Writers in the Storm

In my own (lucky) experience, your online pals become your real-life friends. My online friends rock. They are my tribe and I can't imagine my life without them. That, my friends, is the real power of social media.

We spend time with these people, whether it’s chatting on social media, sharing a writing sprint or cat video, asking about a plot problem, trying to figure out what kind of cooties your kid has, or sharing morning coffee. 

People are seeking authentic connections online and, by joining in, an author is opening themselves up for connecting. For introverts that can be a scary prospect. My advice is to take your time and conserve your energy.

The best part of all this? Seemingly disparate people throughout the world are connecting through social media (and sometimes in real life!) and enjoying the hell out of each other.

Some of those people are readers who might just be inclined to buy your book. Even if they don't,  you'll have made scores of new friends.  That's a beautiful thing.

Sometimes I'm lucky enough to see my internet pals in person — at conferences, on vacations or when they pop through town. When I see them, there are hugs and smiles and words and fun. You see, we know each other already. We've spent time together. I get as many holiday cards from my online friends as I do from my family.

I know, I know. Many of you are introverts. But you are also authors who have realized that no one is going to ring your doorbell and ask you if they can buy your book.

You've got to put yourself out there a little, which brings up a most important question...

What the heck do I post?

If you really don't know what to talk about online, try the 'ten phrases game.' (aka the "How many words does it take to get to the center of YOU" exercise.)

I will throw myself under the bus here so you have an example of what I mean. Here's Jenny in 10 Bullets or Less:

• Rejuvenated by creativity
• Nurtured by family and friends
• Loves to give back
• Teaching lights my fire
• Growing things hits my Zen button
• Gluten-free eating changed my life
• Thankful to be alive
• My guilt muscle is strong, but my humor muscle is stronger
• I dream of being an organized person (and a good singer)
• Morning mantra: Give the scary lady some coffee

And I still left plenty out, and you will too when you try this for yourself. (This exercise is hard!!)

What do those ten points equal topic-wise?

• Creativity
• Gardening
• Health
• Family
• Coffee
• Gratitude
• Help me organize!
• Humor

Those are eight areas where I can bond with other people on social media!

If you're coming up blank on how to convert these topic ideas into action, here are some tips to make the process easier:

• Effective social media is a thousand drops of water sprinkled across months, not throwing a big bucket of updates out at once. High volume sharing tends to tire out most followers.
• Pick only one (or two) social platforms and really embrace them. You can do more if you have the time but DON'T do 5-6 different apps with no interaction. Pick the few you're most comfortable with and visit at least once a day for the first few months.
• Look up the people you already know and see what they're posting about. Jump into those conversations. If it's online, it is open to the public...just be polite about it.
• Find the hashtags for topics you know a lot about or have interest in.
• If you're just starting on a platform like Twitter or Instagram, go look at someone you admire and follow all the people on their list who look interesting. 
• Be sure to use the 12:1 rule by responding or retweeting twelve items/links/conversations from other people for every one of yours.

As marketing genius Seth Godin says, "The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations: It’s a process, not an event." More awesome Seth quotes can be found here.

Your Challenge

Sum up the essence of YOU in up to 10 points and post it for us in the comments, along with your fave Social Media hangouts. I also challenge you to connect with as many of the people in the comments section as possible - comment on their self-summary, follow their social media links.

Before you know it you will have a tribe. If you have a tribe already, you'll have an even bigger one. :-)

by Kathryn Craft
Turning Whine Into Gold

The defining characteristic of the living organism is striving. Evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche both wrote of this back in the 1800s. Writers get this. Yet we carry on, even though at some point, our eyes open to the fact that writing impactful stories is hard to do. And getting them published? Striving will be a given, often to the nth degree.

We have one powerful partner to help seduce, prod, and even pull us forward: story itself. Our characters spring to life, beckoning us again and again to the page. Their conflicts beg resolution, keeping us up at night as if awaiting the past-curfew return of our own not-quite-adult children. At some point, they become so real we feel obliged to see their stories through. We owe them this whole new level of striving.

But one story, often gone unnoticed, may be holding you back: the story you are telling yourself about your writing life.

It is easy to spin an optimistic story before you enter the publishing fray. In fact, I think rosy idealism is a necessary component in undertaking this particular kind of striving, where the odds of reaching the starting line toward traditional publication—gaining agent representation—will not in any way support optimism.

I belong to a marketing cooperative, the Tall Poppy Writers, comprised of some 45 accomplished women authors, some quite prolific. As each of them has a new release, I arrange the support they need to create the social media rocket fuel for a successful launch. Optimism meets measurable outcomes on release day, when even the most brilliant author’s fingernails are bitten to the quick, Amazon is neurotically refreshed, and the possibility of day drinking while holed up alone is high. It is a privilege to provide them support.

Since I haven’t had a title out in a few years, there have been times when, emotionally, this role felt like watching dozens of my teammates step up to the plate to swing while my failed proposals relegated me to the bench. To stay on the team, I played bat boy.

Somehow, worn down over time, the story I told myself as I launched title after title became a whine: “Ugh. I only have two books.”

Then, as 2018 turned 2019, I hosted Bloom, the Tall Poppy Facebook group for readers, where several members told me they had read and were profoundly moved by my novels. Several others said they were just starting to read them, four and five years post-publication. Such investment exposed the artifice in the story I’d been telling myself while holed up alone in my office.

“Ugh. I only have two books,” became, “You know what? I have written two really good novels.”

The self-condemnation evident in the first story could come to no good.

It’s a new year, I have a new agent and a new manuscript out on submission. Anecdotal evidence about editors who no longer edit, the death of the mid-list writer, and a glut of manuscripts under consideration suggest that my odds of success are not all that great.

Yet I refuse to let statistics tell my story. Instead, I’m focusing on the view the bat boy has, watching and learning from all that brilliance.

Back at the start of my journey toward publication, when querying agents, this was the story I told myself: “Yes, only 1% of submissions are accepted. But I’m working hard and getting better every year. Why couldn’t that 1% include me?”

There is no reason why I should forsake this idealism just because I’ve added a degree from the School of Hard Knocks.

Forsaken idealism shrivels into cynicism. Cynicism may seem like it’s protecting you, but it drains the emotional reserves you need to keep striving. On the flip side, it keeps you from fully steeping in moments of achievement. Your inner cynic will warn you that joy is elusive, too fragile to trust.

If you agree that Darwin and Nietzsche were right, and we writers are going to strive toward publication anyway, why make it harder for ourselves by spinning a tragic story?

Let’s just accept that our publishing life will offer many opportunities for the rush of our idealism to crash against the rocky shore of reality. But consider the nature of a wave: it draws back, gathers strength, and tries again. In doing so, it tells a story of relentless, heroic persistence.

So I’m committing this to writing, and in public: in 2019, I want to tell myself a better story. I am committing myself to circling back. Reclaiming the childlike curiosity and wonder with which I first approached story, as well as the cockeyed optimism and idealism with which I set out on my publishing journey. I will reframe my “frustration” and “disappointment” as “experience” and “wisdom.”

In telling myself a better story, I will empower myself to live a better story.

Who’s with me?

No time? Not enough education? Too old or too young? What story are you telling yourself that is hindering your writing dream?

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the award-winning author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy, and a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft. Her chapter “A Drop of Imitation: Learn from the Masters” was included in the writing guide Author in Progress, from Writers Digest Books. Janice Gable Bashman’s interview with her, “How Structure Supports Meaning,” originally published in the 2017 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, has been reprinted in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, both from Writer’s Digest Books.

by Laura Drake

I'm the last to chime in on the throwdown. In case you missed the others, here's Fae's, Julie's, and Jenny's We didn't mean to do them in order from 'hate it' to all yay, but that's how it worked out.

All of us here at WITS knew when we came up with this throwdown, that I'd be on the, 'Oh, hell yes', end of the spectrum. I love me some social media. Why?

First, it fits my Golden Retriever personality. I love people. (I do try not to shed or drool on them.) I'm a crazy-extrovert.

Second, I moved to West Texas 5 years ago, leaving my friends and strong writing community behind. I am a motorcycle riding, Yankee city-girl in the middle of the country. I open my mouth and they know I'm not from around here, and from their expressions, they're not sure what to do with me. I'm working to build the tiny writing community here, but I don't have any close friendships. So when I’m not writing or working out, I’m pretty much online. And thanks to that, I have a strong platform.

I’ve been reading everyone else’s posts and comments on the throwdown and come to realize there’s some misunderstandings out there about social media:

1. No one cares what you’re eating—not even your mother.
2. Likes, hearts and emojis and # of followers aren’t like gift stamps; you can’t trade in 100,000 of them for a blender.
3. If you’re only on social media to sell your book, you’re doing it wrong.
4. You don’t have to be a Pollyanna, a radical, funny, or anything else that you’re not.

What social media IS about, is connecting. And as an author, if you’re not looking to network, connect, or have people get to know of you and your writing, why publish? You could write, stick it in a drawer, repeat.

When I first moved here, I heard about a writer’s group that met at the local library. There, I met a really old guy who’d written a book of short stories—remembrances from his childhood. After the meeting, he glanced around to be sure no one else was listening, leaned in and gave me his nugget of wisdom about marketing. He told me to go to a local printer and have them bind my book (with a colored paper cover, so it stands out). Then take it to locally owned grocery stores (the chains won’t let you, imagine that) and ask if they’ll sell them for you. He said he sold a TON of copies that way (I didn’t ask how much each copy weighed).

Yeah, thanks, dude.

I'm in a fairly small town. There aren't a bunch of readers here. There are quad-zillions of people online, many of them readers. THAT’s the audience I’m going for. Social media is just the vehicle I use to get to my audience.

I tried a bunch of Social Media (I still don’t get Instagram, because of #2, above), but I found my favorite—

I don’t go there to sell. It’s where I go to be found. No politics, downers, or meanness—my profile is an oasis of all that is coffee, beauty, wisdom, funny or weird. People who like that are likely to like my writing—humorous, emotionally charged, but always an HEA. I post questions now and again, so I can get to know my followers. Things like: What was your best memory of last year? Name one thing we don’t know about you. Stuff like that.

And you know what? People who friend me tell their friends to friend me (wait—you and I ARE Friends, right?). So when I have a release, or something exciting in my writing life, I post it. Honestly, my writing posts are probably 1/50th of my postings. The rest of the time, I’m just having fun.

Okay, you may not be an extrovert. You may not want people to know ‘you’. No problem. You create characters for a living, right? Create your online persona! I’m not saying to lie to people, but all your characters carry a piece of you, right? Just show that piece, honestly and forthrightly (holy poop, two adverbs in a row—someone slap me!).

People are all the same, underneath. We seek to be seen, to connect and be understood. If you connect with them on those universal levels, they will respond to you. One of the coolest things for me is watching my followers get to know and connect with each other.

What is the ROI on all this? I can’t quantify it. But I have more followers now, AND more sales. Coincidence? I hope not.

Spreading the love, one post at a time. It’s what Golden Retrievers do!

What do you think? Have I talked you into putting your toe in the social media pool yet?

Laura's December release, The Last True Cowboy, was chosen by Amazon's Editorial Board as one of the Best Books of the Month!