Keeping Quiet About Your Problems
Gawker has had a couple of pieces recently that have been making the rounds on the writers boards. One is about a New Yorker writer looking for donations to pay for rescuing his digital images from a crashed hard drive. The other concerns a writer who allegedly used a pseudonym to keep touting the glories of his own writing to Gawker.
It amazes me the types of habits and predilections a writer will advertise in public. The New Yorker popular music critic has this request for up to $5,000 in donations posted on his home page - and he wasn't going to send individual thanks to the donors, though he's willing to post an "honor roll" of those who got his data life together. How the hell does he think people in the industry, including his bosses, are going to see this? Here's a clue: corporations often do things like running background and credit checks to make sure employees or job applicants aren't going to be tempted to steal or sell off inside company information.
As for promoting via a fake email address, don't writers read news stories about authors getting outed for posting anonymous reviews on their own books? Do such people really not realize that they're not as clever as they think? That many people don't know how to uncover subterfuges unless the perpetrator is unusually skilled in technology?
But before you scoff as these displays, consider what you might be doing without realizing it. Have you ever posted on a writers' board asking whether you could get away with something that might be seen as in an ethical grey area? Ever asked about something that you wouldn't want an editor or client to know? Depending on the discretion of strangers is unwise, and you never know when that editorial client might also have access to the same board.
There's nothing wrong with being ignorant of one thing or another. (If there were, we'd all be in constant trouble.) There's nothing wrong with asking for help or in asking "dumb" questions. And there's no value in pretending to be more than you are, because the truth generally works its way out.
However, there is such a thing as being too forthcoming. You hopefully wouldn't go around telling everyone in sight about your problems in relationships, money, and self-control. Why ever would you do the same for professional weaknesses? Develop relationships with colleagues you can respect, learn which ones you can trust, and ask what you need to ask so you can learn to improve. But don't take out the online equivalent of full page ads showing you dressed in fool's motley. It's a way of building and promoting a questionable reputation ... which isn't smart business.
It amazes me the types of habits and predilections a writer will advertise in public. The New Yorker popular music critic has this request for up to $5,000 in donations posted on his home page - and he wasn't going to send individual thanks to the donors, though he's willing to post an "honor roll" of those who got his data life together. How the hell does he think people in the industry, including his bosses, are going to see this? Here's a clue: corporations often do things like running background and credit checks to make sure employees or job applicants aren't going to be tempted to steal or sell off inside company information.
As for promoting via a fake email address, don't writers read news stories about authors getting outed for posting anonymous reviews on their own books? Do such people really not realize that they're not as clever as they think? That many people don't know how to uncover subterfuges unless the perpetrator is unusually skilled in technology?
But before you scoff as these displays, consider what you might be doing without realizing it. Have you ever posted on a writers' board asking whether you could get away with something that might be seen as in an ethical grey area? Ever asked about something that you wouldn't want an editor or client to know? Depending on the discretion of strangers is unwise, and you never know when that editorial client might also have access to the same board.
There's nothing wrong with being ignorant of one thing or another. (If there were, we'd all be in constant trouble.) There's nothing wrong with asking for help or in asking "dumb" questions. And there's no value in pretending to be more than you are, because the truth generally works its way out.
However, there is such a thing as being too forthcoming. You hopefully wouldn't go around telling everyone in sight about your problems in relationships, money, and self-control. Why ever would you do the same for professional weaknesses? Develop relationships with colleagues you can respect, learn which ones you can trust, and ask what you need to ask so you can learn to improve. But don't take out the online equivalent of full page ads showing you dressed in fool's motley. It's a way of building and promoting a questionable reputation ... which isn't smart business.
Labels: clients, promotion, relationships, reputation, writers
posted by Erik Sherman | 7:35 AM
2 Comments:
"Have you ever posted on a writers' board asking
whether you could get away with something that might be seen as in an ethical
grey area? Ever asked about something that you wouldn't want an editor or client
to know? Depending on the discretion of strangers is unwise, and you never know
when that editorial client might also have access to the same board."
Erik, you know cases -- I know cases -- where messages posted to writers message boards (private boards!) were copied, pasted and forwarded to editors! In one instance (if my memory serves) a writer posted about an editor's unresponsiveness...and was shocked to receive an email from that editor the next day, referring to her message board post! Bottomline: what's public is public and what's private also may be public in Web 2.0
Absolutely - and to act as though that wasn't true is short-sighted, to say the least. What you put into print anywhere, in any form, should be words you can live by, because you're likely to be doing just that. Think of all the white collar criminal defendants who thought that email was a "safe" medium.
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