This is so not me. But it is the me I want to be.
Photo by Lanakila McNaughton, part of a
series of great photos here.
I hate to admit it, but I'm a lifelong nerd/teacher's pet. I am an easygoing, rule-following, non-wavemaking, non-stuff-starting conformist. It's been ages since I got in trouble for anything, much less was kicked out of anything.
So I was a little nonplussed recently when a couple of my shares got removed from a writing community I joined. They were not spam. They were not of the Notice Me/Buy My Book ilk. They were relevant (IMO) links on the craft of writing, with my brief comments as to why they might be found interesting by the community.
I'm a little embarrassed that I troubled them with inappropriate posts. But I'm also a little ticked. I went back and read their posts about what they did and didn't want submitted, and I can't for the life of me see why mine didn't pass muster. Particularly when I see some of the other posts flowing through unimpeded. The most amusing are the lame attempts to circumvent the community's 'no promotions' policy, such as this recent post:
"So far my free book promotion on Amazon has reached the rank of #169 overall and #4 in my genre (fantasy/epic). Is this pretty much par for the course in your experience with free books, or should I be excited?"
Oh, that's not self-promoting. No, not at all.
I dropped out of the community just to avoid any future misunderstandings. It was tempting to reach out to the admin for clarification and stay active in the group. But have you seen how many other writing and blogging communities I belong to? That would be like a drowning person asking the lifeguard to please add a little more water to the pool.
Still feeling all black-leather-jacket-and-motorcycle about my shares getting the boot. Wonder what I will get kicked out of today?
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