First of all, please excuse my use of “social media” as a verb. It really shouldn’t be, but I’m afraid that’s what it’s turning into: an action. As in, “I’m just going to social media for a while before I write another page of my novel.” Oh dear. I expect Mignon Fogarty to barge in and rap my knuckles with a ruler at any moment.
Grammar aside, let’s move on to the meat of the issue. Tell me if this scenario seems familiar to you:
You have some free time; you want to continue work on that novel you started a couple months ago. You sit down at your computer with the best of intentions, fingers ready to fly across the keyboard when a thought flickers through your mind, “I should check my Facebook page. I haven’t posted an update in a while.”
So, you visit your page, post an update, and see that someone Liked your page. “Who is this person?” you wonder and proceed to click on their name and visit their page. Then, your phone sounds.
Someone just added you on Instagram. “Cool!” you think. “I wonder what kind of pictures they post.” So, you jump from Facebook to Instagram, browsing through pictures for half an hour when CHIRP! someone favorited (yet another made up verb!) a tweet from yesterday. “Hmm,” you think, “should I start following that person? Will they follow me back?” Then, you remember that you haven’t logged into Just Unfollow for a while to see who’s stopped following your account.
And the day marches on, inundated with LinkedIn updates, a new Goodreads newsletter, Tumblr updates, RSS feed alerts, a new Blogger follower, a comment on last week’s Vine video, a slurry of Google Alerts, and on and on and on.
By the time you sift through all your social media, post updates (even if you’re super efficient and use a tool like Hootsuite), comment on others’ posts, add back followers, update your profile, thumb through your Google Alerts for interesting fodder for this weeks’ blog post, etc., you’ve used up so much of your day that your writing is completely neglected. Another day claimed by the ocean of updates and virtual connections.
And your novel has been set aside yet again.
It’s easy to fall into the social media snare. Authors today (indie or not) need to have some kind of social media presence. It’s simply expected of us now. What makes things difficult is that there is SO MUCH FREAKING NOISE out there it is hard to get noticed by anyone unless you’re constantly making a fuss.
But why even bother to make a fuss when you don’t have the material to back up your social media marketing? Why spend hours strategically following blogs on Tumblr when you could be working away on your next novel or poetry series or short story collection? You shouldn’t. Your focus should be on your material above all else. If you don’t have the chops, don’t pick up the trumpet and start playing.
Sure, you can build up an army of Twitter followers by posting dazzling photographs and videos, but what does that army mean? Nothing, if you have nothing substantial to offer them.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t invest some time in building up your social media base before you are published, but I am saying that you should get your priorities straight. Above all, you’re a writer. You write compelling, thoughtful, edge-of-your-seat material that you’re proud of and want to show to the world. Isn’t that worth marketing?
| This week, I challenge you to make an honest effort to write. Close your browser, put your phone on silent, set aside an hour or two that is dedicated solely to writing, and WRITE. It doesn’t matter if you’re penning Pulitzer Prize-worthy material, the point is you’re writing. Writing is a craft (just like playing the violin or woodworking or playing soccer) and you need to practice your craft every day in order to stay up to snuff. |
And after you’ve written a little, go ahead, tell your millions of followers about it.
Good luck and happy writing.
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.
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