The Madness of Social Media

Social media is like chasing the White Rabbit.

Social media is a necessary evil for all writers. If you are serious about driving sales to your book, you’ll know that social media is the hard work and that writing your book was the easy part. I spend a few hours a day on social media, socializing on Twitter, trying to drive traffic to this website. I need to start working on my Goodreads account and thinking of things for my FB author page. This social media is planned work, not something I do during my leisure time. In fact, my leisure time is reading and being with my fiancé.

How do you navigate this maddening world of social media? I can only give you my experiences, but hopefully they’ll be of some service to those drowning in the social media cesspool.

For one thing, a blog is a great thing to have, especially on your website. I use WordPress as my website because there are more templates available, they have a cleaner, professional look than BlogSpot, and it is so easy to follow others and leave comments without having to go through the annoying captcha crap because BlogSpot doesn’t have a good spam filter. Eventually I’ll buy the domain and change it, but I’m saving up my money. Having a blog on your website helps drive traffic to your other pages: your about me, your writerly works, and so on and so forth because it’s all right there. No need to have your website and blog separated. Heck, WordPress allows you to create your own template if you or someone you know is HTML efficient.

You can use your blog to update on you, your life, your writing life, you in general. You can do guest blog posts, interviews, book reviews, and giveaways. I’ll be doing a giveaway once I hit 200 followers. I’d like 1000+ by the time my book releases, but we’ll see. You’ll also want to give back. Comment on people’s replies to your blog posts. If you don’t have time, please mention this as a courtesy to your followers. If time allows, comment on their blogs. Go to the Reader and find blog posts there. Make Followers. Don’t expect anyone to follow back or read your stuff.

Get a Twitter account and use it correctly. I have been having genuine conversations with people on Twitter and have been gaining more followers as a result. Link your Twitter account to your blog so you can get more from there. Share links to your blog on your Twitter account, but only after you’ve conversed with people. Don’t spam your Twitter feed with links.

Get accounts on other popular social media sites, like Instagram and so forth. Keep blogging. Blog as often as you want and/or can and/or what works for you. Be persistent. People don’t build a following by sitting back and waiting for people to come. You will have to do some serious leg work to build a following. Quality blogging/Tweeting/whatever is first and foremost. Create something your gut tells you people will want to look at. Also, join writing forums to get you and your book out and around. While I’m not wild about AbsoluteWrite, it’s a great forum to converse with other writers and talk about your book without being branded as someone tooting one’s own horn.

Do whatever you can think of in the social media sphere. You and your book will thank you.

How Many Drafts Do I Write?

So I am very sick as I am writing this. Out of nowhere a cold decided to hit me in the face at work, and now I have chills, body aches (which fibro intensifies), a sore throat, and an aching head. But I’m determined to get this post out. I have no idea when I’ll slow down on the blogging. Probably once I run out of ideas or something. Or once I really hunker down with When Stars Die revisions.

In any case, I hate writing first drafts. Because I hate them, I just make the first draft a glorified detailed outline, writing whatever spews forth from my mind. I’ll put major revision notes in the margins, but I’ll just get the skeleton of the story down and reserve the second draft for putting some meat and skin on that skeleton.

Back in my younger years, I would have to do lots and lots of drafts because I was never satisfied with my writing, and for good reason: My gut was trying to tell me I just wasn’t mature enough, but I wanted to plow through to prove you don’t need age to have stellar writing. Well, generally you do. Even teens who become published have immature aspects in their novels, but they’re marketable enough that it doesn’t seem to matter.

When Stars Die took five drafts to get it to this point because I did start it as a fifteen-year-old. I suppose that isn’t a whole lot compared to how many it could have been, but I did shelve it for several years before finally deciding to bring it back out. I am on the seventh read-through of When Stars Die (the last two were proofreading, so no re-writes). Surprisingly I’m not tired of it yet.

When Stars Die is my first, truly complete novel (before AEC Stellar starts hacking it apart). My hope is that with Stolentime, I can revise on the second draft, have someone read it, and have the third draft be strong enough to send out and hopefully get contracted by AEC Stellar. Or another company is fine too. Whatever happens, right?

Truth is, now that I am more mature with my writing, I have no idea how many drafts Stolentime will have to go through. Of course I can improve with my writing; we can always improve with everything. But I’m hoping for three. Seriously. Fingers crossed.

So how many drafts do you average?

Precedence: the Story or the Writing?

I was reading a thread on AbsoluteWrite that mentioned that while Stephen King’s storytelling skills may be flawed, apparently he is one of the best writers around. I have read a few of his books, but I could never really get into them. His writing is also a bit too simplistic for me. But this got me thinking about what I prefer in a book: good writing or a good story? And this is with the assumption that the quality of the writing doesn’t ruin the quality of the story, and vice-versa.

For me, I prefer the story any day over the writing. Books are about telling stories. Books can showcase the authors’ writing skills, but books are first and foremost about the story. I have read books with brilliant writing, but the stories were so dull that not even the writing made the book memorable. In fact, there were a few books with brilliant writing whose stories were so dull I stopped the book before I even finished it. I would have given these books bad ratings. No amount of good writing would have influenced by ratings in the least.

I also think brilliant writing is subjective for every person: To an extent. Blatant bad writing is blatant bad writing and this will kill the story for me, but I’m not talking about books with blatant bad writing. In any case, to me, brilliant writing and a good story go hand-in-hand. How can a great story happen without brilliant writing? I still prefer a great story over good writing because I have read books with grammar errors, but they weren’t enough to kill the story for me. The book just needed another proofread. For others, even if the writing is sub-par, but the story is stellar, they are able to forgive the book for its weakness in the writing department. Look at Twilight. The writing is fairly bad, but even some experienced writers will argue it has a good story (and I won’t argue whether or not I like it). And then there are others who are so by-the-book with grammar that starting a sentence with a conjunction seems sinful and might even ruin the story for them.

The point is, the mistakes I find in books are not going to ruin the book for me, especially if the story is strong. I’ll wish the book would have had another proofread, mostly for the writer’s sake because of the reviewers out there that nitpick, but it won’t kill my experience or even influence the rating I give.

I am a writer who wants both my writing and story to be memorable, but at the end of the day, I want the story to be remembered because stories influence people more than good writing. With a good story, the writing can be marveled as well. But I just can’t marvel the writing without a good story.

So, what takes precedence for you? The story or the writing?