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3 Clicks to Better Blogging & Social Media

IMG_0432I’m teaching a workshop on Blogging and Social Media for Writers at Red Oak Writing this Saturday. The powerpoint slides are ready, I have notes in hand, and the computer is all juiced up.

Even though I’ve gone through my stack of articles gathered over the last several months, I’m still coming across new ones of note. This is a hot topic: balancing writing with author platform, figuring out if we should or when we could or how to begin.

There are still seats available for the workshop. Email me through my contact page if you’d like to join us to talk pros and cons of blogging, strategies and etiquette of social media, and which digital outlets might serve writers best.

If you can’t make it Saturday, because you live states away or you’ve recently moved to the Caribbean (I’m thinking of you, Julie, basking in that tropical sun), here are three links to articles that hit on some of what we’ll discuss.

1. How to Write a Great Author Blog AND Avoid Huge Ships

Blogging is THE most resilient form of social media and one of the best tools to build an author platform. Why? Readers read blogs. Perfect snare for readers. 

Kristen Lamb talks right brain, left brain, and how you can use your muse for blogging as you do for your fiction.

2. Finding a Balance Between Writing and Marketing

The one thing no one ever told me before my first book got published was how much time I’d spend on non-writing related work. Even if you’re a traditionally published author, you have to engage your audience, which often means using social media.

Joshua Graham says even bestselling authors have to engage in social media while writing their next book, and he gives six tips for balancing between “your creative and business life.”

3. 50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in 5 Minutes a Day

Writing rules. Self-promotion drools. Isn’t this how most writers think?

Christina Katz reminds writers that we can’t just stick to pen and paper in the 21st century and assume our art–alone–will lead to success. We’ve got to take ourselves online, and she gives us 50 quick tips for taking it one step at a time.

See you Saturday or see you online!

 

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Experience is an Action Word

In Christina Katz’s weekly e-zine, she continues her discussion on the 52 Qualities of Prosperous Writers.

This week’s quality is experience.

*****

Experience is an action word.

It’s a noun, yes. But, the word – and the meaning behind it – comes alive with action.

Last week, I experimented with a short story rewrite, deciding it not only needed a good trim but a rigorous reduction in extraneous verbiage.

I’ve rewritten passages before and added words here and there, but I’ve never attacked a whole story with the goal of cutting the word count in half. I needed help, so I turned to other writers. I posed a question here, and several people commented with great suggestions.

Over a course of several days, and several draft print-outs, I attempted to trim a 3500+ word story to just under 1200 words. Each time I considered a strikethrough, I leaned on the experience and words of those writers:

  • Cut the facts, keep the emotion.
  • Get rid of the passages that are better expressed elsewhere in the story.
  • Cut the beginning and introduce the conflict in the first sentence.
  • Take off the ending.
  • Follow your intuition.

The initial cuts were easy. I crossed out the ending without a problem, and I condensed the beginning two paragraphs into one concise sentence. My pen danced through unnecessary adjectives and random details. But after the third pass through the story, I still had well over 200 words left to cut.

Talk about killing your darlings…It pained me to think of losing even one more word, let alone a few hundred. Then, I read Jordan Rosenfeld’s recent post, at Make a Scene, about deep-cut revising, and trusted her when she said weeks later I wouldn’t even notice what I bumped from the story.

So, I cut whole scenes, gave one character the boot, and said farewell to descriptions that no reader would love as much as I loved them.

As I got closer to 1200 words, the skeleton of a story that remained read so choppy that I wondered if I cut too much. But, I weaved the story back together with careful precision – into a sensible plot – and ended just under the 1200 bar. I then sent the “new” story off to a few writing friends to see if it held together well. Comments were positive, and I was able to work in a few more suggested changes while staying under my word limit.

The experience I gained through this experiment was invaluable. I learned several things about my writing – I write on and on sometimes and plenty of what I say can be cut without losing the premise of a story.

This rewrite experiment also taught me that, while writing is a solitary act, I rarely do it alone. I ask around when I’m not sure how to begin a story or edit a story or end a story. And in listening to other writers’ suggestions – and their experience – I find the courage to attempt new writing challenges myself.

Then, I celebrate my success when the story I just slashed still reads like a story and not like a ticker tape.

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Finding Balance – A Daily Task

In Christina Katz’s ezine, The Prosperous Writer, she writes on the 52 Qualities of just that – prosperous writers. This week, she focused on balance.

The word balance pops up everywhere these days — in posts (like this one from Allison Winn Scotch) about negotiating social networking around writing time and in essays (like Sayantani Dasgupta’s) about the plight of the mother-writer.

Balance, for me, equals writing longevity.

Sure, like many others, I juggle writing with parenthood, a day job, my marriage. Toss in time spent browsing Twitter, reading blogs, and thumbing through the pages of a good book. All of a sudden, I look up and see a cluster of balls suspended in the air, and I duck for cover.

In my eyes, juggling is organized chaos. Balance works more like a swinging pendulum.

At one end, I am stuck, not writing: there isn’t enough time, I don’t know what I want to say, I’ll never get published so what’s the point.

Sometimes the pendulum swings to the other end and drops me, head first, into writing. Like a maniac, stay up until the wee hours of the morning, punt on housework and sometimes dinner, ignore the phone because I am busy – writing.

At either end of the spectrum, I don’t function well. When I am not writing at all, I am miserable. When I am writing non-stop, I am self-indulgent and easily irritated when anyone or anything disrupts my flow. And, I am miserable.

What I have learned, is that balance is critical. Not only for my mental and emotional well-being, but for my writing career. If I am off balance, I am either on the verge of “quitting this whole business of writing” because I’ll never be good enough. Or, I am writing so hard that I am sucking the life out of my muse. Then I find myself on the verge of “quitting this whole business of writing” because I’ll never find the time I need to write well.

I love writing, and I need it. But, I also need times without writing to rejuvenate my creativity, to nurture the relationships with the people around me, and to remember what is important in life.

Finding that balance between life and writing is a daily pursuit.

Things that send the pendulum into high swing (and how I bring it back):

  1. Discouraging news about the publishing world or the writing life. I skim these articles or essays. Because, regardless of what’s happening in the publishing world, I love (and live) to write.
  2. Flat responses from friends or family when I talk about writing. Jody Hedlund wrote a great post about this the other day. Some people will just never understand the writing life. My best bet is to find safe people with whom to talk about writing, and plan coffee dates as often as possible.
  3. Forcing a story. Occasionally, I think I have to submit something to a particular place or literary magazine, because, well…they put a call out for submissions. I don’t want to miss my chance. But, that kind of motivation leads to manic writing — hovering over my laptop in a corner, looking like a feminized version of Mr. Hyde.

Things that keep the pendulum close to center:

  1. Posts from writers, like this one from Aimée Laine, that talk about keeping expectations and goals manageable. And, books like Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, that suggest weekly artist’s dates: time away from your craft of choice (writing, painting, etc.) to rejuvenate, to refuel, and to return with fresh eyes and a fresh spirit.
  2. An email from an editor that says, Hey, we love your piece and we want to include it in our next issue. After reading that kind of email, I can take a break from writing and indulge in life’s goodness for a while. No, this doesn’t happen as often as I would like, but when it does, I definitely feel close to center.
  3. Trust in a Power greater than myself. Spirituality surrounds every writer. Whether you call it your muse, your genius, or God, something guides us. My job is to take the actions set in front of me: write when it’s time to write, play when it’s time to play, read when it’s time to read. I am not in charge of the results.

I am not in charge. Phew! If I remember that on a daily basis, balance is surprisingly easy to achieve.

What does balance look like to you?

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