Social Media - My love-hate relationship

 

Fabulous social media friends
Candy Gourlay and Kathy Evans
At my book launch

I very definitely have a love-hate relationship with social media. Probably about ten years ago somebody I knew had a go at me because I used social media. They said 'you know the friendships you make on there are not real?' Well, those friendships I had made via social media then are still some of my greatest friends now. Many of them I've met in real life, and they have been with me through the highs and lows of the last ten-plus years. Proving that somebody very wrong.

I love social media because it is a wonderful place to celebrate the great news. When you shout about your book deals and publications. The wave of support is incredible. It is a wonderful way to keep in contact with friends and family too. With Facebook, I have a closed account for privacy so that my students can't access it, I am able to post things I want to share with my siblings. They can see photos of my children and grandchildren as they appeared. Plus family in Australia and the US can also catch up with what is going on here. Social media can be great for connectivity and communication. I should add, it is not just for the good times. It can be a great source of comfort during difficult times. Being like a huge hug as friends swoop around to support you.

I said I have a love-hate relationship. The hate element is because I am very aware that social media can have a negative impact on my mental health. Social media is fantastic if you are feeling positive. But if you are not having a great day, it can suck the life out of you. It can make you feel you are a total failure. You are not the one visiting all those schools, you haven't got all those events planned, you haven't got another book/film/tv deal. This is when you have to remind yourself that social media is the edited version of someone's life. Nobody shows their true life on there. You don't know know what is going on behind the scenes, what struggles they might be facing, and everyone's journey is a personal one. Plus you need to remember Matt Haig's brilliant words from Notes on a Nervous Planet: 

This phrase is my mantra!

Also, I should mention at this point an element that I have not personally, so far, had to deal with and that is trolls. There are some people out there who seem to think that because they are behind a screen it doesn’t matter what they say. It gives them a right to say whatever they want regardless of how offensive and inappropriate it is because it is 'only on social media' and therefore doesn’t count. Yes, it does! You should never write anything on social media unless it is something you would be prepared to say to somebody face to face.  You do not have a right to pass comment on somebody’s decisions, looks, children, careers, anything come to that. Don’t say anything unless it is supportive. Be kind.

KL Kettle -
brilliant author

It is also easy to become overwhelmed by social media particularly if you try to do all of them. There is not enough time in the day to do them all. Focus on what makes you happy. I confess I have taken a bit of a step back from Twitter as I find it rather shouty. I post some bits and any articles that I find interesting. More recently I have focused on Instagram. I find it a friendlier place at the moment. I have an author page on Facebook and as I said a closed personal page for the family. I am watching TikTok, in particular, K L Kettle and Kathryn Evans who are doing brilliant things on there. It is something I might explore soon. What I try to do is schedule things. I use Tweetdeck to schedule my tweets, so I don’t have to worry about those during the week. I have an Excel spreadsheet with potential tweets listed that I might use, so I do a single brainstorming session that covers a few weeks, then I just dip into the spreadsheet when I am scheduling.  I plan my Instagram – particularly if I have a campaign I want to do. I then sort out my content and save it ready to post. I might spend a Sunday morning doing that, so it is ready. I do though have times when I step right away from social media to give myself and my mental health a break. It gives me a chance to decide what I want to include next in my social media and refocus my life. Remembering what my priorities are. 

The important thing with social media is that you do what is right for YOU and what YOU feel comfortable with. There is no right or wrong (other than being kind and not abusive obviously). There is an expectation if you want to be published that you will have some social media engagement, but you have to mediate between their expectations and your needs whilst being aware of your mental health. Be social media savvy.

Farewell 2018 - it's been a good one!

What a year 2018 has been. I have seen my dreams come true (and a son get happily married). I have spent years wondering what it would be like to have a book published and many a dark moment thinking it would never happen. Well, I was wrong and it did. Last summer Firefly published Flight.

Wonderful cover designed
by Anne Glenn

This was a novel I started working on after a long discussion with Imogen Cooper about how a previous novel was just not working and we agreed it was time to walk away. This had been a difficult decision as I had been working on the previous novel for several years but it was definitely the right decision. A friend, Annaliese and I have decided Imogen is the 'Book Whisperer' as she has this innate ability to get under the skin of books, to get to the nitty gritty of them, to really understand them. As do many of my colleagues at the Golden Egg Academy.

It being published was just the beginning though. Some of my fabulous author friends said incredible things about Flight, which I was truly humbled by. Then the reviews started coming in and they were amazing. People I have respected and admired for years like Amanda Craig and Charlotte Eyre loved it. The wonderful Megan, who does the publicity at Firefly, would let me know that there was another good review in and she would laugh at me because each time I was genuinely surprised and grateful. She kept saying 'You do realise it is a good book?' I think (and still do) I kept expecting to wake up from this dream or for someone to turn  around and say 'Only Joking - we haven't published your book!' There are of course the Book bloggers, like  BookLoverJo, My Book Corner and Fallen Star Stories who also published lovely reviews. The teachers and teaching assistants have been amazing with the work they did with the story. Telling me tales of reluctant readers becoming totally engaged in the story - isn't that one of our dreams when we write? Thank you in particular to Scott E, David K, Dan M and Jo for their constant support and encouragement. Scott E even included  Flight in his #PrimarySchoolBookClub vote which was thrilling and helped raise its profile. I made a surprise visit to a school book club where they treated me like a celebrity. This is why I write books - not to be treated like a celebrity - but to see their faces when they talk about the book.

Parents of readers shared their fabulous stories. One told me how their son had read it multiple times since buying it only a few days previously. Why? Because he loved it so much. Another parent only yesterday tweeted a picture of their daughter refusing to interrupt their reading in order to eat dinner. I remember being like both these readers and when I started writing it was one of my dreams to write a book that would inspire children to get as lost in my stories in the way I used to get totally lost when I used to read. I think maybe I have done that. I have pinched myself several times this year to prove that dreams do come true.

It has been an amazing year but it is also a year full of doubts as you constantly worry you are not doing enough. Social media is a wonderful thing but it can also make your life miserable if you let it as you watch the world shouting about what they are doing and all their successes and the places they are going. Matt Haig has a very pertinent line in one of his books 'Do not compare yourself!' This is my mantra because I can't do everything. I have three jobs. I love what I do and I will do everything to the best of my abilities.

What will 2019 bring? Lots more exciting things I imagine. I have school visits planned. I know of schools that are using Flight. I have writing planned. I have an article coming out and another two planned and maybe a feature to pitch. There are masterclasses to organise for Golden Egg Academy.  It is going to be an interesting year.

I want to say thank you to everyone who made 2018 so incredible and also wish you all a very happy 2019 and I hope it brings you the dreams and joy you are looking for. See you next year ;-)

I am posting this song because it reminds me of a happy time in 2018 and just because I love it: Jack Johnson - Better Together

A new reality

Am I grown up now?

Over the summer I have submitted two books for publication. One, an academic book on writing young adult fiction, and the other, a middle-grade historical adventure novel, FLIGHT, to Firefly, which hopefully will be published next summer. Suddenly I have found my world has shifted slightly on its axis. Does this mean I am an author? Have I become a grown up now?

I am thinking about different things. Firstly I had to fill in a hugely detailed media form for Firefly which was very useful and certainly made me think. In part, it was completing this form that started this current journey. The one where you become a twenty-first-century author. Gone are the days where an author used to write a book, present it to the publisher and disappear while they wrote the next one. Oh, no thanks to Robert E Kahn and Vin Cerf who invented the Internet and Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web, which we all think of as the Internet. Then, of course, there was the first recognizable social media site which was in 1997 and was called Six Degrees. All of which have had an impact on the modern day author and how they behave.

On the day it was announced that Firefirely had acquired FLIGHT I spent the whole day dealing with social media. It was amazing. The brilliant author Jennifer Killick had warned me but I had no idea it would as frantic as it was. The support across Facebook and Twitter was truly incredible. I then did the simple things like ensuring in my social media profiles that it says that FLIGHT is being published next summer. I have been busy on Twitter making contact with other people, book bloggers, teachers, librarians, booksellers, anyone who might be interested in FLIGHT in the future. I have tried to ensure that I have been giving them something so they don't feel like I am using them.

I have created a Facebook author page. I am careful what I post on here and ensure it relates either to writing or to FLIGHT. You have to watch how much time you spend on social media though, it can suck time.

I am beginning to plan my website. Following advice from James Nicol, Jennifer Killick and Vashti Hardy I started off by looking at other people's to see what they had done. Working out what I liked and what I didn't. I made notes on all the sites I visited. I am not going to start my site until I know what my cover is likely to be so I can use some of the colours from it. I have been thinking about school resources that I can include. Talking to teachers so that I make sure the resources are the most useful they can be.

In the meantime, I have been talking to Vashti again about author photographs. She very kindly shared a Pinterest board she had created and shared some very valuable advice. As I was very worried about it all because the photo that went out with the press release was a bit of a rush job taken by my son in law - thank you, Greg for doing it. Vashti and I have had several long conversations about this. I have decided to have some professional photographs taken because then I will have a bank of photos I can use for the media, for the back of my book maybe and for the website. I know it is an expense but I am doing this because I hate having my photo taken and the photographer I have chosen is a friend of my son that I have known for years, I love his photos, therefore I know I will trust him and will then be relaxed. Watch this space for the results.

And then there will be the book launch...no I can't think about that at the moment. See it all becomes suddenly very real. I know these are all very wonderful things to be worrying about and I know I should be grateful, I have dreamt about being at this stage for a very long time but it is very scary! And I am not even thinking about the academic book ;-)

And now for all those phenomenal women I know listen to Laura  Mvula's 'Phenomenal Women'