Hi there, fellow writers, and this month several prompts inspired this post.
One was a joyous local writing walk which you’ll hear described at the end of the video. Less joyously, a writer tweeted a book launch photo, where not one person showed up; another writer attacked festival organizers on social media about poor promotional opportunities; a third writer, singularly self-focussed in their online content, scrambled desperately to get people along to an event…
Most of us – unless we’re lucky screenwriters or collaborative novelists – write alone. But we’re also in our psyches desperate to connect with others, and writing is our preferred way of doing this. I know this because the vast majority of you lovely students tell me so.
So in this video, I’ve tackled some ideas to help writers feel more connected.
If you’re an extreme career writer, you’ll have realized almost certainly that live events and being highly social doesn’t sell your work, necessarily.
If you’re an extreme social writer, you may be puzzled why expending a lot of time and energy into events and social media is not reaping a return in sales or demands for your services.
It’s my sense that quite a few of we careeer focussed writers would feel happier if we decided ‘You know what, I hate promoting myself and my work so I’m not to going to do that. Instead I’ll learn search engine optimisation, some analytical marketing and only create standout content that is entirely reader/client focussed’ . Or, if we more social writers decided ‘I’m not going to pretend to be much more successful than I am- I’m just going to go for a lot of interactivity with my creative friends/readers/clients whether on or off-line, whichever suits me most…’
Anyway, jumping off my soap box here, here are the links mentioned in the video and apologies that my words on two of the links are not entirely accurate. It has been deadline central here recently, and I recorded this late in the evening…
Austin Kleon Newsletter ( thanks to Tim Shore for this recommend)
As a parting shot, please remember that you need never be alone as one of my writing students – and you are always most welcome to DM me on Udemy or put something in the course Q & A. And please write on!
Writing Investigations 