“Who has time to write?” by Gail Simone

The following Twitter commentary was shared with me by my writing partner, Joey Pinkney, and I found it so compelling and on point that I asked the writer of the commentary, Gail Simone, if I could post it to my blog.

I did screenshots of the entire commentary, instead of just embedding each tweet, because I want to make certain that even if Twitter goes offline for a few minutes, a few hours or forever that this commentary is still visible.

When I’m asking myself how am I going to make time to write, I will have this gem to come and read over and over and over again until I get it through my thick skull. Continue reading “Who has time to write?” by Gail Simone

Food for thoughts: Social media humiliation…

There’s another video making the rounds of social media where a step-mother decides to “discipline” her step-son for smoking marijuana by shaving the hair off the top part of his head and forcing him to repeat the current grade he’s in.

I will not post the video on my site, because I do not want to be another link in the chain of this particular child’s suffering. However, I did want to speak on this issue of using social media to shame children who misbehave.

It is one thing to discipline a child who is misbehaving. It is an entirely different thing to destroy a child’s spirit and sense of self-worth. That goes far beyond discipline into the realms of abuse.

Parents who take to social media to share with the world that their children are misbehaving are saying to their children, “This is not something you did. This is who you are.”

The child I mention above, who is being “disciplined” for smoking marijuana, may never smoke another joint in his life, but now he will have to live with this brand, for lack of a better word, because his parent decided that the whole world needed to know about his childhood indiscretion.

Once the incident is on the web, it will take many, many, many years for it to die. People will even download it to their personal storage so they can resurrect it later. It will continue to be played out over and over every time someone new stumbles on the video, and people who think the video is funny, or even laudable, will make sure to keep sharing it around and around.

College acceptance boards are using Google to research potential students. Creditors are searching social media networks to determine creditworthiness. Potential boyfriends/girlfriends are checking the web to see if they can filter out the psychos before getting involved with them.

Can you imagine one of the children in these videos, now an adult, sitting at a job interview trying to make his/her best impression, and having the interviewer burst out laughing and say, “I knew I recognized you! I saw a video on Facebook where your mom…” It may not have happened yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Some things need to remain private. Children have a right to be protected from public ridicule, and parents should not be the videographers of their children’s humiliation.

Food for Thoughts: Communing with the dead…

When people try to love and support you through whatever hardships are going on in your life, let them.

If you decide to close yourself off from them, they will have no choice but to keep on living life without you. When you’re ready to live again, and you want to reconnect with the people you care about most, be prepared to accept the void that has been created between you and them during your absence. You must simply accept the fact that you can only move forward from the present and start rebuilding your life from the moment you rejoin the living.

There’s no going back and making up the time that has been lost while you were communing with the dead.

What number of reviews should a book have before you consider it to have a solid reputation?

The eBooks I tweet about on my Twitter timeline and on the Twitter genre accounts I started meet a specific criteria that I decided was appropriate.

In my opinion, I tweet about highly-rated eBooks to help people wade through the abundance of eBooks available for free and for sale nowadays.

The following are the minimum requirements I came up with:

  • the eBook must be available on Amazon.com
  • the eBook must have a 4.5 out of 5 stars or better rating
  • the eBook must have at least forty-five (45) reviews

The first two criteria are non-negotiable, and the second one I’m firmly set on. If you’ve lost more than half a star, and you have over 45 reviews, then my opinion is that your book is not highly rated. Again, this is just my opinion, so it’s fine if you have a different opinion.

The point that I’m up in the air about is how many reviews should an eBook have before it is considered to have a solid reputation?

I mean, I have set the number at forty-five (45). My original threshold was fifty (50), but I lowered it to include those eBooks that were right on the cusp of 50 reviews.

I wonder, however, if the number should be higher or lower than 45.

What do you think?

Feel free to comment here or reply to the original tweet. I’d really like to know what other people think.