by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
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| MorgueFile--Crass |
I read a post recently (yes, I’m about a
month behind in my Feedly reader) that I thought was a very interesting
read…and I found myself wincing in sympathy for the writer. The post is “Floundering”
by Stevie Libra, guesting on Robert Lee Brewer’s My
Name is Not Bob blog.
Stevie seems to be relatively new to
writing and to platform-building. She
stated that she’d participated in Robert’s
30-day
Platform Challenge in 2012, which resulted in setting up a presence on
different sites. As she put it, getting
established on these sites created “a monster that required daily feedings of
intensifying proportions.”
It’s an interesting post because Stevie
analyzes some of the problems she was experiencing while trying to keep up with
her platform building. These included
email collection for newsletters, fighting spam on her blog, what to blog
about, and finding the time to do any of these things when she was struggling
with her writing.
Stevie reports that she solved some of
her problems by cutting back and simplifying what she’s doing online.
I was glad to see that she was cutting
back. As Jane Friedman put it in a post
entitled “Industry
Trends Requiring Every Writer’s Attention” on the Writer
Unboxed blog, she stated:
If you’re a totally new, unpublished writer who is
focused on fiction, memoir, poetry, or any type of narrative-driven work,
forget you ever heard the word platform. I think it’s causing more damage than
good. It’s causing writers to do things that they dislike (even hate), and that
are unnatural for them at an early stage of their careers. They’re confused,
for good reason, and platform building grows into a raging distraction from the
work at hand—the writing.
Therefore, build your platform by writing and
publishing in outlets that are a good fit for you, lead to professional growth,
and build your network. The other pieces will start to fall into place.
I think that’s fantastic advice. I will say that I think it’s important to set
up a few basics, even for new writers:
A professional email address (your name,
perhaps) with gmail, outlook, or another free provider.
A home base of some sort, as a
writer. For me, it’s the blog. My blog is the one place online where I
consistently interact with other writers.
That’s been a critical source of support and encouragement for me as a
writer. For you it might be some other
site you enjoy: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
For the harried, published writer:
If we regularly update our website/home
base (blog, etc.), and we need to cut back…I can’t see the harm in it. I used to blog every day until my schedule
got so crazy that I cut back to four days a week. I know several successful “slow bloggers” who
post once a week, but are very consistent and have large followings. Again, I think it’s important to stick with
what we enjoy…if we enjoy Facebook more than blogging, then that’s what we
should focus on. The important thing is
having a way for readers to connect with us, if they want to.
Eventually, I’m imagining (and it’s
already technically possible, but I haven’t seen it employed in any ebooks that
I’ve read) that eventually we’ll get to the point where our platform is located
inside our digital books. Honestly, it
seems to me where this makes the most sense to connect with our readers…through
the books themselves. I’ve seen live
links to authors’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, but it seems like we could have
more of an interactive book club type thing…forums, discussion boards, etc. in
the books.
How do you juggle social media and
writing? Have you cut back your time
online?