Mal d'Escalier

It's a wonderful French phrase, and it describes me most of the time. Mal d'escalier means, literally, "staircase disease." 

It's that feeling you get when you walk away from an exchange with someone. You've had a discussion or an argument, they gave one last remark that was pretty good, and you either responded with a lame comment or no comeback at all.

And just as you start up the staircase it comes to you - the perfect riposte. The most elegant argument ever, that would certainly that other #*$%! down if you could have but said it to them. But, since you are already on the staircase, it is far too late to say it. And you must go on forever, knowing that you lost an opportunity to shut down a #$*$%!

Delivering a great comeback is a rare, wonderful thing. One of the best was Wilkes' return to Montagu:

Montagu - "Sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox."
Wilkes - "That will depend, my lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Not much to look at, but he did have game.

Can't you just imagine the shocked gasp, followed by applause, followed by the surging exaltation in Wilkes' spirit? Yeah! Told him! Take that, Montagu, you ass! Buh-bye!

However, with social media there is less and less mal d'escalier. A lag in response times, as well as an opportunity to edit my own remarks gives me the ability to sound wittier than I really am. So, when I post on Facebook or Twitter, I can phrase my comment exactly how I want it. I can type it out, edit it, look up a reference, and send my little comment out into the world.

Online troll; actual photo. Only the wooden paneling of mom's basement is missing.

I don't often join in online arguments because even a witty comeback doesn't fly on some sites. Wilkes himself might have been drowned out by online trolls if he had posted his superb riposte on, say, LinkedIn or any of the various news sites out there. "My Mistress! Your (sic) stupid. Why dont (sic) you pull you're (sic) lip over you're (sic) head and swallow." 

It's for that reason that I stay away from those (and I use the term loosely) discussions. They are sometimes like an unending Fibonacci sequence, stopping only when the thread is buried with thankfulness on all sides by another discussion that is just as useless.

I don't mean that ALL social media is like that, of course. I do think, though, that a) chatting online makes me sounds more intelligent than I really am and b) online arguments can be meaningless and endless. It's sad, but there you are.

So, if you ever meet me in person, don't expect the urbane cosmopolite who writes on this blog. I'm just as wizened as the next fellow.

Social Media for Authors, Pt. 1: A New Star in the Twitterverse

Over the next few weeks, some of the authors at FIBP and I will be running a continuing series on how to work social media  to increase your author network and drive traffic to your  blogs. In doing so, that will get more eyes on your book and hopefully drive sales.


Each blog focuses on a particular aspect of the social media network. Today’s post, for example, highlights Twitter as an important portion of your toolkit for reaching readers. We should point out, however, that all forms of networking can interact: Twitter can highlight blog posts, blogging can take readers to sites like Goodreads, and Facebook can be a central hub for it all. In fact, each individual author can design a network that reflects her own marketing goals.

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When I finished my book,  agents and publishers never called or rang the doorbell. Once I was live on Amazon, the throngs of people clamoring to shell out three clams for my book also failed to materialize. I had to go and get them, one at a time.


One of the main tools I use to do that is Twitter. It’s a great resource for writers - in fact, I would hazard a guess that a lot of tweeps out there are writers.


When I started marketing, I had 17 followers. I now have close to 700, three months later. If you are starting off from scratch,  I suggest you use your writer’s name as your twitter username, or your name + author if it’s not available. Go to Twitter .com and build a profile. Be certain to upload a nice photo – one that looks good humored or that has a bit of sass to it.


Include a short bio that  mentions what your connection is to writing, as well as a link to your blogspot (more on that later.) The next step is to get a whole boatload of followers.


I built a following by participating in #WW or #WriterWednesday, and #FF or  #FollowFriday. If you put some of your followers’  names in a tweet and add those hashtags, they will do the same for  you. They’ll know you have done that because they will click on the @Mentions, which will bring up all the tweets with their names in them.

At a certain point the following will just start building on its own, especially if you take the time to say thank you to every new follower. 


You can do the same thing. Click on @Mentions after you have been on for a few days and you’ll see who has mentioned you in a tweet. Tweet them back and say thank you. That gets both of your names out there even more.


That brings us to the magic RT, or retweet. If someone puts up a mention of a book or a blog in a tweet, be certain to retweet it for them. Do it often enough, and you’ll pick up a lot of thank yous. When you put up a blog or book link, people will do the same for you.


While all of this is going on, be certain to tweet about funny thing that happen to you, random thoughts as a writer, snippets from your day – fun things to read. If you go overboard with the marketing and retweets and #FF’s,, your tweet list  will look like one sea of red links, and you won’t get as many followers. Who wants  to get in touch with someone who talks like an infomercial all the time?


The more time you spend on Twitter, the more followers you will get. Don’t let it take over  your life, though. You have  books and blogs to write after all.


Which brings us back to that blog link you put into your profile. Remember how you told new followers that you would check out their links? And how you did? And how you liked some of them enough to follow their blogs so you could read them each week?


Well, some of your new followers will be doing that  to you as well. Through the use of Twitter, you will increase your blog readership. This is how social media will begin bleed over  across formats, in a good way.


Not only that, but as you look at your new  followers’  blogs and read their tweets, you’ll find new  opportunities. There are writers out there looking for guest bloggers and people to interview and books to feature. They might as well feature your book.


BTW - as a reminder, you only have 140 characters to tweet in. You’ll need to shorten some of those looooong  links.  You can do that at bit.ly, or at a host of other shortening sites. I like Bit.ly because it stores  your shortened links and copies them to your clipboard when you need them again.


As a final tip, now on #WW (Writer  Wednesday) I feature a few select friends, instead of long lists of @writername and @whoosis.  Here’s an example:


#WW @danielleraver - She’s funny, talented, and a tech whiz. Her book Brother, Betrayed is at http://amzn.to/jZxiSk

I actually tweeted that, by the way.


A tweet like that  gets a lot of attention - well, more than strings of @writernames, and the people I mention in those tweets get a real kick out of it. 


In my opinion, being classy, having a thick skin, and respecting the other authors out there will get you a lot further  in the Tweetiverse than any automatic Followback software. But I think that’s true of most of the aspects of being a writer.


Look for the next aspect of social media at Philosophies of a Young Heart by Danielle Raver, author of Brother, Betrayed, appearing next week.