How Social Media Can Benefit Writers

Tina Cho and Leslie Tribble are teaming up on this post to show writers why they should be on social media. 

From Tina:

Social media can benefit writers in wonderful ways if used responsibly! I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Twitter, especially, in its concise tweets has brought me lots of goodies. Here are my reasons why you should be on social media too.

You might find an agent. 

I found my agent through Twitter. I was following another agent from Martin Literary who tweeted about a new agent. Bingo! I submitted to her, and we’ve sold five books since 2016.

Adria Goetz is the best!

You might find story ideas.

Someone tweeted about haenyeo (South Korea’s diving women). I looked them up and knew I must write about them. The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story published in August 2020 from Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random and received 4 stars and lots of other accolades. See my website for details.

You might get an animated special deal (i.e. short movie) for your book.

It all started with a Tweet, dear readers!! Because Twitter friends share book covers and book reviews, someone who works for a media company just happened to see the book cover of The Ocean Calls, told her company about it, who got a hold of my agency, who bought the rights to make it an animated special. So keep sharing those book covers & reviews!

You might find a writing tribe.

Because of my books and presence on social media, especially Twitter, the famous Newbery author, Linda Sue Park EMAILED me to be a part of her #kibooka team of Korean-American & diaspora writers. See https://kibooka.com/ 

You might discover your book being sold at a famous store.

One early morning as I was getting ready for school, Penguin Random House tagged me on Instagram. Pottery Barn Kids is selling my book along with other wonderful picture books on equity and inclusion. I was floored! And last weekend I did a video for them!

You will meet wonderful people.

I have met so many wonderful people on social media--authors, illustrators, editors, agents, parents, teachers, etc… All these connections are integral in helping you become a great writer and person. 

Librarians and book reviewers will want to tag you.

Each week I’m usually tagged by librarians or book reviewers or parents or readers who enjoyed my books. I’m humbled and enjoy meeting people around the globe. 

Your publisher will want to tag you.

If your publisher is marketing your book, they will tag you. 

From Leslie:

My social media platforms are Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is my favorite form of social media, and I’ve been posting my nature photos there since 2013 - that is hard to believe!

For me, social media is a way to connect with other like-minded folks. I follow authors, both adult and kid-lit but I also follow a lot of landscape and wildlife photographers who inspire me with their work. Seeing the beauty of their art makes me work harder at my own photography. I don’t have a huge following, but I’ve really enjoyed the connections I’ve made with some of these virtual friends and have even met a few in real life. 

It was the suggestion of some of my social media followers that prompted me to create a calendar. I have zero photo editing skills and didn’t know how to create a calendar at all, but I buckled down and finally produced something I was very proud of last year. It was a huge learning curve, but gratifying in many ways, and I’m already working on a new calendar for 2022. 

My SM platforms have also been a convenient way to promote my self-published outdoor recreation guide. With one quick picture and a few words, I can tell people about my book and have even have others expand my reach when they repost my photo. Free and instantaneous marketing! In fact, now that spring is slowly making its way to northwest Wyoming, I’ll be posting a photo of my book soon, reaching even more folks than last year.

Social media can be a huge consumer of your valuable time, but it can also bring personal friendship, engagement, creative inspiration, career success and overall enjoyment. It’s a good way to get your name out there in whatever field you’re interested in. 

Let us know what successes have come your way through social media!

Tina Cho is the author of four picture books-- Rice from Heaven: The Secret Mission to Feed North Koreans (Little Bee Books 2018), Korean Celebrations (Tuttle 2019), My Breakfast with Jesus: Worshipping God around the World (Harvest House 2020), and The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story (Kokila/Penguin Random House Aug. 2020). Her lyrical middle grade graphic novel, The Other Side of Tomorrow, debuts from Harper Alley in 2023. After living in South Korea for ten years, Tina, her husband, and two teenagers reside in Iowa where Tina also teaches kindergarten. 

website: https://www.tinamcho.com/ 

Twitter: @TinaMCho

Instagram: @Tinamcho

Facebook: TinaWheatcraftCho 

Leslie Colin Tribble is the author of Adventure Guide to Cody, 2019. She's written for Cody and Beyond, Cross Country Skier Magazine, Yellowstone Valley Woman, RootsRated, and Sunlight Sports - East Side Stories. Leslie lives in northwest Wyoming with her adventure dogs, Robbie and Milo.

Instagram: @Sagebrush_Lessons

Facebook: Leslie Colin Tribble

My Week Without Social Media: Or, Why I'm Not Nearly As Important As I Think I Am!

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chaperoning a mission trip with high school students from Kenosha’s St. Mary’s Lutheran Church and Spirit Alive Church.  37 of us loaded up in three huge vans and one Chevy Traverse and headed to Detroit.  We were blessed to use Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington Hills, MI as our base camp.

While in Detroit, we spent the bulk of our time supporting the Matrix Center.  This centrally located building is an oasis in the Osborne Neighborhood, just a few miles on the edge of Detroit.  We cleared vacant lots, did landscaping, painting and a whole host of other projects that the busy staff just never had the time to do. The hot temperatures made outdoor work challenging.  The intense summer sun and heat pushed us all to our limits.  Still, the trip was fantastic in every respect.  While I enjoyed the hard work, I also enjoyed the mental vacation from social media.

Image courtesy Victoria Fields.

We had asked the youth to limit their phone use.  We wanted them to ‘be in the moment’ that seems to develop when folks are not forever looking down at their tiny screens.  They rose to the occasion.  It seemed only fair that if I was asking them to step back, that I should do the same.  I added ‘vacation responders’ to all my email accounts, professed to the social media world that I was taking a break from it.

While I hardly ever have my phone’s volume up, I noticed the ‘notifications’ popping up on my screen over the directions app. almost immediately.  When we stopped, I was tempted to ‘just check’ on those emails or that funny tweet that popped up.  I knew I was going to have to do something drastic.  In fact, when I told my 18-year-old daughter what I had done, she let out an audible gasp.  I deleted ALL of the social media apps from my phone.  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger.  I even deleted my email accounts.  Besides the camera and photography apps, my iPhone was basically, and somewhat ironically, a phone.  The chaperones were using a group text to keep in touch between vans and occasionally we had to place a random call, so I left those two apps intact.  Almost immediately I felt the relief, but also a bit of anxiety.  The word ‘addiction’ gets thrown around pretty loosely.  I don’t think I’m addicted to the phone, but I have been conditioned to pick it up every time it vibrates, ‘just to check.’

One of the many beautiful art pieces at Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington, MI.

Why did I delete the apps?  Mostly because I have so little self-control; I'm just being totally honest.  I knew that if they were on the phone, I would look.  At first, just, a peek, but soon  full-fledged minutes would turn into hours and so on.  Why not just re-load them?  Well, that’s a good idea, but that would have taken time and by the time I had the ‘need’ to check notifications, the need had passed.  So, I embraced the void.  I figured if something earth shattering happened, I would find out soon enough.  I might even just get a phone call.  Remember those?

The soaring sanctuary of Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington, MI.

Unfortunately, some horrible events DID in fact happen.  There was an attack in France and shortly thereafter there was another shooting of police officers.  We were alerted to the possibility of violence in major cities across America following these shootings.  I had told the other leaders about my social media ‘fast’ and they were monitoring events.  We shared the bare bones of the events with the students that evening as we gathered.  Seeing their faces reminded me how we ‘used’ to get bad news.  Because we were all essentially processing it together, we had time to reflect, cry and pray.  I think we miss much of this in our 24/7 connected world.  By the time one event hits the news cycle there is another event happening.  We don’t’ have time in this ‘modern’ world to grieve.

The baptismal font is large and centrally located at the Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington, MI.

As the week wore on, I noticed that I didn’t even really miss the facebook updates or countless photos of friend's children or vacation images.  In fact, I actually found time to read.  Not as much as I would have liked to, but given the fact that I had 34 noisy teenagers around me all of the time, that I read at all is a miracle!

Detail of a building at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit.

I won’t lie. I was very anxious to re-load the apps and check in with my social media accounts.  Somewhat disappointedly, I must say that nobody ‘needed’ me.  Nobody offered me a book deal, that part in the new action film, nor had I won any lotteries.  In fact, there actually very few emails or updates on my accounts.  I’d like to think that it was because I told everyone I was offline, but I think that the actual reason is that I’m just not as important as I would like to think I am.  I say that not in a disparaging way, but in an honest and humble way.  The world will turn.  The sun will rise.  All without me.

One of the structures at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit.

And yet, despite the fact that I wasn’t ‘missed’ on social media, I made memories that I will never forget; even if I didn’t document them with a tweet, gram or post.  You could say I got to time travel because I saw the ‘future’ in the faces of the youth.  I spent countless hours with them singing, praying, working and sweating.  The future is indeed bright!

The General Motors Building in Downtown Detroit, MI.

How can you manage your social media ‘addiction?’  Well,  Ibrahim Husain’s POST on Lifehack has some fantastic tips, a couple I would like to highlight.  First, he states that you have to acknowledge you have a problem.  Use one of the many trackers to monitor your use.  MOMENT is one of the best in my opinion.  It literally tracks every time you pick your phone up and seeing those statistics can be quite sobering.  After you acknowledge this, you can start working to curb your addiction.  Husain suggests deleting many of the apps from your phone, permanently.  Do you really need Facebook and Twitter on your phone?  I personally have found that using an interface like TweetDeck helps me efficiently monitor and learn from my Twitter feed.  I haven’t found anything similarly for Facebook.  For now, I’m limiting myself to it by using a timer.  

The beautiful organ at Hope Lutheran Church in Farmingham, MI.

I DID make a few changes as I re-loaded those apps back to my phone.  The first is that I turned off ALL notifications except a few key apps (text messaging and calendars).  I will NOT get notifications of new tweets, or posts to Instagram and Facebook.  I won’t even get notifications of email messages. I am sure I’ll miss a few emails late at night or early in the morning.  I apologize in advance to you if that happens. (Three weeks on, I've really enjoyed not seeing those messages on my screen.  It takes a little discipline to 'remember' to check the messages, emails, etc. but that is a much healthier 'problem' than being a slave to the notices.) Who knows, hopefully, I’ll find some time to let my mind drift; it is in that kind of moments I find I do my best thinking.  Maybe my monumental stack of books next to my bed will gradually shrink!  One thing is for sure, my week without social media has had a powerful impact on me.  Give it a try!

The whole crew gathered along the river walk in Detroit, MI.

Why You Might Want to Opt Out

Why You Might Want to Opt Out

by Leslie Colin Tribble

Last week I posted (Nov. 6) a list of some of the amazing classes and challenges available to writers of children's books. If you desire to improve technical aspects of your craft, seek inspiration or want to engage with others in this positive, encouraging and amazingly helpful community, then that list will help you find what you need.

But instead of signing up for every class, or joining every Facebook group, maybe you should opt out.

 Last year I felt compelled to be a part of the group. I signed up for lots of writing opportunities - most were free but some I paid for. I wanted to add my voice to the community and thought this was the best way for me to get lots and lots of writing done. After all, if you're engaged in a challenge or class you'll actually be working on a manuscript, right?

Not necessarily. I discovered I wasn't disciplined enough to do the work for whatever group I was currently involved with and work on my stories. Or I start out great - developing a story idea, make a few revisions, then I'd totally fizzle out so that now I have several very rough manuscripts hiding in folders on my computer.

I've talked to other writers and they sympathize. Many say something to the effect that all these great writing events are keeping them from doing their real writing - it's keeping them from sitting in the chair and actually writing.

Joanna Penn, bestselling author says, "The biggest writing challenge continues to be actually sitting down to write." 

It's nice to know I'm not alone, but now that I understand how hard it is I have to be even more diligent to keep myself in the chair.

Let's face it, we writers are wonderful procrastinators. How many times have you sat down at your computer and had the same experience as Megan McCartle who penned this:

"In the course of writing this one article, I have checked my e-mail approximately 3,000 times, made and discarded multiple grocery lists, conducted a lengthy Twitter battle over whether the gold standard is actually the worst economic policy ever proposed, written Facebook messages to schoolmates I haven’t seen in at least a decade, invented a delicious new recipe for chocolate berry protein smoothies, and googled my own name several times to make sure that I have at least once written something that someone would actually want to read."

I laughed at this because I don't know about you, but that's so me. So in an effort to cut down on those distractions that keep me from actually writing, you won't see me registering for online classes or challenges. I really want to publish a book and no longer are the sands of time on my side. I guess publishing posthumously is better than nothing, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather read it to a group of kids than have someone else read it. 

I'm also pulling back from social media. I read several articles on the subject and found myself really agreeing with Steve Pavlina:

"As I did this, I began considering that maybe I should drop Twitter and Google+ as well. I thought about it carefully and decided that I really didn’t want to spend any more years of my life sharing things on social media. I basically asked myself which scenario seemed best over the next 10 years — going social media-free vs. continuing to use it. It wasn’t really a difficult choice to see which alternative was best. The thought of investing another decade in those services made me cringe."

I know lots of people who are social media mavens. They're incredibly adept at using the platform and really, that's impressive. But that's not me. I agonize over what to post so that it will be engaging. I even ask my 20-something year old daughter how she would caption something because I know my words are stilted and *sigh*, old-sounding. Now I'm checking in about once or twice a week and it's very freeing. I'm not pressured to 'like' everything my friends post, and I only post if it's something that really is important to me (usually photographs).

Considering I'm already very easily distracted from writing I completely agreed with Steve Pavlina when he wrote this:

"I also dislike how social media conditions my brain to be very distraction prone. Too often I’d find myself engaged in some activity and impulsively checking accounts — much more often than I needed to. Have you ever experienced that?

How many times have you checked on some account or other in the past 24 hours? If every social media check was equivalent to a shot of alcohol, would you be considered an alcoholic?"

Ouch! 

When I'm honest with myself, I realized I used to check Facebook (I'm too long-winded for Twitter) simply as something to do. I'd even see what was for sale on my local FB Classifieds group, even though I certainly didn't need a broken lamp shade (I have my own, thank you!). Think of how much writing I could have gotten done with those 5, 10 or more mindless minutes given to social media. 

My business card and email signature says, "Writer," not "Social Media Checker."

Note: All images taken from Bryon Collins' article, "25 Valuable Lessons From Seriously Successful Writers"