Need a writers' support system? There's a social media community for that!

I may have mentioned that I'm the sort of person who can write in my little cave without emerging to see the sun for days on end. This is true for many writers, I think. We can be solitary creatures, and writing tends to be a solitary activity.


That's all well and good, until we need some support. Someone to hold us accountable for our stated goals. Someone to pat our shoulder when we get that story rejected--for the twentieth time. Someone to remind us that the best way out of any snafu we encounter as a writer is to keep writing. Someone to show us a video of babies dancing to bring the good feels back when all we can think about is how our writing is complete crap.

Our non-writing friends are great, but they often don't  understand what it is we do (or why the heck we do it), and not all of us are blessed with a bevy of writing friends. That's when it's nice to have a virtual writing community to support us.


As I've been working to learn more about social media for the purposes of my 'platform', I've discovered fun new ways to surround myself with others who are as obsessed with writing as I am. There are tons and tons, within genres, across genres, for different purposes. Here are a few of my current favorites:




1) #WriteClub: I'm not sure who originated the hashtag, but every Friday, the lovely people at @FriNightWrites on twitter put on a series of writing sprints under that hashtag. This technically only happens for a few hours in a given time-zone, but different people oversee the sprints in different time zones from all around the world, so the hashtag ends up being active all through the day. When the admin calls time, everyone reports how many words they were able to write during the sprint, and there's even one dedicated admin who has been tracking those numbers since the inception of the project, and reports how many cumulative words have been written. @TheSprintShack also runs sprints under this hashtag throughout the week, and people use it to connect through the week as well. This is a great way to get yourself motivated and get some words on that page!

2) #WritingChallenge: This is a group of writers who encourage each other to write 500 words per day for a month. There is at least one Facebook group associated with it, and you can always use the general hashtag (#WritingChallenge), but the actual hashtag changes each month (e.g., #MarWritingChallenge). Even if you're not a twitter person, you can check out the Facebook group for support that way.

3) Pinterest writing boards: This one is probably obvious but I have to mention it because I love visiting boards where people store writing advice and inspirational quotes. And the great thing about boards like this is there will inevitably be a quote that says something along the lines of 'Shouldn't you be writing right now? Go write!' Sort of like a built-in timer that reminds me I've spent enough time on Pinterest for now.








4) #AmWriting/#AmRevising: Search these hashtags for an instant community of folks who are pouring their blood, sweat and tears into their current work in progress (#WIP, btw). You'll find encouragement, solidarity, great quotes, and witty banter.








5) #PitchMadness, Pitchapalooza, #PitchWars: Each of these is an event that gives you an opportunity to have your work seen by an agent. Pitch Madness happens in February; writers submit a 35-word pitch for their novel, and agents fight over the best ones for a chance to read more from the author. Pitchapalooza is going on right now, and it's a NaNoWriMo-based event that can help you get some important feedback on your pitch. Pitch Wars happens in August, and mentors fight over which authors they get to mentor, to help you put together the best set of materials you can produce. In each case, a writing community springs up around the event to help one another produce the best work they can.





This is just the surface of the cool stuff you can find to help keep you writing out there on social media--there are thousands. Start following those hashtags and see where they lead you. Follow a few of the accounts, and twitter will suggest more--one is bound to suit your needs. And you can take advantage of it all from your couch, in your jammies.

You'll see me hanging out in these communities as @mishka824 on Twitter, Mishka824m on Pinterest (where I have my own writing board, of course!), and Michelle Chouinard on Google+.

Do you have any favorites virtual writing communties or secrets? Please share them with me!

Happy writing,
M.

Using Pinterest for character development and marketing

I recently made a discovery that I had to share: Pinterest is a great tool for character development.

A while back, someone in a group I'm in asked if anyone had made a Pinterest board for their books. The thought intrigued me, but I didn't run with it. Then, a few days ago, a friend mentioned she had created a Pinterest board for a character in one of her books.

But I heard her wrong, and thought she said she'd made a whole page for the character. A whole page? Like there is an actual person, who has their own actual page with their own actual boards? The idea banged around my head setting off a bunch of fireworks, and I was off and running.

See, there's a lot of advice out there about building your characters, so they aren't two dimensional. Exercises you do when you put your character in certain situations to see how they would react. Questionnaires and lists. All wonderful, and I love using them. But none of those techniques give me a legitimate reason to look through pretty pictures.

I instantly ran to Pinterest and created a page for the main character of Accidental Divination, the book I started during NaNoWriMo. I've just finished the first draft, and hope to write a sequel, so thought it would be cool to create a space where I could 'become' the main character, Semarra Rae. I spent several magical hours creating boards for her, and finding pins for those boards.

For almost any aspect of a character you can imagine, you can make a board. Of course the obvious visual things, like a 'muscle car' board or an antique jewelry board, but not just these. A home repair board for a character that flips houses. A board for tech articles for your software engineer. Even a board for gambling tips and favorite casinos for your gambling addict. No matter how strange or obscure, you can make a board for it.

In fact, if you realize you can't think of many boards for your character, that's probably a warning sign that you haven't given him/her enough dimension. Give them a few hobbies, or a few odd quirks. Maybe they love Tasmanian Devils (I know I do--don't judge). Challenge yourself to come up with a half a dozen, at least.

As you make decisions about which things you want to put on your character's board and why, you'll find yourself making decisions about them that deepen your insight into who they are, and this will show up in your writing.

But it gets even cooler.

Remember when LOST came out, and had a whole bunch of fake web pages based on the show? Pages for the Dharma Initiative, and the founders of that initiative, pages for the fake websites, etc.? Even though the fans knew these pages weren't real, they spent hours surfing them, looking for insights and clues.

You can do the same sort of thing with your character, if you create a whole page and not just a board. If you build it the way a real person would, it will give the impression the real person exists, because it's a full page with multiple boards determined by their personality. And with that, you've created a web presence for your character, and you can use this to build interest for your book:

• Before your book comes out, use the page as a teaser. What sort of character is this? What sort of person likes these things? 

• When the book comes out, use the page to highlight interesting aspects of your character and plot. Pin items/lists/places/events that feature in your book. Tweet them as hints to your audience. Play guessing games about how they're relevant. 

• In between books in a series, use them to keep your reader's interest alive. Reveal things about the character that you didn't in your book, bonus aspects of who they are. Give hints to the next plot. All of this will help keep your audience engaged. 

So how do you do create a separate page for your character?

1) Create a new e-mail address to use for this purpose. 
You will need a separate e-mail address for every Pinterest page you create. But, that's not as annoying as it first seems. Gmail, for example, lets you create multiple e-mail addresses, and you can forward the mail from each one to your 'real' e-mail address, so you don't have to deal with multiple accounts. So, if your character's name is 'Sherlock Holmes', grab something like sherlockholmes@gmail, and set it to forward any mail to your main Gmail account.

2) Set up the Pinterest account associated with your new e-mail address. 
Name the page after your character in some way, preferably something that a search engine will pick up on. Here's the one I created for my character; I used her first and middle name:

Now you'll want to start adding pins...and here's where it gets a little bit tricky to have more than one Pinterest page. Let's say you're on your personal Pinterest page, and you see something that would be perfect for Sherlock's page. You don't want to have to log out and log back in as Sherlock, find the pin again, and pin it. So there are two ways you can get around this.


3A) Create a board on your personal Pinterest page for pins you want to later pin to Sherlock's board. Then have Sherlock follow this board (or all of your boards). That way, you only have to log on as Sherlock once in a while, and grab the pins you've been storing up. This is my favorite solution. I have a board on my personal page named after the book itself, for this purpose and to publicize the book if I want to do so directly from my own page.

3B) From Sherlock's page, invite your personal page to add pins to his boards.
This way, Sherlock's boards show up under your personal list of boards, and you can pin directly to them without having to switch accounts. To set this up, log into Sherlock's page. Go to the board you want to share; either open it, or click on 'edit':

Then, invite your personal page to add pins; enter the e-mail address associated with your personal board, and click 'invite':

You'll get a notification on your personal e-mail board to pin to Sherlock's boards; once you accept that, you're golden.

The reason I don't like this method as much is that when you pin to Sherlock's boards, it will say that the pin was added by your main page, not by Sherlock. If you're going for the illusion that the page is actually maintained by your character, this will interfere with the effect.



There you have it! I hope something here has been helpful; I'll report back as I learn more.

As I've been pinning things for Semarra, I've been whittling away at her character, and have been inspired on her behalf. Quite a few of the pins have started to spark potential plot points, and have helped me flesh out existing scenes. And it's been tons of fun.

And here's a parting question for you: which book character's Pinterest page would you like to be able to visit, if it existed?


Happy Monday!
M.