Tag: Twitter

Fluff About Fantasy: Official Announcements

Hey everybody! I am aware that my presence on this site has been someone lax lately. I promise I’ve got a lot of reasons big and small of why my life has been so busy, and today’s post is about making all of those announcements as well as some new changes to the site!

Announcement #1: Scaling Back

I am so passionate about Fluff About Fantasy that it has been absolutely killing me not to be able to write two posts a week as I did last semester. But to give you an idea of how this semester is going, I’m taking essentially three history classes and two languages, including starting an entire new language (German). Now while I love all of these classes, the reading load and the work load is nearly double what it was last year. I feel like I’m moving forward towards my academic goals with fantastic speed, but it means my time has dramatically shifted.

Because of this, I’m going to officially cut down to one post a week on Saturdays. This way, I can put out a clear and interesting post of decent length out to my readers without placing too much stress on myself. I want to put out information that you all are going to want to read and want to use in your writing endeavors.

I hope I won’t lose any of my readership by scaling back! I’m still looking to expand and grow; it’s just going to take a little more time than I thought.

Announcement #2: My Departure From The Pantheon

Today, I officially left the writing project, All in The Pantheon. I have loved writing for Aphrodite for the last six months, and the people at the Pantheon are some of the most wonderful people I have ever met in my life. But my time has become too short, and I have had little to no time for my own writing pursuits like Chasing Fae or Fluff About Fantasy or my new upcoming book (see Announcement #3). I had to make some tough choices about what activities to cut out of my overcommitted life, and unfortunately, this was one of the things that had to go.

It was so tough having to leave. My last couple days with them were fantastic; I got so many well wishes from everyone. My friend, Nikki (who writes for Nike) did not want to let me leave at all. I love her so much; she’s always been one of my favorite people at the Pantheon. But she also made me super emotional! My friend, Ashley, (who writes for Nyx) adopted me through their #AdoptAMortal initiative on Twitter before I had even announced my official departure! It was super exciting and made me feel a lot better about whether I would still hear from these fantastic writers. I got added to a new group chat with some of the writers so I could keep in touch, and I’m still on the unofficial Discord chat.

If you haven’t started reading the amazing stories at All in the Pantheon, you should head over there now! My stories will still remain up for a while, so catch them while you can!

Announcement #3: Book Creator News

The Book Creator program that I’ve enrolled myself in is going fantastic so far! I’ve loved learning from Professor Koester and the other young writers taking part in the program. I’m still in the researching and interviewing phase for now, but I’m starting to get really excited about the writing process. I’m looking right now at a potential July 2020 release through this program. Stay tuned for more news!

Announcement #4: Other Social Media Accounts

I’m working on expanding my social media presence across multiple platforms to gain more traffic. I would appreciate it if you would all help spread the word!

Facebook

Instagram

Pinterest

That’s all for now, my friends! Look forward to a new post about writing next Saturday!

Building An Author Platform: Twitter

Today’s post is specifically for those writers who have little to no experience with Twitter, but want to tap into this social media platform. And trust me, you really, really do.

Four months ago, I had no idea how to use Twitter. It was the one social media platform that I couldn’t justify jumping on to. It didn’t seem like much more than a place for people to shoot quick messages at each other or to the world without any real impact except for the cases where you said something really stupid or were particularly famous.

But after making an account, I realized exactly how wrong I was.

The #WritingCommunity on Twitter is legendary. Right off the bat, I was welcomed into the community even as a new writer. You can really connect with people inside and outside of your genre. I’ve gained writing tips and querying tips, conversed about my WIP and gotten people excited, and helped out other writers with ideas. And through that, I’ve seen my following grow exponentially. 1500 followers in 3 months. That’s just crazy.

Tips for Twitter

  1. Profile: When creating your profile, you only have a limited number of characters for your bio. Introduce yourself. Keep it short and sweet. Who are you? What are you working on? Take up as much space as you can.
  2. First Tweet: Reintroduce yourself. Keep it short and sweet, more so than your bio. (Bio is where you can elaborate a bit more on personality.) Introduce your work in progress and the genre. Then either elaborate on that or introduce your author website as well. Again, make the character count serve you. Finally, pin it to the top of your thread. It’s a good spot for people to see. My first tweet still gets likes and retweets months later.
  3. Keep It Simple: Tweet what you’re thinking about. Tweet about your work in progress. Tweet about your writing process. Talk about your good days and your bad days. Feel free to share a bit about your personal life as well. It helps readers and writers alike to connect with you and get excited about the work that you’re doing. Don’t feel like you need to overthink it.
  4. Interact: Spend some time each day scrolling through your feed. Comment on other writers’ posts. Support others. Provide motivation. Sometimes, you’ll find links to great blog posts or useful writing tools. A lot of writers in the #WritingCommunity ask questions to get to know others and their personalities or their WIPs (or both!). Get involved. Whenever someone comments on one of your posts, always reply back unless it’s entirely irrelevant. I’ve found that replies start conversations so easily, and I’ve gained a lot of support that way.
  5. Use Hashtags: Hashtags help get your Tweet and your name out to more people at once outside of your followers. #writingcommunity is the most important one. For fantasy, #amwritingfantasy gets your work out to other fantasy writers on Twitter. #amwriting and #amrevising will help you find writers in various stages of the process like you are.

These tips will help you go far in this community. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend hopping on. It’s 100% worth it. Thanks for reading!