Tag: Author platform

Posted on in Blog, Books, Culture, Life, Social media, Writing

A Writer’s Holiday

As most of you will not have noticed at all, because you have your own lives, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from social media.  And it has been good.

While most writers talk about taking a break from writing, I’m talking about a break from being ‘visible’, ‘out there’ and ‘switched on’.  A break from that constant gnawing feeling that you should be doing something… online.  Being online creates that weird paradox where you feel like you’re achieving something, but what it is, you can’t exactly say.

We’re always on.  And if we’re not on, there is a fear that we’re not doing enough.   Or FoMO – Fear of missing out (yes, it’s a thing!)  Are we using Twitter/Facebook/Instagram or are they using us?  Where is the down time?  Are we really interacting meaningfully, or are we just scrolling through other peoples’ thoughts, witnessing other peoples’ outrage and occasionally getting caught up in debates with people who never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.  Like Bing Crosby sang, we’re busy doing nothing.

But it’s all harmless fun, right?  Maybe, in moderation.  But the mindless compulsion to check into this social world every day in order to feel like you’re ‘engaging’, eventually becomes a bit joyless… a bit robotic.  So I switched off.  I put a sign on Twitter saying I was on a break (mainly as a deterrent to myself) and even unplugged the broadband.  For a whole day.  But then I had to plug it back in to check my email because I’m not complete lunatic.

I felt bad at first – all of the people who retweet me and whom I regularly retweet might get the hump (or think I’m dead).  But I had to ask myself, am I a writer or a social media personality??  The answer was simple and funnily enough, so was the break.  I didn’t miss it at all.  The constant need to keep up with everything, to stay connected, was gone.

That restlessness was replaced by restfulness.

Turns out, I didn’t need to know everything after all.  But Twitter and Facebook weren’t going to let me away that easy.  Notifications telling me that people I ‘know’ have all liked the same picture tried to tempt me back.  ‘What is the picture?’ I wondered to myself, but I stood fast.  Even when Facebook lamented the 228 followers who hadn’t heard from me in a while, did I want to rectify that??  No, they’d have to get through the day without me.

It’s silly really.  We’re all trying to promote stuff without looking like we’re promoting stuff.  ‘THEY’ say that you shouldn’t promote on social media, you should gain popularity by being interesting and fun to follow.  No pressure there then!  Is this high school or some kind of Machievellian double-speak?!   99% of our lives (if we’re lucky) are pretty boring, so how are we going to keep all of our followers entertained and somehow fool them that we have something interesting going on, all the time??  I don’t need my readers to know how uninspiring I can be on a daily basis.   I am a writer and I’m here to promote my books – let’s call a spade a spade!  And the really funny thing is that when I took a step back from social media, my book sales continued to rise.  So there was no correlation whatsoever between me being constantly switched on and my reach when it came to readers.  My book even did this:

#3

Yes, you are seeing correctly – that’s my book at number three, beside Alice Hoffman’s ‘Practical Magic’.  Quite the milestone!  And it happened all by itself.  Well, by the power of Amazon’s algorithms, which I still don’t get, but the point is, it had nothing to do with Twitter.

And it’s not just me.  I’ve read a lot of blogs recently where book bloggers are cutting down and in some cases, no longer taking part in blog tours.  The pressure to be available all of the time is taking its toll and I think a lot of people are trying to create more of a balance, where they can participate on their own terms.  They are continuing to promote books, but in a way that suits them.  More and more, I see people questioning the benefits of being so switched on all of the time.  There comes a saturation point where you have to step back and focus on your own path.

Have I used this break to write?  Nope!  I’ve done NOTHING and it’s been wonderful.  I’ve read other peoples’ books.  I’ve been checking out designs for my new book cover with my publisher.  I’ve baked!  I spent half an hour trying to make some DIY Nordic Christmas decorations (damn you Pinterest!) Unfortunately, my Christmas star ended up looking like a Halloween pentagram, but hey, I made something.  I’ve allowed myself to get bored.  Remember boredom?  The mother of all creation.  I watched Stranger Things and kept all of my opinions about it to myself (it’s basically ET, right?!)  I got a head cold and ‘took to the bed’ without a second thought for my abandoned accounts.  And it feels so good to just let my mind be free.  To not have that niggling feeling… ‘I’ll just check’.

So, the moral of the story is, a change really is as good as a rest.  Taking a break from social media has just made me more aware of how jaded I had become by the whole thing.  And it’s not like anyone is holding a gun to my head (well, not that I’m aware of *gulp*) so all of this pressure to be ‘on’ is self-inflicted.  I can get all of my social media stuff done in half an hour, so where do the other two and a half hours go?  I think writers especially need time away from this social machine to create some space for creativity; to breathe and grow without this constant spotlight, demanding your attention and sapping your energy.  Social media is great – in my view its benefits certainly outweigh the down sides, but it might be better in small doses.

So like those people who do dry January, I’ve become all preachy and holier than thou (even though I did break my break a few times) so we’ll see how long that lasts!  What about you?  Have you managed to avoid getting sucked into the black hole of social media? Do you detox regularly or is switching off a step too far?

If you haven’t read my books, then you really should have the FoMO!  Check out my Amazon Author Page or follow the links below.

The Mysterious Bakery On Rue De Paris by [Gaughan, Evie]

Apple ~ Kobo ~ Barnes & Noble ~ GooglePlay

 

Posted on in Blog, Books, Culture, eBooks, Literature, Writing

To Share Or Not To Share?

16152378754_27fa36cfc4_mIn a recent article for Women Writers, Women’s Books, I wrote about the ubiquitous ‘author profile’ and whether or not this has any bearing on your readership.  I follow lots of authors on Twitter and while a lot of successful authors have a devil-may-care attitude to what they share, others are quite guarded and even take a hiatus from all social media when writing.  (Imagine!).  So which side of the fence are you on?  Are you a J K Rowling type with lots to say and no hesitation about saying it?  Or are you a Joanna Trollope, keeping yourself to  yourself and looking down your nose at all those attention-grabbing selfies?!  Or do you just see it all as one great big distraction?

Social Media: To Share Or Not To Share?

July 4, 2017 | By | 6 Replies

evie-goodreadsIn this golden age of social media, I still find it a bit of a novelty that I can tweet my favourite author.  Even more so on the occasions when they tweet me back!

Having this kind of direct access to an author would have been unimaginable just 20 years ago.  Back in the old days, you didn’t get to know anything about the author, save for whatever the publisher deemed necessary on the back page.  Their allure was their anonymity, save for the words they put on the page. But times have changed and it is now something of an anomaly if an author doesn’t have a Twitter account.  Publishers encourage authors to ‘get out there’ and the constant advice to new authors is to build an author platform (i.e. make yourself widely available across all social media apps.)  The lines between being an author and being your own PR machine have become increasingly blurred, which can be both liberating and problematic.

Read the full article here

Posted on in Blog, Books, Culture, Current Affairs, eBooks, Indie Author, Life, Literature, Self-publishing, Writing

A Party Of One

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The lovely Eva Green contemplating the futility of it all……           classic writer pose

The other day I read a tweet about preparing for festival season.  I assumed that it was related to Electric Picnic or Glastonbury, advising us to get our ‘festival on’ by donning the obligatory uniform of wellies, trilby and cut off shorts.  But imagine my surprise, dear reader, when I realised the tweet was referring to literary festivals and directed at authors who want to start booking their summer appearances now.  When did this happen?  When did authors become a troupe of travelling minstrels and what happened to the idea that writing is a solitary pursuit?

Writer Jason Guriel wrote a really interesting article this month ‘What Happens When Authors Are Afraid To Stand Alone?’  addressing this shift from what was always seen as an individual sport, to a community endeavour, and why he feels we are the worse off for it.

“writers have become more entangled than ever. Workshops, readings, book launches, conferences, artists’ colonies, and other glorified mixers increasingly press literary types upon one another.”

It’s a controversial argument, but a very interesting one.  Are all of these gatherings, talks, residencies and teaching gigs taking away from the one job we’re supposed to be doing – writing?  As authors, we have been tasked with the job of getting our work ‘out there’ and I think the writing community has grown from that.  But while many authors really enjoy engaging with the community, Guriel argues that if everyone is being pushed in the same direction, what happens to the independent spirit?

It is true that we need time alone to develop our own ideas – it’s hard enough not to be influenced by trends and seduced by mainstream ideas.  In order to really create something truly original, we need to be alone with our thoughts and in order to do this, we need to guard our privacy.  It’s nice to share, but writers need to keep a certain amount to themselves (namely, their selves).  There is a risk that if you become too much of a spokesperson for your work, or a writing personality, the authentic voice of your work could get diluted.  Not every writer is a loner, but they do tend to seek solitude in order to hear their own voice.

“Let’s not share. Really. Go off in your own direction way too far, get lost, test the metal of your work in your own acids.”  Kay Ryan, poet.

When I began writing, the buzz words were ‘author platform’ and if you didn’t have one, you’d never make it.  So I made it my business to build my platform, one blog/tweet/post at a time.  I got to know the main players and believed that I was on the right road to success.  But then, I would see a complete unknown, an outsider if you will, speed past me to publishing fame with no platform whatsoever.  No social media accounts, no blogs, no ground-works to speak of.  While I was busy networking and making connections, they were writing and submitting.  So you see, there really are no hard and fast rules when it comes to being a writer, you’ve got to do what’s right for you and more importantly, what works for you.

“‘What is the role of the writer to her society?’ was a question Wallace Stevens took up and his answer was: none,” says poet Souvankham Thammavongsa. A writer’s real responsibility, she suggests, is “to build a voice and to keep building that voice.” This stands in stark contrast to the civic-minded suggestion that writers apply their bricks and mortar to some cloud-city of togetherness.

Then there’s the whole ‘totes awky momo’ when someone you’ve been palling around with (in the literary sense) asks you to review their book and you don’t really like it… what do you do then?  I know book bloggers (unfairly) get stick for this all the time, but it’s not just bloggers who get caught in this web of networking that make it increasingly difficult to go against the pack.  I’ve noticed even with online bookclubs, when there is over-whelming support for a particular writer, anyone who feels differently is almost afraid to speak up.  I have seen people apologise for not liking a book!

“It becomes harder to file an honest review of a book if you’re always rubbing shoulders.”

Still, I don’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bath water (I think there are laws against that now anyway).  I believe that there is more integrity in the community than this article suggests, but I agree that we do need to challenge the status quo and question the prevailing wisdom around promoting the writing ‘scene’ as opposed to the community.

Personally, I love the community I have found, particularly online because I don’t have to dress up for them!  Pretty much all of the writing opportunities I have found have been through social media.  There is great support there, people share information on all sorts of things, particularly in the indie community and it’s good to meet people who are experiencing the same things.  I love when other writers talk about how difficult it is to stay sitting down, or how your writing can seem like genius one minute and drivel the next.  I feel a sense of solidarity.  But I don’t discuss writing techniques with these people.  I don’t learn my craft by talking to authors, I learn by reading their books.  I learn how they deal with different challenges in their writing between the pages.  Talk, as they say, is cheap, but if you really want to further your writing career, read.

While you’re here, The Heirloom is just 99p on Kindle all this week.  Eva Green said she couldn’t put it down*

*Might have made that bit up