My Memory Book

Posted on December 5, 2017 ·

For nearly a decade, my memories were kept on Facebook. I bet yours are there too—on Facebook, on Instagram, somewhere online, or on a screen anyway. Or maybe you’re better organized than I am and you’ve had your pictures printed and put into photo albums over the years, actual photo albums that you can hold in your hands and page through. Those are important; growing up, I never tired of looking through our family photo albums.

I left Facebook a year and a half ago, but I never deleted my account. It was like a safe in a dark closet, hidden and storing many of my favorite moments from 2009 to 2016—my wedding day, my daughter’s first piano recital, my son’s first day of kindergarten, the day I became a published author. Sometimes I’d think, I have to log back on and download my history, but it didn’t seem too urgent, or maybe I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to log back off.

A few weeks ago, I decided it was time.  I reactivated my account and within minutes had my entire history in a zip file. I copied the file to a flash drive and to my daughter’s laptop, just in case, and then settled in to revisit the past.

But it was all in pieces. The photos were in one folder, status updates in another, and no comments to be found. Even if I knew how to piece it all back together so it resembled my old Timeline, it would still be on a screen, and I wanted it in print. Surely there was a company out there who did that?

There is. The company is called My Social Book, and the book they put together for me is everything I’d hoped for. Not only does it include photographs with dates and captions, but all of my status updates with everyone’s comments, and even my comments to their comments (and emojis!).

I was a pretty conservative user, so my entire seven years of activity on Facebook amounted to only 344 pages and $88. When you connect My Social Book to your account, you’ll know almost instantly how many status updates and photos you’ve posted since joining, and how many pages that generates. You can choose what goes into your book, or you can just include everything. There wasn’t anything I regretted posting or that I wouldn’t want my children to see, so I opted for the latter. But if there are moments you’d rather not revisit, they’d be easy to filter out; the site is very user-friendly.

You also choose your cover. I picked a simple design, displaying the background and profile picture I’d used for years, so that looking at my cover is just like looking at my old Timeline, which is sweetly nostalgic. The entire process is incredibly easy; it took fifteen minutes, and within 2 weeks I had my book, and with it, the sense of relief at owning a print copy of these photos and memories being stored on a website that I have no control over. I really recommend doing this (it works for Instagram as well).

Here are some pictures of my social book. I am thrilled with the results–paging through it makes me inordinately happy, and I love that my family has these snapshots of our life at their fingertips. The only thing I noticed missing were status updates with links, but the more personal moments were good enough for me.

Each section begins with the most popular post for that time period.

How status updates with comments (and comments on comments) look.

How photo albums look.

Note: I wanted to get my Social Book ordered right away, so I didn’t play around much on the site or bother looking for discounts. I think you could definitely find a promo and save a few bucks on your order. And I’m sure there are lots of great features to customize your book. If you decide to order one, let me know how it turns out!

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A Year Without Facebook

Posted on May 11, 2017 ·

Image from Flickr by benstein

Last May, with a deep sense of relief, I quietly deactivated my Facebook account. Since that day one year ago, I have not logged back on. This is not a self-congratulatory post; I’m writing it because I know many people are overwhelmed with Facebook and have considered quitting it for good too, and if you’re one of them, I want to help if I can.

If you absolutely love Facebook or have never considered walking away because it’s a great way to stay connected to distant family and old friends or you need it for your job or you are too involved with groups that only operate there etc., it’s fine. You don’t need to justify that to anyone. This post isn’t for you.

If, however, you often find yourself weighing the pros and cons of the site and wondering if you could do without it because most of the time you actually hate it or you hate the way you feel about yourself and/or people you like/love when spending time on it, this post is for you.

Here’s what to expect when you break up with Facebook:

At first it will be surprisingly easy, the way quitting most addictions is easier in the first few days when your resolve is strong. And then it will get harder, because the new quiet that was such a luxury begins to feel a little lonely. You wonder what you’re missing. You wonder if you’ve made a mistake. This feeling comes and goes, but—I promise—eventually it stays gone.

At first you’ll find you have so much more time to do the things you love—reading, crafting, taking long walks in the evening—and then something else will start to creep into those moments, like another social media site or television or just the Internet itself. You’ll have to work to stay mindful and protect that time, but it will never be as hard as it was before.

At first you might believe that all your “true” friendships will continue on a regular basis once you ditch Facebook. They won’t. Not all of them. People are busy and you’re going to lose touch with some of them, and this doesn’t mean they’re not real friends. They’d probably be there for you if you really needed them, but not everyone is the kind of friend you’ll go to lunch with once a week to make up for the fact that you’re no longer interacting daily on Facebook. This is fine.

Eventually you’ll feel immense relief at all the things you did miss out on, because you’ll realize they’re not the important things. You’ll learn to like people again because you no longer know everything about them, nor do you feel obligated to know. You’ll feel so much better about yourself because of the fact you feel better about others.

You’ll realize you’re setting a good example for your kids by cutting your screen time and reclaiming some of your privacy, and you’ll be doing them a favor by giving them back some of their privacy too. You’ll concentrate better. You’ll learn again to treasure some memories just for yourself.

I still miss Facebook sometimes. I miss sharing funny and sweet moments from my life with others not in my immediate family. I miss looking back through years of memories the way I’d page through an old photo album. I miss those few dozen or so friends whose posts always made me smile, or laugh, or think about something in a different way. Some of them are people who I connect with in real life, some are on Twitter.

And for those I lost a connection with, I have to weigh that admittedly sad loss against the memories of the constant flood of memes and outrage and racism and politics and fake news and conspiracy theories and oversharing and bickering and clickbait and ugliness and the flat-out sadness of it all. Is it worth it? For me, it was not. I hope, if you’re struggling with the decision, I’ve made it a little easier one way or the other for you to decide whether it’s worth it to you.

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The Secret to Social Media–One Year Later

Posted on August 8, 2014 ·
Image from Flickr by mkhmarketing

Image from Flickr by mkhmarketing

This month I’m celebrating a birthday. No, not mine! What are you thinking? I turned 39 in July, and I’m not ready to turn 40 quite yet. 😉

What this month marks is one year of blogging, tweeting, pinning, and goodreading, although my computer tells me that’s not a word. In one of my earliest blog posts, The Secret to Social Media, I wrote about my initial reactions to each of the following four sites, and in this post I’ll tell you what’s changed a year later.

Pinterest

Then: As a writer, I’d forgotten the pure joy of expressing emotions solely through visual imagery. With Pinterest, you can create boards that reflect the things you care about, and you never have to say a word.

Now: Yep, sounds lovely, but Pinterest was the one to go. I still have an account and I’ll probably revisit it sometime, but it’s just not possible to juggle five or six social media accounts. I knew this going in, but I figured the one to fall would be…

Goodreads

Then: What I love most about this site, so far, is I have one place to list my “to be read” books. Now I can collect all the scraps of paper, sticky notes, and electronic lists buried in my phone and shelve those titles in Goodreads.

Now: For a long time, this was all I could do on Goodreads. The problem is that it’s not a user-friendly site. But on January first, I resolved to read a book each week for 2014. Goodreads came in handy for this resolution because of their Reading Challenge—where you publicly declare a reading goal for the new year. Anyone can view your progress. That was the motivation I needed to stay on task, so I dug my heels in and learned how to navigate the site. Now I truly love Goodreads, and I’m only three books behind my goal.

Twitter

Then: This was supposed to be my favorite, because that’s what everybody says. I do like Twitter—there’s something about the immediacy of it that’s freeing—but it’s confusing.

Now: Surprise! Guess which social media site is my favorite? Twitter did take time to understand—in fact, it would be months before I caught on. But once I got comfortable jumping into conversations with total strangers, I met some amazing people. Most are generous—Twitter is all about sharing and discovering. Many are also fall-down funny; I’ve laughed myself to tears on more occasions than I can count. The only downside is that it can be a distraction.

Blogging

Then: My personal favorite. This has been a shock—I worried about the time it would take to blog, I worried no one would read my blog . . . now I know it’s about perspective.

Now: I admit I’ve lost that perspective several times. There’s no question that blogging can feel frustrating because it is time-intensive and once in a while seems as though you’re talking to yourself. To ease that frustration, I made some adjustments:

  1. I no longer spend several hours on each post. Yes, I did that. Those early posts were drafted on Mondays and heavily edited throughout the week, then published on Fridays, which could take all morning.
  2. I stopped worrying excessively about typos.
  3. I started posting less frequently. In the beginning, I posted weekly, but twice a month works better for me and I actually get more visitors that way. I think you have to give people a chance to miss you. 🙂

One great thing about blogging is looking back on old posts; it was sweet to read the first one—written a few days after I received my contract. I was so unsure of what lay ahead: I didn’t know what the book title would be, or what the cover would look like, or when it would get published. All I knew back then was a dream had come true, and that was enough.

Oh, and the secret to social media? It hasn’t changed: give yourself permission to have fun.

(See the original post HERE.)

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Dear Writer on Twitter: Don’t Be a B*!#*

Posted on March 7, 2014 ·
Image from Flickr by chrisinplymouth

Image from Flickr by chrisinplymouth

I love writers, and I love Twitter. But I’m getting tired of writers on Twitter. Why?

Because writers tend to brand themselves so successfully they become nothing more than their brands.

And that’s sad, right? None of us is one dimensional. When a person is passionate about a topic to the point of obsession, it can be sweetly endearing. But there’s a difference between someone reaching out to others for a shared sense of belonging and someone selling their brand, and the difference is always obvious on Twitter.

Honestly, I’m not all that interesting. If Facebook broke down the subject of my posts into percentages, I’m sure 90% would be about my children. So I hate to judge others for being boring. 😉

But when writers only tweet about their writing, or the subject of their writing, or links to other authors’ writing in the hopes that those authors will then tweet links to their writing, it’s beyond boring, it’s self-defeating. These tweets are just thinly veiled commercials, and people tune them out.

A blog should be focused—readers are coming to you for a particular reason. But Twitter is a conversation, and it’s much more fun when the conversation is varied. Pick three things besides your writing that you love, do a search for those subjects and connect with others who share your interests. I reached out to people passionate about writing and reading, but also to those tweeting about parenting, baseball, and my favorite bands. The music fans are the most fun. 🙂 What drags down my Twitter feed are the writers.

Please stop selling yourself short. Stop selling yourself period. I get it—you’re a writer. Hey, me too! That’s probably why we connected in the first place. Now do us both a favor and talk about something else.

I promise not to unfollow you if you sometimes post about your cat, or the sunset, or how great it felt just now when a song you love came on the radio at exactly the moment you needed to hear it. Be inspiring, be interesting, be funny, be vulnerable, be nerdy, be cool, be yourself.

Don’t be a brand.

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One Simple Resolution

Posted on January 3, 2014 ·
Image from Flickr by shutterhacks

Image from Flickr by shutterhacks

My New Year’s resolution has nothing to do with writing. Well—not directly, anyway. It has to do with reading.

About 2 ½ years ago, my cell phone died. I visited the Verizon store, tugging on phones attached to cables, tapping screens, pushing buttons, looking for the perfect match. When I found it, I waved the customer service rep over and told him I’d like “this one, without the data plan.”

“Um—this one doesn’t come without a data plan.”

“Well, which one can I get that doesn’t have a data plan?”

“You mean—you just want a talk/text phone?” He seemed dubious. This was apparently not a common request.

“Yes, just a regular phone. Without the Internet.”

He steered me to a lonely corner, where a sad little flip phone awaited, like the orphan who knows he will never be chosen.

I ended up with an iPhone. A $30 data plan. The world at my fingertips. And, just as I’d feared, an irresistible, time-sucking device. Coveted moments at night–when my son has drifted off to sleep and I lie burrowed in quiet comfort–used to be reserved for reading novels; now it was time spent scrolling through writerly blogs, parenting ezines, online literary magazines, Twitter feeds, Facebook, and Yahoo! News.

It’s still reading, I told myself. Essays, short fiction, very important news, advice, interviews, information.

But it’s not the same. There’s no substitute for reading books, and I’m not reading enough of them. It’s not my iPhone’s fault, or technology’s, or Twitter’s—it’s my fault. I’m horribly undisciplined when it comes to time management. My contract is up, and soon I may just go shopping for a feature phone. I hear they’re in demand lately.

As for my New Year’s resolution, I’ve committed to reading one book per week, starting with Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s January 1, two in the afternoon, and already I’m on chapter four. This should be an easy resolution to keep.

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The Secret to Social Media

Posted on August 16, 2013 ·

Writers love to rant about the (undignified! soul-sucking!) task of social media promotion. I’m sure at some point I’ve used those very words (blush).

But here’s the thing: when you stop thinking about it as promotion, and give yourself permission to have fun, it’s kind of, well, fun.

Of course, I just started; my Facebook account is four years old, but my Twitter, Goodreads, and Pinterest accounts (not to mention this blog) are babies.

It’s funny—now that I’ve figured out how to format a blog, scan Flickr for Creative Commons photos and attribute them correctly, and quell the anxiety of hitting “publish” without the validation of an editor, I find that blogging doesn’t take much time. What takes time is researching topics like

  • should fiction writers blog?
  • what should fiction writers blog about?
  • aren’t writers just blogging to other writers?
  • how do I keep my chocolate chip cookies from getting all crunchy around the edges?

Whoops, never mind that last one.

Anyway, if I’d applied those hours toward blogging, I could have started a year ago. And this article from The Write Life by Chuck Sambuchino silences the question of whether fiction authors need a web presence.

You’re supposed to ease into social media, but that’s what they say about gardening, too. And my family was so excited about our first, we bought an abundant, crazy mix of seeds and scattered them wherever we felt like it. That was our most fruitful garden; since then, we’re lucky to grow zucchini (and anyone can grow zucchini).

So I plunged in, and here’s my take so far:

Pinterest

Ah, I get it now. As a writer, I’d forgotten the pure joy of expressing emotions solely through visual imagery. I remember doing it as a child—with stickers on my school binders, magazine pages lining my bedroom walls and dreamy abstracts floating on my computer screen. With Pinterest, you can create boards that reflect the things you care about, and you never have to say a word.

Goodreads

What I love most about this site, so far, is I have one place to list my “to be read” books. Now I can collect all the scraps of paper, sticky notes, and electronic lists buried in my phone, and shelve those titles in Goodreads. Voila! A book lover’s dream.

Twitter

This was supposed to be my favorite, because that’s what everybody says. I do like Twitter—there’s something about the immediacy of it that’s freeing—but it’s confusing. I tried learning it before tweeting, but on Twitter it’s easier to learn by doing. There’s no real fear of judgment; people are just cool. And it moves so fast, no one’s going to hold it against you if you, like I did at first, respond instead of retweet, or whatever. It’s all good.

Facebook

After being on Twitter, Facebook feels like watching life in slow motion. But that has its moments.

Blogging

My personal favorite. This has been a shock—I worried about the time it would take to blog (see above), I worried no one would read my blog . . . now I know it’s about perspective. If you enjoy doing it, the rest is just icing. And since I enjoy writing (and am used to doing it for free), blogging doesn’t feel like wasting time at all.

Still, comments are nice 😉 Got one to share?

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