How to use this Page

Oh Heidi, Heidi, Heidi. :( Why oh why did you butcher yourself??? You were so beautiful and real. And the real you is better than a different you.

There is nothing for me to say except - this ones for you (and your larger than life "girls").


But somehow, in seeing Heidi's recent plastic surgery results inspired this post.

She made me think about how plastic surgery might be able to help my writing.

So here it is....my public service announcement to writers.

Top 10 ways we might be able to use plastic surgery to improve our writing. (A stretch I know, but bare with me. :)

10. It helps to slim down - I just had to cut 15,000 words on my book and it was a very rewarding process. Its amazing how lean your book can get if you nip and tuck.

9. Bigger is not always better. Sometimes saying what you need to say in 70,000 words is more powerful than 120,000. Sometimes the small meaningful word makes more of an impact than a thesaurus's alternative.

8. Sometimes you gotta suck it up. This business is tough. The key to succeeding (besides writing well) is pushing forward. No matter how hard it is. That may take nights, tears, and all the energy I have but when push comes to shove I suck it up and keep moving on.

7. Change your shape. Don't be scared to start over. To take some off here and add some there. You never know where you will end up or what shape your book can take.

6. Plump it up - add volume to your characters as much as you add to the story. Characters must be allowed to grow in ways you may not have expected.

5. Get rid of the wrinkles. Revising is key to getting rid of the wrinkles in your book. You have to be willing to go over and over the same lines to be sure they are essential to the beauty of the story.

4. Know what's fake and what isn't. Its important that your voice and story is authentic. Don't try to make it like someone else. You need to do your story your own way. No one way works for everyone. We are all different.

3. Know when to stop. Sometimes you can tweek to death. Its important to know how to recognize when our book feels done or when to get feedback. You can work your work to death.

2. Open your eyes - Immerse yourself in the business. Read and learn about your craft. Always work on your craft. You can always get better if you stay open to learning.

1. It lifts you higher. There is no feeling like sitting down, getting an idea, and have it pour out of you onto the pages. There is no feeling better than printing out your manuscript and know how much you have created. And there is no felling better than someone loving your work.

So appreciate who you are as a writer.

Being yourself is better than looking like someone else.

Below is another reflection on the life of a publicist from Michelle Rafferty. Rafferty has been a Publicity Assistant at Oxford University Press since September 2008. Prior to Oxford she interned at Norton Publishing and taught 9th & 10th grade Literature. Every Friday she is chronicling her adventures in publishing and New York City, so be sure to visit again next week.  Follow Michelle on twitter here.  Follow the OUPblog here.

This week the founders of Twitter defended the decreed “viral craze du jour” with responses ranging from tweeting yourself out of natural disasters (see Maureen Dowd’s grilling session) to mending relations between the United States and Iraq (see Jack Dorsey on CNN). It’s a good thing I finally decided to take this social networking craze seriously. I signed up for Twitter about two months ago, but I could never really make myself commit. I came up with a few forced posts, but the whole time I was thinking “I really don’t have the time for this” and “there isn’t enough room” and “what the heck is RT?” I had trouble making myself stay on the thing for more than five minutes. Then I found Perez Hilton.

It began Tuesday morning. I was haphazardly scrolling through my tweets when I noticed that The Today Show tweeted Matt Lauer’s interview with Miss California Carrie Prejean and Perez Hilton. I wanted to know what Hilton thought of all of this, so I went to his Twitter profile and began scrolling through his posts, which essentially gave me a play-by play of his reactions as the Miss America debate swept America. Throughout the day I continued to return to his profile while I pestered Oxford’s fearless blog leader Becca for tweeting tips (how do you retweet? How do you cram a URL into 140 characters? And what does the “@” mean?) By the end of the day I was reading Heidi Montag and Miley Cyrus’s opinions on Perez and Jesus (in case you are wondering, they support both).

After work I came down from my Twitter high and had the same sense of regret I felt in college after spending two hours on Facebook instead of working on a paper that was due the next day. Shel Silverstein’s poem “Jimmy Jet and His TV Set” came to mind: He watched till is eyes were frozen wide,/And his bottom grew into his chair./And his chin turned into a tuning dial,/And antennae grew out of his hair. Silverstein is no doubt rolling in his grave.

I also had a strong sense of déjà vu—hadn’t I seen this on the cover of US Weekly before? I realized that Twitter was doing what blogs had started years before: transform the static, speculative, and photo shopped tabloid duals into real time virtual wars. Although I would argue that this event is a whole lot more complex and substantive than the never ending Jen and Angelina showdown, it is similarly PR driven: in her Today Show interview Prejean admits she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sit next to Lauer if this all hadn’t happened; Perez comments on how good he looks on Larry King; and is it really a coincidence that notorious celebrity feuder Donald Trump is involved? There are serious issues at hand, but all of these players also have images to uphold, promote, and protect.

I know I shouldn’t be admitting that the Miss USA pageant debate is what finally got me into Twitter, but when I analogize it to the Young Adult novel argument, it don’t think it seems so bad: people who support YA Literature think of it as a stepping stone, a hook for young leaders, Stephanie Meyer will lead them Bram Stoker. In the same way I have moved from “Celebrity Twitter” to “Muck Rack”—an amalgamation of tweets from the most influential members of the news media. This week I’ve learned that I can use Twitter to find out what editors, journalists and bloggers are writing and thinking about (the aforementioned “Muck Rack” makes this especially easy). And while Twitter seems to be the latest and greatest way to get the news, it also shows promise for being the book publicist’s best new tool. I can use tweets to figure out who might want to cover a particular book or interview a certain author. This type of information is especially useful for newbies like myself who are still trying to learn names and personalities in the media industry. Twitter can also be another element of the publicity campaign—I can tweet our Oxford author reviews, interviews, and events—and in a best case scenario get some retweets (that is, after I get some followers). If I make an effort to limit my time on Twitter (no “Twitter head”!), I think it could be something that actually makes me more productive at work.

There does seem to be some cognitive dissonance going on among Twitter users. We laugh at the satirical YouTube shorts and the absurdity of the word “Twitter” and all its variations; I had to mock shame when passing up on a lunch with co-workers after my Twitter rampage ate up all of my morning work time.   So, until Twitter starts getting us out of earthquake rubble and initiating world peace, it looks I will need some sort of justification for my tweeting. Luckily it has become my newest job requirement.

Ypulse readers: We just confirmed my friend Gary Rudman, a former TRU (Teen Research Unlimited) veteran and current independent teen marketing expert, to lead our hour-long "Youth Marketing Boot Camp" intro session at the Ypulse Youth... Read the rest of this post