Neil Gaiman’s Facebook page introduces the author as someone who “will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down.” He nudges forward that dose of humility to share with his reader. Here is a post from May 29th with Neil at a book signing:
Look, I am reading
from the beginning of the new novel while having a beard. Do not watch if you want to be unspoiled...
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He completely humanizes himself. Under his personal interests, he lists his
wife first. Then “putting things down on
paper. Words, mostly.” This consistently humorous, puttering and
almost blundering yet quiet voice then goes on to list his dogs, where he may
have misplaced his cell phone, the comic book legal defense fund, and
bees. Neil presents himself as informal,
humble, fun, a little goofy, and passionate about writing. He is as consistent with posting new links as
he is with his sense of humor. New links
along with brief introductions from Neil sharing his blog, Tweets, adventures,
interviews, and event appearances are frequent.
He posts several times a week at the least, and there are multiple posts
per day on most days. His latest link
posted to Facebook “about an hour ago”:
About an hour ago
Backstage in the
control room at the #AFPsalon at bit.ly/TheAFPSalon. Starting soon.
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The #AFPsalon belongs to his wife, musician
Amanda Palmer (Amanda F*cking Palmer) where Neil performs readings along with
musical acts with her. Neil includes his
family often in his posts. He has several
daughters as well as pets that find their way into his posts. He shares his everyday life, helping ground
the extraordinary celebrity, allowing the readers to know him as if they were
there with him. Neil is social, engaging
on an equal footing, as well as natural.
Neil is also diverse. He indulges visitors with his life as a
father and husband. There is also
advocacy for human rights. This past
Sunday Neil shared a link for humanrightsturkey.org, helping spread awareness
and gathering followers and directing them towards assisting with aid:
Amnesty International
has a http://humanrightsturkey.org/ page
that has an excellent summary of whats going on in Turkey right now and what
you can do.
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He promotes other writers and
artistic expression. Also on Sunday,
Neil shared a link that helped publicize an art auction:
I pondered not
publicising this Auction, and going and picking up artwork by the likes of
David Mack and Michael Zulli for a song. There is amazing stuff here going
really cheaply, I think because nobody knows it exists. I am putting it up here
anyway...
http://www.32auctions.com/organizations/8185/auctions/9000
http://www.32auctions.com/organizations/8185/auctions/9000
Neil Gaiman finds a balance through
Facebook between promoting himself, his work, and sharing time with his family,
with readers and page visitors, all while presenting his life in common terms
with his fans in a comfortable fashion.
Several other writers besides Neil who
I follow and visit via Facebook are Michael Chabon and Margaret Atwood. All three share common threads and similar
voices in their work. Their Facebook
pages help distinguish them from Neil Gaiman.
Margaret Atwood’s page is updated
frequently. She shares links as often as
Neil that engage the reader and visitors.
However, I don’t get that warm feeling, that sense that we’re on equal
ground in the same way Neil gracefully presents himself. Her page doesn’t demonstrate diversity in the
scope that Neil does. However, along
with promoting her work, she provides links that discuss writing and philosophy
where she weighs in. Her page is
professional. What breaks through some
of this professionalism are the endearing and beautiful photographs of herself
throughout her career. In contrast to
Neil, the About section states that the author’s page is maintained by her
international publishers. That removes
her personality from it, and I’m left with only the photographs.
Michael Chabon’s page is also
maintained by his publisher, Harper Books.
Although there are many links that open to interviews, along with
pictures of Chabon smiling to visitors, the page contains only promotion for
his work. I noticed that the page is
only a year old, created in July of 2012.
Maybe he, or the publisher, just needs time to develop it more.
Neither Margaret Atwood or Michael
Chabon, although both just as incredible in their written work as Neil, do not
share the same online presence as Neil.
There really is no on quite like Neil himself.
Off to Mexico in the morning for a week. I can't wait to share my own new adventures with you then. Nos vemos mas tarde, mis amigos.
Grrrr, the photos didn't transfer! Anyone have suggestions for how to properly upload photos this way ... and while I have you here, how to transfer videos from my iPhone to the blog? I have all this great footage of the storm-shelter-in-a-van-down-by-the-river from the Oklahoma Tornadoes last month yet to show you.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great article full of good little tidbits.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I cannot help you with your technical issues, as I use window's applications and gadgets (like my HTC Windows 8x phone!), and I am completely inept with my girlfriend's iPhone 4s.
Thank you for sharing this blog.
I also have a question: Can we throw this link out to everyone in our circles like the notification I got for this link? If so, how?
Appreciated!
-Russ
Thanks Russ. Although I sort of lament the personable nature of an author maintaining their own website, I can see that there's something to be said for professional help. One caveat: beware of copy and paste. Where I've used it, I can see on the iPhone app where it changes the font and background color. Looks awful. I'll have to work on that some. As far as the Google+ feature,when I go to publish the finished blog, a text box pops up automatically (probably because the accounts are linked) and asks if I'd like to share with certain circles. It's an opportunity to broadcast, and so I clicked yes. Hope that helps. Looking forward to seeing your work, sir!
DeleteJust personal experience, but if you want to keep the text color, font, etc., it's easier to do this from Word, then copy and paste. As far as the pics, I think you would have better luck using a screen capture, then uploading them via the image loader. Also, the videos can be uploaded directly from YouTube on Blogger. Makes it easier. If you're handy with HTML code, there's an option for that as well. Don't know if this helps, but fingers crossed that it works out! :)
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