On Social Media

For those of you who visit this website (as opposed to simply subscribing to the RSS feed), you may have noticed some snazzy-looking social media links in the right-side column. I’m by no means an expert in any of them (I’m downright irregular when it comes to the stuff), but as I chart this journey into writing, I thought it might be interesting to talk about how I’m approaching social media.

The biggest ones out there (… as far as I know) are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and Pinterest. Since I’m focusing on writing, I don’t quite know what to do with the latter two (though other authors do use them!), and I’m also throwing Goodreads into the mix.

But having social media accounts and using them are two separate beasts. I’m still in the early stages of navigating all this, but I thought I’d share how I’m considering approaching each of these.

Facebook

Currently the biggest name in social media. I have both a profile (which I’ve had since college) and a DolanWrites page (which I created a short while ago, but is currently not published). I’m not super active (this will be a running theme), but I anticipate this would mostly be announcements of published stories/other projects. That said, given its user base, it’s probably the best place to actively try to engage people.

Twitter

As of this writing, Twitter just increased character counts to 280 characters. I’m not very active on Twitter either, but I usually use it to share cool links or the occasional witty thought. Going forward, I hope to be a little more active — especially because of the big social media sites, it’s the one that most lends itself to focusing on the writing.

You may also notice that I have a Twitter timeline along this blog’s sidebar. Having one that updates regularly will in turn make this site more attractive to search engines.

Instagram

Similar to Twitter, but with pictures. So this relies on me not just doing something cool, but something visually cool. Currently, I have it set up so that anything I post here automatically gets posted to my Twitter profile too.

The thing is, writing isn’t a very visually-interesting process. So I’m not sure if there’s a way to consistently create compelling pictures that are writing-focused. There is a #bookstagram subculture of Instagram, but it isn’t something that I’ve dived into, and I’m not sure how well it would mesh with writing rather than reading. Needless to say, I’m still figuring out what to do here.

Tumblr

Unexpectedly, this is possibly the social media service I’m most active on. While I don’t engage with any broader Tumblr community, I’ve been using it to keep track of the books I’ve read for a few years. When I began, I’d just take a picture of the book’s cover and include a brief description of the story. Over time, it involved into a micro-review that’s rarely more than two paragraphs. Really, they’re so short that I hesitate to even call them reviews — they’re essentially a brief collection of thoughts about the book.

My anything-goes perception of Tumblr also makes me think that it would be a good place to consolidate all my random thoughts. Book reviews, cool links, clever witticisms, etc. While I think this blog should be focused on writing, stories, and my personal authorial journey, Tumblr could be the metaphorical window into my mind.

Goodreads

You might ask why I’d write book reviews and then post them on Tumblr but not Goodreads. Well, the first Tumblr post I wrote was literally a two sentence summary of King Solomon’s Mines with incomplete punctuation. I had a feeling that wasn’t going to fly on Goodreads. But since then, these posts have grown in length as I’ve injected more personal thoughts on each book. They’re still a paragraph or two, but they’re long paragraphs.

I’ve posted a few of these reviews on Goodreads, but it’s nothing I’ve done on a regular basis. I’m not sure what the standard Goodreads review length is, but I think there’s value in short, paragraph-length reviews that (in my opinion) hit all the main points. The rating system is a big turn-off for me, but I think I could get back to just posting reviews without subjectively rating each book.

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Going forward, these are the social media sites I hope to use. There are other ones out there (YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Patreon, Google Plus, etc.) that may merit a new post one day … but for now I think these five will be more than enough for me and my schedule.

All that said, social media is an enormous resource, and it’s not uncommon for companies to devote several employees to maintaining their presence. Fortunately, I’m not aiming to be a great success in that realm. Right now, I view these as opportunities to interact with readers, boost SEO, and basically “get my name out there.” I don’t intend for them to replace writing, and I’m not going to worry about neglecting them if it means I’m focusing my attention on that pursuit.

But enough about me. What are your thoughts on social media? Can you recommend some writers who use it really well? What do you think about its relationship to writing?

Quick Update

In lieu of putting a lot of time and thought into this week’s post, I’ve been focusing on some submissions for Splickety. (See the 2018 themes!) So know that even if it doesn’t seem like I’m writing, I actually am. My goal is to write a few of them in quick succession and then dedicate time to longer projects. Which hopefully means a more substantial blog post next week. See you then!

Course-Charting

Let’s talk a little about inspiration for this blog. When I started it, my biggest motivator was Lunar Eclipse being published, and wanting to have a writing-focused web presence. (This website/domain was previously my online portfolio.) I knew I could’ve spent forever coming up with a “strategy” and/or writing posts before going live, but the story’s publication date wasn’t going to move. Since I wanted to have something ready when the story got published, I jumped right in without much of a plan.

And here we are, several weeks after Lunar Eclipse’s pub date, and I feel rather in over my head. But it’s been a great in one area in particular: I’m writing more regularly. Even though the first few posts had two or three weeks between them, I’m now more into the groove of posting every week. Around this time last year, I used Splickety’s monthly prompts to get myself to write on a monthly basis (and it mostly worked!). So it’s nice to have this as a motivator to post something not just every month, but every week.

The key word there being “something.” Right now, posts have run the gamut from flash fiction pieces to a list of favorite books to thoughts about this website to podcast links. There’s definitely a writing theme, but not much else tying things together.

I’ve realized that my issue is less about the content of posts, and more about the purpose of this blog/site. I think that once I identify that, I’ll have a better sense of what to post about. And even though I’m reluctant to pick one, I think the point of this blog (at the moment at least) is chronicling my journey of taking my writing more seriously and developing my stories/projects.

My biggest inspiration for this is Jason Brubaker’s reMIND blog (there’s also an inkling of post about this). While he was releasing his graphic novel online page-by-page, he also posted about the process itself — website hosting, advertising, coloring, printing, running a Kickstarter, etc. It was super insightful! And I think that’s what I want to do with this.

It sounds rather meta, but it’s the approach that most intrigues me. I do still want to include posts about things that I find inspiring, or progress I’m making on projects (assuming consistent forward progress). And I’ll definitely post about published pieces as/if they come along. But since this is still a work-in-progress (and I have so few readers!) I think there’s plenty of room to experiment and course-correct as things evolve. So let’s go.

Some of My Favorite Books

Since I’m still pretty new to the blogosphere, I’m still in the process of brainstorming and developing post ideas. And, as a writer, it seems only natural for some self-generated content to include some of my favorite books. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and the books aren’t arranged in any particular order, but they’re some of the first titles that come to mind when I think of some of the books that have had the biggest effect on me.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. When people ask what my favorite book is, this is my most common answer. I vaguely remember being really intimidated by its size as a young kid, but eventually mustered myself to tackle it. And when I did, it blew my mind. The self-referential narrative and scores of characters with unique stories expanded my idea of what I thought a book could be, and, ultimately, inspired me to start creating my own stories.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (and whole Narnia series) by C.S. Lewis. The Neverending Story may have got me started on storytelling/creating, but The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe got me started on reading. I wasn’t much of a reader at a really young age, but my mom insisted that I read the Chronicles of Narnia. I in turn insisted that I start with LWW because my brother and I watched the animated 1979 version on VHS. By the time I finished, I was hooked. I devoured the series, moved on to other fantasy books, and never looked back.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. My mom (sense a theme here?) read this to my brother and I when we were young kids, and I fully intend to do the same with my own one day. It took me quite some time after that to move on to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I really loved how The Hobbit gave us a shared family memory.

Sabriel by Garth Nix. I read this classic YA adventure on a week-long Boy Scout trek. I had no idea what to expect, but was drawn into the world Nix created and revealed through Sabriel’s eyes. The combination of reading such a an engaging adventure while hiking through the Northern California forests made reading this book such an unforgettable experience. Even better, I was able to share this story with Nix in person at an author event where he signed and personalized it, and we were able to talk about our scouting experiences together!

Neverwhere and Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Once again, what made these books so special was their stories plus the memory of where I read them. I actually bought my copies of both books while studying abroad in London, and read them that same semester. It was so cool reading Neverwhere while living in London and able to go out and walk to the different places it references in London Below, and I really enjoyed reading Stardust at a time when I was going out every weekend and exploring other parts of England.

Like I said at the beginning, this is just a smattering of my favorite books, but there’s probably a reason they’re the first few to come to mind. I’ll most likely revisit this idea over a number of posts, but hopefully won’t resort to this theme too, too often, haha.

Short Story Ruminations

Even though I’d like to write longer fiction somewhere down the road, these days most of my creative writing is flash fiction. And since not all of them will be published (see “The Bard’s Blessing” from last week), I’m wondering if there’s any value to recording them here for posterity.

If I do, there are a few ways to go. At <1,000 words, flash fiction lends itself very nicely to blog post content. And that means a potentially deeper well to draw from every week (instead of scraping the metaphorical barrel for topics). One disadvantage of this is them likely getting lost among other posts, though this could be addressed with the Flash Fiction tag.

On the other hand, this particular WordPress theme has a full-width page template. It offers a nice, uncluttered layout — ideal for reading stories. But if I go this route, there’d need to be some directory or other way to access them. And if I listed them all on the Stories page, it could start to fill up really quickly. Maybe a dedicated Flash Fiction page would be the way to go…

At any rate, I don’t need to make that decision for a few weeks yet. This site, like my creative writing career as a whole, is still in its early stages. There’s plenty of time to prototype, get feedback, and refine. What say you?

The First Post

Everything needs to start somewhere, and so this is where my blog starts. Or, I suppose this is when it starts. Not a particularly notable day, but it needed to come some time.

Until a few days ago, this site was my online portfolio. Now it’s a blog where I hope to take my writing more seriously (read: frequently). The current plan is to publish one blog post a week, consistently (for perpetuity?). I like Wednesdays because they’re smack dab in the middle of the week, so hopefully the next post (theme/purpose TBD) will come in exactly one week.

I’m not sure how long this particular post will last, but as I’m editing and updating this refreshed website, it’d be nice to have some content to work with.

Thank you for reading!