FINDING MY WAY ON VOCAL

I have only just joined Vocal in the last week. It was a spur of the moment thing really. I’ll blame Facebook as they kept shoving the promotions in my newsfeed.

I don’t know why Facebook thought I would be interested; I’m an artist - painting, creating jewellery and that sort of thing.

Anyway, about a month ago the challenge for the Little Black Book story popped up. It intrigued me. So I made the mistake of clicking on it to find out what it was about. Now that just feeds the giant, doesn’t it?

Well from then on promotions for Vocal kept popping up and last week the one for the Little Black Book challenge came up again, saying it would close in 24 hours. At the time, I was sitting in my bedroom, the only place with an air cooler, trying to escape the terrible heat in our rented house. Flat roof, no insulation, Australian heat, really!

I decided there was nothing better for me to do so I decided to put pen to paper and write my first story, “Mourning”.

Joining Vocal

I was quite excited with my first attempt. It was madly scribbled on a notepad, with some of the writing running off the page in my haste to get it down before I lost the thought. When things cooled down later that night, I decided to type my story up on my very old, but trusty computer. (I’m not exaggerating the ‘old’ either. It runs on Microsoft XP would you believe?) I revised it many times, but when I was happy with it I opened the Vocal page to submit my work.

It was then, the technical aspects of submitting said story came into play. Registering with Vocal+, then Stripe and paying my joining fee.

I thought, I get to actually put my story up now. Well no, not that easy either. They wanted a photo to go with the story. My God, I thought. Where in the hell am I going to get something like that? Oh dam! this wasn’t going to be easy at all. I put my poor husband to work to try to find something suitable that I was allowed to use. He was bombing out at his end but then I remembered I had joined Pixabay, for my art inspiration, which had free photos for use. Luckily I found something on there which was, I thought, suitable.

Another thing that threw me was that it suggested a ‘Sub-Title’. What the hell? I had enough trouble coming up with the main title! Thankfully, my husband had the suggestion of ‘Help From Beyond’. Whew! I needed some of that right now. Finally, I could move on.

I cut and pasted my word document onto the page, rechecked it for errors and hit ‘Submit’. I looked at the clock and thought, wow; I only just made it by a few hours. Then when I went back to the challenge page it said I still had 30 odd hours left. I realized then that it was American time and we are ahead of them so I’m not sure how that works.

Getting Published

The next day I clicked on my ‘Stories’ expecting to see, of course, my story. But no, it was still in limbo. It took another 48 hours or more of me anxiously waiting to see if it would be accepted. I must admit that just before it got accepted, I received an email from the Vocal team explaining the delay due to the high volume of entries. This settled my nerves a bit.

I eventually received an email from Vocal to say that my story had been accepted and was published; and a further email giving me hints on sharing to social networks and keeping track of things via ‘Stats’. These emails are a must read; they include many helpful links too. I still have a long way to go deciphering the various methods of sharing and promoting my stories but research is essential.

To see your first ever story in print is so exciting. I know it is only a short story challenge but still ……..

Getting My Story Out There

I nervously shared my story on my facebook page, which is private and has a very limited number of friends to reach, and on my facebook public art page - Margart Creative Art. Don't forget to make your post 'Public' if you normally only have sharing with friends and family. I found out that if you don't, if your family goes to share your story, they won't be able to if it's not Public!

As I found with my paintings and other art work, you feel very vulnerable when you put yourself out there for your work to be judged by family, friends and strangers.

First responses were positive, though that was mainly the family and friends group. Then I started getting some positive feedback from the public readers. Once again this was encouraging.

I went back to the Vocal page to check what they call my ‘Stats’ which tells you how many reads your story has had etc. Disappointingly, it showed zero reads! That had me confused. I knew for a fact that at least three close family members had read it. So what was the go?

My Guardian Angels to the rescue

The facebook group, Vocal Media Creators Hub, was my saviour.

A story I read on Vocal – one of many, I must admit - happened to mention the group and that they were supposed to be full of information.

When I finally pulled myself away from reading the amazing stories that people were writing, and that is so hard to do, I went in search of the facebook group’s page and joined. Within minutes of me joining, I was finding information that helped without me asking a single question. Straight up it was mentioned that there was a time delay on updates of your Stats. So ok, maybe people are really reading my story, and not just saying they were, to be nice. I left it till the next morning and found they were right. My story had been read by about 18 people. I thought, ok, so that’s not so bad.

Expanding Your Reader Base

This group is there for the sole purpose of helping writers with any questions; Give tips and advice where requested and help promote each other’s published work where possible. I took their advice to share my story on the group’s page. Now, as I explained, this is a big learning curve for many of us Newbies.

Once again, what I thought should have been straight forward, definitely wasn’t. Immediately after hitting ‘Post’ I received a comment that my link wasn’t working.

Now what? I thought.

Here is where the Group is a stand-out in the sphere of this new realm I was entering.

After tearing my hair out for what seemed an eternity and driving my husband crazy, I finally got my story posted. A quick question to them was all it took to find the answers. A very helpful member, who appears to be a regular contributor, Laquesha Bailey, explained where I was going wrong. Then more help poured in from other contributors such as Bonnie Cohen who wrote a very informative How-To on the subject. I don't need to explain that here now as I have included the link below for any others who need it.

Between them they got me up and running on the group page.

The following day, I checked my Stats page again and was very happy to see that my read count had nearly doubled. If you write a story, you want people to read it. This confirmed what the Vocal email instructions had said too. I just didn’t know how to follow those instructions not being a whiz on all things facebook . There are a myriad of things that others know about using social media platforms that I have yet to learn and there are also other groups on facebook that you can join and share with.

This is where things switch back to Vocal itself. There are communities on Vocal such as ‘Geeks’ or ‘01’ which delve into many things techno including information I need to learn. Contributors are a wealth of information and they are not afraid to share it in so many articles. You must do your research and that includes so much reading of other’s work. It is a win/win scenario.

Pros and Cons of Vocal

The ‘Pros’ for Vocal are quite obvious:

- A platform on which you can express yourself and publish your work.

- A community willing to help you learn and grow in a nurturing environment

- The chance at actually receiving a monetary reward for your efforts

- The thrill of reading the work of so many talented writers – unfortunately this leads to the ‘Cons’;

The ‘Cons’ for Vocal that possibly aren’t so obvious:

- The biggest down-side I feel is that if, like me, you are an avid reader, then you will find you have to really discipline yourself with the time spent reading others’ published stories. If you don’t, you won’t produce any of your own which defeats the purpose

- I also found that navigating their site is not always straight forward with some of the links being a bit ambiguous. They may need to look into that from a Newbie’s perspective but then again I could just be a bit slow!

That is my journey to this point in time. It’s been exciting, frustrating but oh, so rewarding. I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

Epilogue

Perseverance must be an essential character trait to continue with this endeavour. It would take too long to categorise all the things that have gone wrong whilst trying to create this story but let's just say it has been an epic effort. My old, but trusty computer turned out not quite so trusty this time around and I have had to resort to commandeering my husband's computer to complete this story. Between screen freezes, lock-outs from Vocal's page and losing everything several times(luckily most of it was pre-saved in a Word document) I wasn't sure how it would go.

Then I had the story rejected because it had broken links of all things. It has had two knock-backs, so far, and trying to learn how to put links in, is very trying. I eventually figured you need to go to that little plus sign that pops up and use the 'embed link' function or double click where you want to add a link and click on the chain-link symbol which brings up a small window to paste your link into but I have still been struggling to put the correct information in the link. Hopefully, third time will be lucky.

Well third time wasn't lucky at all. Still rejected with broken links.

I have given up on putting the links in for the facebook pages altogether. I put the names in which you can use in facebook's search function. That is the best I can do. I think there needs to be more instructions for us Newbies on how to use this platform. My guardian angel group apparently has also been having problems in this area so unfortunately this time they were no help either. If I don't succeed this time, I think it will be time to give up!