To raise a child it takes a village, to write a book it takes a community. I knew a few writers from critique groups and writers organizations. Outside of meetings, I had only conversed with a few. My writing community wasn’t a community at all, but more like a lone cabin in abandoned woods.
How do you build community when most things are virtual now? Social media.
I never had an Instagram, I didn’t know how twitter worked. I wondered if apps where your posts disappeared after 24 hours were for some nefarious users, so that was a definite no. I thought I would start with just one. I chose Instagram because I like photography so much. What do you do on social media? How does it work? Do you see everyone’s posts? Only the people you follow? Can you follow just anyone? Can someone reject your following? Does it go in chronological order? I didn’t know any of this. Still in my thirties, (don’t ask what number comes after the three), people expected me to know these things. I think my writers group, who are almost all older than me, and more advanced at social media and really any tech topic, got a kick out of me being so lost.
During one of our write ins, when it was my turn to say what I would be working on for the evening, I couldn’t bear to lie and say I was editing my novel (a story for another post), so what was I there to do? I’ll work on a blog post. As we went on mute, I thought, let me see if I have any traffic on my Instagram. And so I spent the chunk of time perusing Instagram. I came across a post that made me think, I ought to look at what books different agents are interested in, so when I do get that lovely book edited, I’ll have some ideas of who to query. I looked for two agents, and found they both worked on twitter, not Instagram. So I had to start a new social media platform if I was going to connect.
Twitter should be simple because it is just words. There were so many words, and letters everywhere, and I didn’t really understand what I was looking at. I did the best I could to send a message here or there. I looked up some of the people I had already interacted with on Instagram. One author had the funniest photo of a dog ready for a zoom meeting. I didn’t even know you could put photos on twitter. I had to comment since my dog would never have the patience to sit there, he would have either eaten the computer in front of him or the books behind him—in his defense, he’s still a pup. I roamed to some other pages, and then refreshed, and landed on my home screen– think it’s called a feed—and a post by the sitting dog author came up. Her book had just been optioned! I loved the book so much (I should write a review soon). I had to congratulate her.
After I posted it, or sent it, I thought…hmm, I sent two responses in the same night, like twenty or thirty minutes apart. Now does it seem like I was just creepy searching through all her posts for the last half hour?!?
Probably.
I didn’t know how to tell if messages had even sent because it didn’t display them at least not right away. So I asked my husband.
He laughed. Best laugh he’d had all day.
Then he gave me some great advice. “Social media is about optics. You don’t have a picture, you need a picture. You need to have your website on there too. People want to see what you’re doing.”
As I said before, I didn’t realize twitter did pictures, or that you could have them as part of your profile. But I heeded his advice and added a photo, and linked this blog. I have no idea if it had an impact. Time will tell.
In the meantime, I am connecting with more people and building my community and having fun responding to posts. Thank you to anyone out there who has interacted with me on social media. It has all been very positive so far, and I hope it stays that way. Please reach out and if you have some advice, I’m ready to learn.
Read Write Relax 