(This is a re-blog from my 1st regular outing on my Soul Mate Publishing website. Hope you enjoy!)
I’ve joined the SMP Authors who blog on our site and will be posting the first Friday of each month. So sit back and enjoy my first time out with this gig!
I am shy by nature. I think most writers are. Like actors who come out of their shells and inhabit a role, filling it like a hand does a glove, I believe writers are chameleons. They become the characters they write about for the duration of the manuscript. They can dare to be outgoing, impatient, courageous and more … all by speaking through the people they create.
At least I do. I run a movie in my head when I write. I see my people. I know what they look like. How they move. How they would react in any given situation. Sometimes I say their dialogue aloud as I type it out, backspacing and deleting when it doesn’t ring true. I talk and work it out and get it down.
But overall, I’m fairly retiring and solitary. So that’s why when I sold my first book, MUSIC FOR MY SOUL, to Soul Mate Publishing, I thought I’d found my niche. I could tell – and sell – the stories in my head.
Wait a minute … there’s more to writing than actually writing, I soon found out. In today’s market? Writing is as much art as business. You need an author Facebook page. You need to blog, so readers can get to know the Real You. And heaven forbid … you need to … tweet???
I wasn’t on Twitter. Had never checked it out. Oh, I read about celebrities who tweeted and had amassed thousands (or millions) of followers. All for mentioning what kind of coffee they had for breakfast. Or where they were getting in their car and going. Seriously?
Now I like celebrity gossip as much as the next red-blooded American. I proudly subscribe to People Magazine and can’t wait for it to arrive every Friday in my mailbox. But I don’t find anyone fascinating enough to read about his or her daily life in such minute detail. Not even Henry Cavill, and that’s saying a lot.
And now I had to Tweet? Ick. The thought scared me to death.
So I jumped far from my Comfort Zone and registered and got myself a Twitter handle. And I waited. Because I wasn’t published yet. I had nothing to tweet about.
Then Jay, the wonderful guy who was working with me to build my author website (yes, ANOTHER “must” for an author), told me I needed to start tweeting. He’d put a tweet box on my website, and even though my site wasn’t going live till the day my debut historical romance went on sale, Jay needed to make sure the tweet box worked. So I had to start tweeting. And he needed me to do 3 tweets minimum to get it up and running.
GAG! I didn’t know what to say. I’m not only shy, but I’m actually pretty boring. Yet I had to liken it to different parts of the writing process. First, being brave enough to get something down on paper. Then brave enough to finish a chapter. And build till I finally had written an entire novel. I had be courageous enough to pitch it to an editor. Patient enough to wait for a reply. Ecstatic when that answer was a resounding YES! And strong enough to go through the editing process to make my novel the best possible before it came out.
Tweeting was similar in procedure. I had to be brave enough to stick that big toe in the very chilly, unknown waters. Then I simply threw all caution to the wind and cannon-balled into the world of Twitter.
Now I try to tweet at least once a day. It’s been fun connecting with different people out there, as well as sharing a little about myself. I tweet about a movie I’ve seen or a song I like. I tweet about something that happened on MasterChef or the latest scandal on Scandal. I tweet pictures of delicious food I’ve eaten or the baby ducks that I saw on that morning’s walk.
I’ve actually survived joining the world of Twitter. So if you want to follow me and my random tweets of cute cartoons, pretty landscapes, or books I’ve read? Follow me @LaurenLinwood.
And remember … tweeting is NOT just for the birds. Happy tweeting!
Write Up My Alley 