘ka777z,’ it was wise of us to obey that rule if we wanted others to be able to read our childish little attempts at writing sentences. 

But we kept on learning more and more, and I hope we will all keep on learning more about writing until we die. There are very few absolute rules other than the ‘traffic signals’ of correct spelling, grammar and punctuation that make other people able to make sense of our work. Imagine if Jeff Lindsay had gone to a bunch of rule-oriented writers and explained his idea for the Dexter novels. A serial killer who’s a blood spatter analyst and the ‘hero’ of the series? You can’t do that! Lead characters need to be— at least more moral than someone that gets a thrill out of making other people dead. But Lindsay did pretty well with the Dexter thing after all.

The point I have to make is we have to develop our writing confidence enough to ignore the people who want to impose various rules on our work. If we are writing ‘OK-enough’ fiction and not groupthinking it to death through critique groups, we can ignore alleged writing rules. And if our writing skills have a long way to go, no amount of slavish rule-obeying will save us. (Hint— if you fear your writing is ‘not good enough,’ read more books. Write more novels and short stories. Your skills will improve.)

“Why is my writing broken?”

A lot of writers out there are desperately searching for a critique group, or beta readers, or even a ‘content editor’ to hire, to get some feedback on their work. Many go so far as to post their writing or writing ideas on an internet group and then get frantic when random strangers on the internet are too critical, which means ‘my writing sucks,’ or not critical enough, which means ‘my writing sucks so much that people feel sorry for me.’

This is a post in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop. To connect with other Insecure Writers, follow this link: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

What we are looking for in these cases is validation, and our search for validation is usually based on ideas like this: My writing is broken. My writing is broken because I am broken, and so therefore I can never fix my own work myself. Other people— any other people, even strangers on the internet— are not broken so that any thing they say about my work is valid and any criticism they make must trigger yet another rewrite. Because I’m broken and they are not.

Why oh why do so many of us think like that? Well, think back to the days when you were first learning to read/write and were writing down words and phrases for the first time. When you showed your first written sentences to a grownup, that grownup often couldn’t make out what you meant to say. Perhaps because the word ‘cat’ is spelled with fewer sevens than you used. Or some of your letters looked more like other letters than the ones intended. Only a grownup could show you which things needed to be fixed at that baby stage of your learning. 

But now, you are not a little kid any more. You probably can spell many words correctly, or you know how to use a dictionary and spell-check to fix mistakes. You can either write legibly or you use a computer to write so no one needs to know how vile your handwriting is. But inside you is still that tiny learning kid that expects his work to be wrong, and broken, and in need of grown-up fixing. 

Here is the reality— your writing is not ‘broken’ and you are not ‘broken.’ You know things and have skills you didn’t formerly have. And you can learn new stuff any time. If you think your characters are weak, you can read a good book on writing better characters. If you make a lot of typing errors, you can get a typing program and practice every day. 

Other people are not better than you at everything. Just because some near-stranger in your critique group says you can’t write a book about a serial killer who solves crimes because he likes to murder other serial killers doesn’t mean you can’t write that. Just because someone says ‘Amanda’ is a stupid name for a character doesn’t mean you have to change it to Agnes. Believe in your own writing ideas more than you believe in that of others. Because they can’t see inside your head and write your story for you, any more than you can see into another writer’s head.

Also, when you learn for yourself to correct flaws in your work, you learn to see the difference between a real flaw and just something that some random person didn’t like. Spelling ‘cat’ as ‘ka777’ is a real flaw (except perhaps in avant-garde poetry,) making your starship captain a talking cat is more a matter of taste. 

I think sometimes that the main difference between the ‘real’ writers and the eternal beginners is not in skill or talent, but merely in the fact that ‘real’ writers believe in themselves and their work— enough, at least, to keep going and to submit or publish their works. I have read big whoppers of mistakes in early works of big-name writers— a writer who created a metal-poor world in which the hay was still kept in hay bales, implying the existence of hay balers which require lots of metal to make. Or the very young writer who implied that a 30-year-old character was old and decrepit. These mistakes made it into print, and these writers made a living in writing anyway. 

So don’t fear mistakes so much you feel ‘broken!’ Your ‘broken’ writing may attract readers that love your work and want more.