Being Chief Editor...

I was asked today, "What's it like. Being Chief Editor? Is it fun?"

Whoa... Slow down.

I was an editor before, in a time gone by. This is harder.

I was a publisher long, long ago. This is more difficult.

I was an author, edited, and published. This is more complicated.

I was a columnist, regularly. This is tough.

I've been there and done that, all of that. I am finding that being Chief Editor for 4RV Publishing makes me more aware of the lack of hours I have in a week and makes me pay more attention to what I type. Arrggghh!

I have many projects in the works from music I am composing, music I am arranging, music I am publishing, children stories I am writing, editing, and publishing, a photo studio to run, private chores around the house I share with my dogs, neighbors to help out, friends to learn about, Twitter to arouse, and of course assigning evaluations and editing for 4RV. Oh, and last, but not least, editing, final proofs, reproofs, re-edits, and more of both for 4RV.

Through the process I have learned a lot that I hope will be of benefit to me in the future. The odds are I am on the shorter side of my life line now. What I do and when I do it I hope has more meaning and value than most of what I have done in the past.

The tasks I do for the benefit of 4RV are not replacing my insomnia, nor improving my health, but then none of the other projects I take on have provided either benefit. It, nor them, have cured the loneliness that my dogs try to cure for me. Life goes on. I go along with it.

I'm still kicking and struggling with fate. I find being Chief Editor is lots of fun, lots of work. If somebody asks you about your job, your life, your task...you say "Whoa..." and think about it.

I'd take the train through the mountains before I took the speedy tunnel with nothing to look at. How about you?

On Being Twitterpated...

The following was an email to a new Twitter friend. The reply back was "you should post this in your blog"... or something like that. And, so I did... (ignore all brand names, personal names, any suggestion of suggestions, and any thing that might make sense)...

Hey,

First, thanks for following my blog. You may be the fourth person to do so...gosh, now I'll have to update it again.

I see you are Tweeting from TweetDeck. This is a good choice. If you haven't already done so set your screen up with a column that shows "mentions" - that will be anything that uses your Twitter address either in sent to you or if mentioned in the text of the message. Then you may want to make a list or two of people you want to be sure to see because once the All Friends gets busy it is hard to see any messages from them. I consider All Friends to be the bane and often don't even have it showing. I have one list that is Fresh and contains the people I don't want to miss. Then I have DM column loaded generally so I can get it too.

In TweetDeck you can turn on an alert and alarms. I have the alerts deactivated but turned on alarms for anything that shows in Mentions or in DM -- then I can ignore the rest generally.

I also went to Conversationlist.org (I think its at .org). It sets up an automatic list of the people you conversed with the previous day - as if you might want to talk to them again today. This means that somebody I spot on another users page, or in my All Friends list that I acutally reply to will show up again tomorrow. Eventually I may move them to my Fresh list or my Rawr list so they are easy to find again.

Of course, with people in columns and on lists you are going to see repeats of messages as they get updated to the columns. Takes a bit of getting used too but is handy. You can also go in to settings and tell TweetDeck not to show any tweet with certain keywords. I use this to remove some profanity and also to remove the hashtags people are using when they are in a group chat mode about some subject I don't want to bother with. It lets me keep them on screen for general chat but doesn't display their chats when hashtagged (#) with a subject they are discussing if I didn't want to be included.

Now for helpful software: Go to www.twitcleaner.com and sign in. It is great and used to be fantastic. Twitter made them stop allowing an automatic unfollow of spam/trash posters. But it will still analyze who you are following and the categories are great. When you see your report the light colored, italics, text are peeps not following you back. If its been three days or so since you followed them it might be wise to trash them.

Generally when I have spare time and am watching All Friends column I just unfollow anybody with a message I don't like. Helps narrow it down - and certainly for spammers. But the TwitCleaner will help you identify them, although at present you have to manually go and unfollow them.

There are other programs, such as SocialOomph that will allow you to autofollow anybody who follows you (a good way to get tons of spammers though). Or, if you have a specific interest in people who use a certain hashtag, do a keyword search in TweetDeck and then start followoing the people who use the keyword. If you use Google Chrome, let me know, because there is a nice extension I use to track users of keywords.

Next, if you like following somebody go to their page and click on who they are following or who is following them and browse the list for possibles.

Unfortunately I haven't found anything that will display the users bio blurb and the last few messages - which to me would be a better way of deciding if I wanted to follow them.

I also set Twitter up to send me any DM I got. It comes as a text message to my phone. You can also have it text you for anybody you want to follow. I used to do that for a few but one I really liked usually starts texting in the 5-6am range when I'm finally trying to sleep - so now just my DMs come in - and they generally arrive before they show up on the computer for me.

If I forgot anything let me know...er, if I remember I forgot anything I'll let you know.

Hope you enjoy,