By Seumas Gallacher
…in some of the science fiction movies, yer heroes and heroines are often endowed with the ability to clone themselves… to be more than one thing at the one time… to be in more than one location at the one time… and as yeez sat there in the kids’ section at the cinema, chomping away at yer crisps and slopping yer ice cream all over the seats, yeez thought, ‘right! that’ll do me!’…
…then, as yeez grew into older versions of yer youth, that wish would become more wistful… the realisation that being just one presence is hard enuff going sum’times… comes now the age of the internet… the era of the SOSYAL NETWURKS is inescapably upon on us… for we scribblers, a wee chink of light appears that tells us that p’raps those childhood fantasies of self-cloning may not be so unachievable after all… coz, here’s the thing… the distilled wisdom currently dictates that to have a better chance of ‘succeeding’ (there’s that daft WURD again, whatever it means to yeez as an author), yeez are recommended to clone yerselves… is that possible, Mabel?… you bet yer redolent rectum it is… first up, getting yer wee masterpieces written demands yer Writer persona… over time, along comes sum’thing else, called yer ’Author’s Voice’… the style and regular content that is recognisable as yer own, even if people don’t see yer name on the book cover… (fr’example, if yeez pick up any book by Charlie Dickens and start reading it in the middle, before long yeez would know it’s by Dickens… that’s the ‘Author’s Voice’)… then on to the ‘getting yerselves out there’ gig… lots of novelists and scriveners abhor this bit… being ‘present’ on the internet in a plethora of guises.. Twitter-ing, Facebook-ing, Google+-ing, LinkedIn-ing, Stumbleupon-ing, any-other-bluudy-netwurking-yeez-can-find-ing, …and prob’ly most vital of all of these, Blogging… in all of that chattering, communicating, networking, yer ‘Author’s Brand’ develops… yer SOSYAL NETWURK presence is key to yer ‘Author’s Brand’ recognition on the Web… (yer unique distinctive personality, or whatever version yeez choose to display of it as such)… so, as a quill-scraper, are yeez an Author?… are yeez a Voice?… are yeez a Brand?… yes!… yes!… and yes!… yeez are the composite of all of that to the outside readers and writers’ universe… the fantasy sci-fi is possible… beam me up Scottie!… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…
