So I have been working on my “platform” (please grimace while saying this, cringe a little, then reset shoulders more firmly). I have a Twitter (@LDarbyGibbs) account and an Indie Writer’s account, a Google+ something or other and a Facebook page (which I still have not figured out after three months of ownership. It didn’t help that it changed format just when I was getting less nervous about what I should do with it.) But Twitter is less overwhelming by far than any of them. After all, a writer should be able to write a sentence or two on the fly.
My most difficult problem is friend requests. I don’t get them often, but when I do, I have no idea how to respond. Mostly I think, “Why do you want to be my friend? What about me caught your attention?” If I can look at their blog, profile or information, I’ll see if we have anything in common, or if I find them interesting. But I don’t just say, “Sure, join the party.”
Follow me, I’ll follow you: those just make me crazy. It seems kind of like little kids collecting stickers. My daughter, when she was little, loved to collect stickers. She would smile gleefully when she received one. Stick it to something, didn’t matter what, or give it away to someone she liked just to see them smile, but she never asked about it again or searched out where she had stuck it. Followers are like that if they are just returning a follow. Sure, I want followers, but I want to earn them, not buy them.
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| Writer’s platform just coming into visibility |
Where was I: oh, yes, platform. Mine is in the just-coming- into-visibility stage. That is if it were a tangible thing, at this point, you would see a vague outline of wood planks, with darkened circular shapes, probably bolts, notable in pairs at the ends and about halfway along each plank. I work to build solid stuff, but it’s not finished. So, invisible man kind-of-thing just starting to be made solid appearing, but not yet. This blog is one of those planks, and it is one of two that appears like you could step on it and not fall through. My book is the other solid looking plank. And see that one over there, off to the right at the top of this foundation? That one is the anthology I am working on. The last short story is getting fleshed out. Then it is heavy duty revise and edit for the lot of them. Maybe by late June, early July it will debut. And one more plank will appear. A person could lay a towel down and get suntanned perhaps.
