When Social Media Bleed Together

Odd title for a post? Perhaps a bit. Let me explain what it means.

There are so many social media sites out there. Some are more powerful than others. Some are more nebulous as to their purpose and advantage than others. (I'm looking at you Instagram and Flickr and all those other similar sites.)

There are several heavy-hitters in the social media world:

Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Pinterest

Of course we can add Blogger and WordPress into that list. (I also find it interesting that Blogger's spell checker has Tumblr as approved spelling but has yet to add Pinterest to its dictionary as acceptable.)

Of those four, I am on two– Pinterest and Twitter.

I love both equally. I've whiled away many an hour on Pinterest, repinning to my heart's content as I explore the Geek board (along with Women's Fashion, History, Food & Drink, and sometimes Humor).

I have many boards. I used to have four more than I currently do. I'd titled these boards very specifically to my interests. BBC Ruins Me (for Sherlock and other BBC programs), Fantastic Bananas (for Doctor Who), Nerd-dom (for all things geeky which didn't fit those boards), and eventually I added Legends of Hyrule (for Legend of Zelda, obviously).

Why did I delete them?

Because they no longer fit the defining characteristic of Pinterest. I mean, isn't the point of Pinterest that you're visually bookmarking things to reference again later? You pin recipes with the intention of someday making them. Clothes to be able to reference them again and perhaps purchase or find a similar garment for purchasing. Historical fashion and photos can be pinned to reference later in writing research.

But the geeky stuff?

I found my Pinterest was quickly becoming a Tumblr fangirl wannabe. Most everything I ever pinned onto those four board was from Tumblr. I still don't quite get what Tumblr's unique purpose and contribution might be to a future writing platform. And I'm still determined to keep Pinterest largely not about a writer's platform. But I did find that my Pinterest was becoming too much like all the fangirl accounts on Tumblr.

So I deleted them. And have determined to keep a clearer focus on the reason Pinterest was created as I move forward in my use of the website. This is the same goal I have with any of my other social media. Twitter is one giant chat room. One in which, admittedly, I get lost more often than not. Thus far, however, I have yet to see Pinterest and Twitter bleed into one another.

I think the bleeding is more likely to happen between Pinterest and Tumblr and between Facebook and Twitter. Though I do have plans for a Tumblr should I someday be blessed enough to have Heirs of the Seven Realms and all its sister books published. (Assuming Tumblr is still popular then.)

Meanwhile, don't mind the tremors in my hands as I go through pinning withdrawals. (I kid, I kid.)

Online Life and Writing

In this day and age, there's real life and online life. Often those intersect. Lately I've been trying to consolidate things online. I've changed my personal email and am currently in the process of migrating things over. Eventually the goal is to have everything related to my writing career's public life on the domain-specific emails I've set up and everything personal attached to my new personal email.

The only problem with that?

Over the course of a decade or more of the internet being prevalent, there's a lot out there, some I'm sure I'm forgetting. It might take me a year to get everything sorted out. Sigh.

My advice to anyone reading this is to start now, if you think you might ever need to change things around. I'm trying to consolidate my life and hopefully thus make even more time for writing.

The other bit of advice in all of this is to set up your blog under the name you want to write with and not some random thing like I did. Because I've been paying for that decision since the day I made it.

Consolidating emails and sorting out the tangled online web I've created is not an easy task. Save yourself the work and start out now.

If you have a question you're dying to ask me, something you want me to address either here on my site or over at the Dojo, send it to info(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Comments and other fun stuff can be sent to stephanie(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Author websites

I know I probably don't need to be worrying about this quite yet.  But I just can't help it.  I've been thinking a lot about a website.  I know at some point I'll need to build one and purchase a domain.

There's an application on my Mac that will help me to design my website.  I've taken a class on the program.  There are others still to take.  I've been playing around with it a bit.  It's definitely nowhere near ready.

The problem is, there's not much to a site when you're unpublished.  I mean, there's the welcome page, the about me page, and I can do a blog feed page.

But what else do I put in there?

Jasper Fforde's website has a ton of stuff on there.  It's all related to his books.  It's fabulous.  There is a wealth of information on there.  It sort of makes me scared to ever put up a website.

J.K. Rowling's website is great, too.  There was always so much to discover there, especially leading up to the release of each book.

Tamora Pierce's website is straightforward, but very informative.  I like its simplicity.  Things are easy to find, there's not much by way of extra information.  (Which is neither good nor bad.  Just different.)

Q4U: What's your favorite author website?  Why?

Social networking for writers

The dreaded word- platform.

How important is it, really?  I'm not going into that portion of the argument today.  Maybe another day, but not today.

"For many writers marketing is almost a dirty word--an ugly truth that must be dealt with in order to make money as a writer."  (Novel Writing a Writer's Digest Yearbook publication from sometime over the summer, page 60.)

Several social networking sites exist which can help us build a platform, connect with an audience, and interact with our peers.  And it's not just for non-fiction writers.  The same magazine I quoted above also had a feature on why novelists need platforms.  But there are different ways fiction writers can build a platform.  You build it through critique groups, memberships in professional organizations, interactions in the local literary community, named connections that you could use discreetly to your advantage, and the stuff you write about.

There are many social networking sites to join and utilize in building your platform, be it fiction or non.

Marketing and Branding

Every company has their brand.  They have their logo and their signature.  They have something that is instantly recognizable as theirs.

iPod.  iMac.  iWork.  The list goes on.  Add that little "i" to something and you know exactly who made the product and what technologies it works with.

It should be something similar with our brand that we develop as authors.  With each book we build that brand.  Every interview furthers the idea that is our brand.

I'm still not sure that I'm developing the right kind of brand.  I don't know that my blog is really fitting with my vision that I had when I began.  Scratch that, I know it doesn't.  I didn't have a vision for the blog when I started out.  I never thought the blog would be read by anyone.  I had no reason to think it would.  And yet, here I sit with an audience.

And that audience expects something.  What have they come to expect?  What will our readers come to expect from us?

It's something to think about.

Q4U: What do you think readers think about when they think about your blog?  What do you expect to find when you come to my blog?  How well do you think you're doing at keeping a consistent brand?

Networking and Platforming Tools

OK, so ages ago I blogged about platforming. I asked the question "When is it all too much?" regarding whether a platform should stay really general if an author is writing in multiple genres or multiple forms or if said author needs to create multiple platforms for each aspect. This is especially apropos to me as I am a poet and a novelist.

But if you do the latter, platforming will take over and there will be no time to write.

Rachelle Gardner recently blogged about social networking in 15 minutes a day. It's a great article so you really should go check it out. She discusses a plethora of tools to use to cut down on the networking side and get the butt in the chair. These are particularly of use for the debut novelist as the writing is more important at this stage than the platform. (Really only if you're in fiction. Non-fiction is a whole 'nother can of worms.)

I'd like to add one more:

iGoogle

The September issue of Writer's Digest had an article devoted to how to use iGoogle to help cut down on the wasted time and allow you to get the butt in the chair so you are writing.

I only read this article on Monday. iGoogle is my official web browser homepage. And it remembers my google name and password so I don't have to log in to start using it in the morning.

There are literally thousands of gadgets to put on there.

My page has google reader, gmail, literary quote of the day, the date and time, and little eyeballs that follow my mouse cursor everywhere it goes on the page.

But you can put Yahoo! mail or Hotmail on there. Facebook and Twitter have gadgets for iGoogle.

It's an amazing little tool to put everything all together in one place. You can see instantly what needs your attention.

So try it out. Get the latest issue of Writer's Digest for more.

And don't forget to read Rachelle's post.

Striking a balance

Achieving my daily word count is becoming a burden. It's taking over my life, leaving no time to do anything else.

I'm chained to my writing pen.

How is this about finding balance, you ask?

It's about balance because I am going to talk about it that way, that's why.

So, balance. A definition: Well, there are several. But here's the one that really matters. (It's #9 in the noun definition of balance.)

Mental and emotional steadiness.

Oxymoronic in relation to writing a novel, right? I mean, a novel is all about tugging at those heartstrings and pulling your readers through a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Or maybe it's more like switching from the roller coaster the carousel to the bumper cars and back again.

Anyways. I need to find balance.

Balance can be achieved in many ways. One of them is not a 2,000 words per day minimum pace in writing. Because that takes too many hours in the day.

I'm trying to keep this from sounding like I'm complaining. But I think it's going to come out a little bit that I'm whining.

Writing that many words a day takes time. Sometimes several hours. Usually I type up what I wrote that day and go to bed because it's taken me that long.

Blogging and platforming are taking another chunk of time. But none of it is balanced. Eventually I'm not going to have all the time in the world to write and blog. There will be other things I have to do, like go to work. (Fingers crossed.) Balance will be key in maintaining my sanity in the long process and throughout the remainder of my life.

My first two steps toward achieving balance are these:

1- I am no longer holding myself to a minimum word count or rigid schedule. Remember those authorial goals and the fial pictures? (I know it's misspelled. That's the whole point.) Yeah, no more of those. Rigid goals and deadlines are out the window.

2- Saturday goals updates (corollary to #1) are going away. As are Sunday's Author's Bookshelf posts. They both put too much pressure on me in the week and I thus don't work toward balance or enjoy the processes I'm going through.

Blogging will now be as follows: Tuesday and Thursday will be my usual thought-provoking posts that I began this blog with. Once per month Tuesday will be replaced by Tantalus Tuesday. WiP Wednesday will be there as a motivator for me to actually write during the week and make progress. Fiction Friday will likely be implemented beginning this Friday. Those posts at least for a time I can write up and have scheduled far in advance. But do keep in mind that this is subject to change at any time and for any random reason.

My hope is that in limiting myself to four days of blogging and eliminating the rigid goals and deadlines I can begin to balance my life and find enjoyment in writing and blogging again.

But if I disappear for a while, either from blogging, responding to comments, or commenting on y'all's blogs, it's because I'm losing my sanity and am perhaps locked away in the looney bin.

Semi-related in the blogosphere:
Ultimate irony @ Cake Wrecks
Balance @ my cozy book nook

Platform: Reaching the audience, be it YA or otherwise

I’ve said before that my principle genre is Young Adult or mid-grade fantasy. This is all tentative of course given that my book isn’t complete, most of what I’ve already written will have to be scrapped, and I’ve yet to hammer out the finer details of the plot. Now it’s on to the platforming choices that will lie ahead in my future. (Or should that be lay?)

I have my blog. It’s important to me. I’ve gloried in the physical signs of audience growth and outreach over the last couple of months since I started blogging regularly. I’m not letting it get to my head that you, my readers, have found something I have to say worthy of your time and attention. I am humbly grateful for this and know that my blog would not be continuing today without the continued support of my readers. I thank you for this.

I know eventually, however, I will have to expand my platform. While having a platform in place prior to that first publication is not as critical to getting published in fiction as it is in non-fiction, we have to reach our readers somehow. I will down the road create a website. (Or have one professionally made for me since I’m really not computer-savvy and I should do better than the free website hosts with their standard, bland templates.) But are blogs and websites the best ways to reach the YA audience? Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and others that I’ve never heard of all pull on the teen’s time. Are these the better places to reach my intended audience? Or should I keep my platform broad in order to reach all of my potential audience since I do intend to write and publish poetry, perhaps some short stories, maybe even branch off into Christian romance. I’m not sure at this point that the smartest move would be to create multiple blogs/websites/Facebook pages, etc. for each of these different aspects.

For one thing it would take precious time away from the writing itself. I know that well-known authors spend oodles and oodles of time on platforming and networking in addition to their writing and it’s important to do so, but when does it become too much? When does your platform become so specific that you have to start from scratch to build a separate one for a different facet of your writing life? Down the road, if the dream came true and I was a successful poet and novelist and I wanted to write a memoir am I going to have to create a whole new and discrete platform for that?

When is it going overboard?



Related in the blogosphere: See Rachelle Gardner's post on social networking

Coming soon! redux

I'm still trying to decide on the timing of it, but I do feel that I need to not be deceptive in my advertising and that I need to associate my real identity with this blog. I don't know how I'm going to do that or what it's going to take exactly, but I would appreciate suggestions for it.

And just think, it'll be easier for me to plug my own work when it eventually gets published if you already know who I am and you aren't having to say, "Is she really the author of this book?"