INSTANT CONTACT AND RESPONSE? SERIOUSLY?

April 22, 2008

Yes is the age of instant contact and response. Everyone walks around with a cell phone that made pagers totally obsolete. With our cells we can answer a call almost anywhere…”Can you hear me now? --Good.” It almost seems as if there is no place off limits; I honestly feel that there is, but when you travel with other people’s children you find you even have to answer the cell phone in the restroom. (When that happened I felt like Dwayne Wade when he receives all those calls from Charles Barkley on the commercial…okay, I digress). But everything is instant. Even if the person doesn’t want to talk to you they can still reach out and touch by using a text message. The sad part is that the sender expects you to answer right then and there. And if its family and you don’t they’re ready to call the police and put out a missing persons’ report. No one stops to think maybe you could be busy! What a novel concept.

Then of course there’s the email message. That’s really funny. No one thinks there email ever is miss-routed or delayed. When people send me an email they expect an answer with in a few minutes. Then when you don’t answer, they pick up the telephone and call you and asked…”Did you get my email?” No one ever thinks maybe a server along the path couldn’t have been down and delayed the transmission or again; you could be busy!

What happens with me is that I actually try to get back to people as soon as possible. Often it is instantaneous, but sometimes it takes a few minutes, hours, days, and maybe a week. Why you asked? Well, some emails, although instant and simple to send, may actually take some thought or research before it can actually be answered. Or mostly importantly it takes thought to make certain you are actually responding to the information requested. But whatever the case, after a week, at the most; then in many cases after a couple of days you should respond with something that acknowledges the receipt of the email and the fact you’ll get back to the person within a few more days. This brings me to my point and question.

Communication is very important. Developing good communication skills is very important when it comes to telling a story and even more so when it comes to giving your characters individual and distinctive voices. Communication is utterly important in the business of writing. Like the examples I used above. No one is perfect including me; I still have to do better on response time. But the worst is no response ever. No feedback ever. You send an email and for all you know it fell in an unknown mailbox. The only way you learn that it arrived at it’s destination is when the system has a glitch or you mistakenly hit send twice or you have multiple email addresses for an individual and they make sure to let you know they received the message numerous times or to every email address (by the way, you never ask for the multiple addresses people like hand them out without instruction so you send). In any case, you are sure to receive the carefully worded response of, “Please don’t send mail to this address I never check it.” But you never get a response to your original email. Go figure.

So my questions are:
* Is the development of good communication skills necessary for a writer?
* What is the average time allowed that you should expect a response?
* Should you send email number 2? 3? 4?
* Is it wrong to expect a person to respond to an email in a given time frame?
* Is it unreasonable to expect the receiver to actually read the entire email before they respond?
* Is acknowledgment too much to ask?
* If you do work on development of your communication skills, response time, feedback, and acknowledgment skills will it hurt you in the business of writing?

Communication is very important.

WHY DO YOU WRITE?

OBS, great meeting yesterday! It was a great turn out and people were networking, making connections with fellow writers. I t was amazing. Almost 100 people in the place. The Education Committee asked Tracy Grant to give the Top 10@10 it was on the nose..."How to Give & Receive Feedback."

We had a great speaker too! Ms. Kellie R. Griffin, Associate Producer for “House of Payne.” She was very personable, answered all the members’ questions and spent a lot of time after the meeting to speak with members individually and pickup scripts. It was great.

Scripts? Yes, scripts....mmm... That could be a very scarry thing. Someone is about to review your work for potentail employment. Is my script good enough? Did I tell the story properly? Did I use the right format? One of the things OBS stresses is for its members to get connected to an OBS sanctioned Writer’s Group – it was also something Ms. Griffin stressed as she shared a few horror stories of people that submit spec scripts.

I could tell there were a lot of people with mixed emotions in the room; not grasping the total concept. I could almost hear the thoughts in their heads; “I don’t need a writer’s group.” “People don’t understand what I want to say.” “They can’t give me feedback because they’re trying to make it like I am.” "I know my script is perfect it, I don't need their feedback." No one actually said any of these things aloud, but I could see the lines in their faces. :-) I must admit I was very pleased to have twenty people approach me after the meeting to get signed up for a Writer's Group.

I’m not going to ask here do you think you should be connected to a Writer’s Group; it may not be the most important question, albeit very important. My question deals with you personally. When you can answer the questions below, the Writer’s Group won’t be an issue.

My questions are:
Why are you writing?
What are your goals?
What do you plan to accomplish with your writing?