Mastering Social Media

I am a bit late in blogging about this, blame my NaNoWriMo 2017 commitment, but it is definitely something I want to shout about.

A few weeks back I attended part two of Anita Chapman’s one-day seminar/workshop on how to get the most out of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and blogging for writers.  At this point I will mention that it is for writers of ALL disciplines and genres, not just fiction writers. Part one was a year ago, I enjoyed it so much and learnt so much that attending part two was a no brainer for me.

In advance of the day Anita sent out questionnaires so that she could deliver exactly what we wanted within the framework of what she had planned for us. She purposefully kept the group small, just five (it was meant to be six but one person had to cancel just before the day due to unforeseen circumstances). That way we all had our say and had personal attention within the class for our specific problems or areas of lack of understanding. This bit actually seemed to blend seamlessly though, rather than a somewhat tedious 'deal with person one then on to person two', we all learnt from each other’s problems as Anita skillfully guided us through the pros and cons muddle of social media.

The list of what we learnt is huge, but here are just a few things: 

• privacy settings for all social media platforms
• adding/modifying share buttons
• how to link all the different platforms
• tackling the TweetDeck and all it has to offer so that it really works for you and your brand/style of writing (I've gone from hating to loving my TweetDeck)
• Facebook ads – what works and what doesn’t and how and when to use them without losing loads of money on them 

Everything was supported by detailed handouts, which have proved so useful in the days after the course.

I need to give a shout out to the venue too. The day was held at the Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury – very easy to find and held in a self-contained seminar suite on the first floor. We had tea, coffee, snacks……….cake (far too much cake) all on tap as and when we wanted it. Part of Anita’s own course deal was that lunch was also included. The room was very comfortable and it was only part way through the afternoon that someone commented on the lack of a window. I was shocked, I hadn’t noticed, partly due to really getting into the seminar information, but also because the room was so comfortable. Here we are in action.

If you are a writer who wants to know how to get the best out of your social media outlets and really get them working for you I would highly recommend Anita’s courses. She is so generous with her information too and you can find a lot of helpful information on her websites, as well as details of forthcoming courses www.neetsmarketing.com and www.neetsmarketingblog.com but as with all these interactive things, nothing replaces actually being in the room with a person in the know directing it.

The proof of the pudding – since putting into place several of the things I have learnt my blog views have risen almost threefold and my Twitter account is gathering momentum nicely.

No Longer a NaNoWriMo Virgin

So what the heck is NaNoWriMo I hear you ask? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is where aspiring and established authors sign up to write 50,000 plus words in 30 days i.e. throughout the whole month of November.

I have been meaning to do it for several years now, but as each November has come around I have already been working on a project and haven’t wanted to break from it or the November diary has just been so busy that I wouldn’t stand a chance of completing it.

This year was different though, apart from two days the diary was empty and as November approached I made sure I kept it that way. Plus, I was in a position to start a new work in progress, so the omens were good. It was now or never.

In some ways it’s just a bit of fun, if you don’t make your 50K you don’t lose anything and the great gods of NaNoWriMo don’t strike you down with thunderbolts. In other ways it is a great help to anyone serious about tackling a first draft.

Signing up to the site is totally free and as you go through each day of writing you can update that day’s word count to your grand total, which is then plotted on a bar chart so you can easily see how you are progressing. Once you have completed your profile you sign up to a home region in your location. For me this wasn’t that easy as there wasn’t a group for Surrey, so I simply waded into the London group…I did live there for nearly thirty years so I reckoned that would get me an entry pass. Within your region various write ins are set up in cafes and other locations so that you can go along and meet fellow WriMoers who are rising to the challenge and maybe find a writing buddy. You can also collect milestone badges along the way too.

So how did it work for me? Pretty darned good! I am naturally quite competitive so although you are only really competing against yourself I set my sights on the bar chart…it HAD to go up every day and either meet the daily target of 1667 words a day or exceed it. I also pitched myself against other WriMoers in my region; they had no idea of course. Your total word count is given at the foot of your profile photo and as their counts rose each day mine had to rise higher and then as 50,000 came closer I had to get there first.

After 26 days I had written 50,297 words of a new first draft and gained my winner’s certificate! This is the fastest I have ever written 50,000+ words, if left to my own devices I can be one of the world’s best procrastinators, there’s always room for just one more cup of tea before I sit down to write…

I still have a way to go though, this first draft needs to be around 90-100,000 words before I can see it finished and ready for the first edits. As I am quite a detailed planner I know exactly what is going to happen in the rest of the book so I hope I can keep the momentum up after the end of November. The next goal is a completed first draft by Christmas. So what’s this new WIP I have been working on…well, that’s for another blog post! ;)

If you fancy your hand writing the first draft of the book that’s been batting around in your head for the last few years, give it a go in 2018. Even if you don't make 50K you've at least started it and hopefully got the first few chapters under your belt.

www.nanowrimo.org

Will I be doing it next year? Ohhhhhh Yes!

A Quick Catch Up

Apologies for the lack of blog posts recently, such a lot has been going on with several projects in the air at once. I will be back in the bloggersphere more frequently from now on. I hope you all had great summers and fabulous holidays.

Here’s a quick catch up on what I’ve been up to over the last couple of months.

I’m currently working through the second draft of a completed novel aimed at a young adult audience. If you like action adventure with a bit of thriller thrown in then I’d like to introduce you all to Ben Weir. In the first book in his adventures he finds himself caught up in the activities of MI9, they’re a bit like MI6 only better! Even more secret and they don’t have to work within the law, which gives a lot of scope for foiling and defeating some of the worst villains around. When this second draft has a bit more meat on it I’ll drop you some tasty morsels as to what Ben gets up to.

The thing I am really excited about is happening on the 1st November…I am desperate for the start gun to get me off my writing blocks for NaNoWriMo…never heard of it? Well, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and happens every November. I hope to write the first draft of book one in a science fantasy trilogy I’ve had in a planning stage for a couple of years. It will be so good to finally start this now that I have other projects completed and out of the way giving me space to devote to it. If you want to know more about NaNoWriMo then shoot over to their website www.nanowrimo.com - if you’re wanting a framework and a bit of deadline pressure for your next WIP then it could be for you.

My holiday this year was revisiting a couple of the fabulous Channel Islands in preparation for starting the fantasy trilogy. I’ve been many times to the various islands in the group. Walking through the beautiful differing landscapes the islands have to offer, plus their varied and interesting histories, inspired me to come up with the idea for the trilogy. I will reveal more as time goes on, plus lots of pictures. One of the absolute highlights was watching dolphins arcing out of the water as they swam alongside the small ferry from Guernsey to Sark…we were even lucky enough to see them again on the return journey!

On the crafting front, part of the autumn bounty for the market stall came in the form of quinces from my neighbour. I turned them into quince and cardamom jelly, which, even if I say so myself, is delicious. I also spent a day at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace on 11^th October. After a few hours of wandering around my head was exploding with ideas, colours, yarns and fabrics. If you’re interested and haven’t been, I suggest you get yourself along to the next one. I’m already planning my visit to the show next March at Olympia in London. There are various shows at venues around the UK and Ireland so check out www.theknittingandstitchingshow.com for more information. I’ll end this crafty bit with a picture of some of the amazing textile art on show. This image of a Maasai village was actually a quilt where the textures of the various fabrics reflected the natural textures of the sand, tree bark, leaves etc.

Finally here’s an update on the World War 1 fiction book based on my great uncle Basil. If you remember from my previous blog posts I was writing a piece of fiction around the actual war diaries for his battalion. Well, I got into a bit a hole as I was trying to stay true to the diary entries, but as I got further into the book the events timeline wouldn’t fit easily into the story I had planned. We’re talking square pegs and round holes, and the more I tried to make the two fit, the more I wrote myself into a deeper and deeper hole. So, I put him away while I finished off other projects. I am in the process of picking apart what I have written (about three quarters of the first draft has been completed) and reworking both story and actual diary events so that I can crack on with him anew, probably in the New Year now. His story is too important to pass by.

The Good Son - Book Review

First off let me just say emphatically that I loved this book. For a start it is quite short (234 pages) which is always a relief after slogging through book after book of 350/400 pages plus. I also hugely liked Paul McVeigh’s writing style, easy to read, at times in your face, but never contrived. His characters seemed so natural they just flowed onto and over the pages. It was almost as if I had travelled back to Belfast in the 1980s and was a fly on the wall watching events and relationships unfold.

This is McVeigh’s debut novel and it won the Polari First Book Prize 2016. It was a finalist for The People’s Book Prize 2016 and was shortlisted for both the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2016…a pretty impressive CV for a debut novel.

The book centres around Mickey Donnelly who was ‘…born the day the Troubles started…’ and his dysfunctional family, but I would question whether they really are truly dysfunctional or a product of 1980s Belfast and the Troubles. He loves his Ma unconditionally always trying to be the ‘good son’ of the title, to win her acknowledgement and love. As much as he loves Ma he hates his alcoholic Da and what he does to the family in equal measure. Through one hot summer Mickey is on a voyage of self-discovery from panic and fear at the impending end of the summer holidays when he will be off to secondary school (not St Malachy’s where all the good, bright children go, but to St Gabriel’s where he’ll get his head kicked in), through to discovering the effects of first kisses and where his proclivities lie. He feels a ‘...funny feeling down there...’ when he kisses Martine, but similarly feels the same funny feeling when he is mesmerised by the hairiness of Pierre’s legs on a field trip to Cave Hill.

To make life more bearable Mickey Donnelly lives in a part fantasy world. His best friend is his little sister Wee Maggie, seconded by his puppy Killer. His archenemies are his older brother Paddy and a bully from down the street, Briege McAnally. The McAnallys and the Donnellys are rival families on the street and the scene where Mickey’s Ma finds out that Mrs McAnally has got an IRA heavy to frighten Mickey had me cheering Ma on. Mickey is on a quest to better himself and take him and the family to America for a better life, except for Paddy and especially his Da, he wants to leave them behind.

The book is at times laugh out loud funny and at others heart rendingly sad, sometimes it strikes a note of fear, but at all times it is real. It doesn’t steer away from the fears engendered by sectarianism, the IRA, bombings, house raids, shootings, police street patrols and the division and rivalry between the Catholics and the Protestants, but many of these are given Mickey Donnelly’s own twist of interpretation. I finished it a few weeks ago and Mickey Donnelly with his antics and sayings are still popping up in my head, a rare thing when I have moved on to the next book.

The Good Son by Paul McVeigh. Published by Salt Publishing 2015.

A Monster Calls – book review

This book by Patrick Ness has been around for a little while now having been first published in 2011. I was drawn to read it a few weeks back for two reasons; firstly the recent film of the book and secondly because I am trying to expand my reading to cover as many different genres and styles as I can while I learn theatre and craft of a novelist.

The book is a very easy read, not surprising as it is targeted at children and young adults. That said, I found it to be a very powerful book that is written with great emotion and compassion, without becoming sentimental or mawkish. The main protagonist is a boy, Conor O’Malley, who is trying valiantly to care for his terminally ill mother and keep their family unit together. Via a series of nightmares a monster in the form of a large, old yew tree visits him. The monster speaks to Conor and challenges him via the nightmares to learn lessons from three tales. Conor desperately tries to understand each of the tales hoping that this will bring salvation and cure for his mother.

Through the book we see his fierce determination to stand proud as he tries to shoulder the burden alone in the absolute belief that his mother will survive and defeat the cancer that is ravaging her body. With the arrival of his grandmother we learn he has a difficult relationship with the older woman who is herself coping with the imminent loss of her daughter and the realisation that she will become a ‘mother’ to her grandchild, a child she finds almost impossible to relate to. Conor’s absent father comes back into his life towards the end and again the boy has to come to terms with the fact that his father has his own new life in America and, other than family visits, that life does not include Conor.

This book drew me in so much I am not ashamed to say that I read the last twenty or so pages with silent tears streaming down my cheeks and a huge lump in my throat as Conor finally faces up to the situation, or ‘speaks the truth’ as the monster encourages him to do.

Patrick Ness writes beautifully and with such compassion considering the subject material. I was not surprised to see from the inside cover leaf that the book has won many awards including the major prize of the CILIP Carnegie Medal. No matter what your age it deserves a read.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Published by Walker Books.