Nope. Blogging is not enough apparently.
I was at a brilliant Society of Authors in Scotland conference yesterday in Edinburgh, all about how writers need to embrace e-books, and build an online platform for themselves. It was quite terrifying actually, with branding wheels, and landing pages, and hash tags, and publishers looking nervous, and some writers looking empowered and other writers (me mostly) looking a bit inadequate.
So. Blogging once in a wee while is not enough. I need to twitter. I need to join online forums. I need to be on Linkedin. (Actually, I am on Linkedin, but I have no idea how to work it or what to do with it, so I need to practise being me online.)
And I need to put multimedia stuff up on this blog. The occasional photo is not enough. I should be doing audio and video and links. (So, that’s a whole new set of skills I have to learn…)
The only problem is, I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK! I went to the first likely location for First Aid Four last weekend. I have a whole shelf of research books now, and lots of bits of coloured paper sticking out of the most exciting pages. I have more baddies than I can cope with (so I’ll be needing a lot of help from Yann this time round). So I really can’t be bothered creating an online me, when I’d rather be creating cliffhangers.
But, apparently, to be a writer these days, you also have to spend time “being a writer.” If you don’t get out there and shout about your books, no-one will read them. And then there would be no point in writing them.
So – would you like to follow me on Twitter, or would you prefer to like me on Facebook? Do you have the foggiest idea what Linkedin is for? Are there any good online forums about kids’ books or fantasy or myths and legends you think I’d enjoy? Or would you rather I just got on with writing…? Do let me know!
Get on with writing, of course! I’m a bit shell-shocked from the conference too – come see my somewhat bewildered response over on http://joanlennon.blogspot.com
Keep breathing!
Get on with writing is the best response possible. I have spent a bit of today sweeping dust off my online platform, but I have also spent some quality time imagining different sizes of baddies, and what each size is good (or bad) for. Which is far more fun. I’m off to visit your blog.
I felt just like you Lari. What we need to remember is that we got into this to write stories for children, not rabbit on to the entire world, most of who won’t be interested anyway. If there’s time for the other stuff, fine, but it’s a way down my list of priorities!
I think you are right, Gill. I’m aiming for an almost unbreakable rule of WRITE FIRST and do all the other stuff in the gaps when I’m taking a breather from burying my heroines inside hills, or trapping them in mazes. But I suspect it can take over. So yes, WRITE FIRST, and have fun.
Hey, I thought it was just me that was in LinkedIn without the faintest idea what to do with it!
Alas, the internet is cluttered with my abandoned attempts to create an online me for my author-self (though my personal self has existed online for a while now. Best to keep the two seperate, though!)
This is an area where we can definitely encourage each other!
Yup. Please, let’s all encourage each other! However, this blog page is now littered with FOUR children’s authors all talking to each other. (Go on, google Joan, Gill and Alastair – they’ve all written great books!) So here we are, all chatting to each other online about the pressure to do stuff online rather than write, rather than writing. When we were probably all going to read each other’s books anyway! IS THERE ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE?
The most important thing is to write. At the same time it is really useful to have an online presence but only to take on as much as you feel can be useful to you. Don’t tweet unless you can see it being useful and fun for example (I’m a huge fan of Twitter, it’s a great way of finding information, news and bizarre anecdotes)
And I’ve never worked out how to use LinkedIn, I think it’s discussion based, which isn’t something that works for me.
LinkedIn seems very businesslike, which I’m not really. But Twitter seems very friendly already and I only dived in a couple of hours ago. And so far it hasn’t distracted me from my novel, but I have burnt my kids’ tea!
Lari, twitter is good because it’s quick, it can be done in the nooks and crannies of your time. If I have to sit there for two hours blogging with videos and working out linkedin…no, I’ll write instead. There are so many people shouting for attention on the social media, it’s exhausting…I resolved to be there just before a book of mine comes out, but not to be a constant presence.
Daniela! Hello! It’s nice to meet everyone out here! And I’m delighted that you’re writing rather than faffing about with multimedia content, because I really want to read the new book. I was slightly weirded out by how easy it was to sign up to Twitter, and how everyone SAW me the minute I was there. But you all seem very nice so far!
Ah yes it was all interesting wasn’t it. “Economy”. That’s my word from the weekend. If we are into writing and communicating we should be into these new ways of doing just that. However….we are also into editing aren’t we? So economic use of twitbook, faceoff, and interlinkywotsit has to be the way ahead. If writers can’t get this stuff right then we’re not really writers. Discuss!
Excellent point! We do need to be editors of our time as well as our words. Perhaps each day should be a perfectly balanced paragraph… What a great way of thinking about it, Mike! And I’m sure I’ll not get it right most of the time, but today I have managed to blog here, tweet AND retweet (wow), comment on someone’s else’s blog (quoting George Orwell!) and edit down three folklore stories to the correct length. However, I haven’t managed to have any lunch…