Thursday, April 09, 2015

Writing Moods and Social Media Experiments

I managed to get past my problem scene yesterday (yes, using the techniques in yesterday's post), and it ended up going in an unexpected direction. Well, maybe not entirely unexpected, as it was a direction I was planning on going eventually, but it was a development in that direction that I hadn't expected to get to so soon. It just popped into my head as a way to handle the situation, and it then made total sense. And it will make things a lot more interesting going forward.

I'm getting close to the halfway point on the book, and since we're in a stormy phase (I write better when it's rainy), I'm thinking of doing a sort of writing retreat/marathon for the next few days. I did have plans for Saturday, but they involved a long drive and a lot of time outdoors, and I don't really want to do either with a good chance of strong thunderstorms. So I may hole up in the house today, tomorrow and Saturday and see how much writing I can accomplish, just to get through and past the midpoint, which is generally a tough part that requires a lot of momentum. I also have a lot of business-type stuff (finishing my taxes) and work around the house to do, and the last few weekends have been so busy that I like the idea of an unscheduled one, even if it is busy at home. We'll see. The weather forecast may change. But I hate to waste the rare impulses when I desperately want to write and that seems more fun to me than anything else I could do. I was dreaming scenes from the book last night.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a bit of an experiment with social media, actually posting things related to my books, which I haven't ever done much of. I've been posting pictures from the trip I took to research A Fairy Tale to Facebook. And my Amazon rankings (the only immediate metric I have) have declined. Now, I know that just means that other books were bought more than mine were. It's not like people unbought my books based on my posts, and it's entirely possible that the decline would have been worse without my posts. I'll have a better sense early next week when I get this week's sales numbers. But it is discouraging to do something designed to make things better and have things get worse. I'm going to try to keep up with it, though, because I don't think it's the kind of thing where you can do it once and get results. I'm just terrible at this social media stuff because I tend to not say anything if I have nothing to say, so I'm not really commenting, retweeting, replying, etc. or posting as often as some people do. On the other hand, you can't accuse me of clogging your feed.

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