Hey y’all! (Sorry, that was a bit of my characters leftover from my self inflicted Month Write challenge.)

So I have been binge watching booktubers lately, and researching everything they’ve said in preparation for completing my novel, and entering the query stages. Yes, that part terrifies me. I can be a slightly anxious person, so the idea of sending off my novel baby to complete strangers in hopes that someone doesn’t think it’s ugly as sin, and then waiting for 6 weeks or so isn’t settling.

So what have I been binging exactly? I’ve been checking out a few of my faves’ channels looking for anything from dialogue guidance, to the cost of marketing. I got a little ahead of myself there, but it’s going to come in handy at some point! Yes, I have to edit my book. Yes, I have to get some beta readers (let me know if you’re interested!). And yes, I have to re-edit the book after the beta readers have told me that they hate everything I’ve written. But my next step would be finding and hooking an agent.

So, I have been researching the ways to do that. Kim Chance, Jenna Moreci, and Alexa Donne (just to name a few) all have great videos on all stages of writing, querying, publishing, etc. While they all have their own spin on the processes, they agree on one thing; author platform. It makes sense if you think about it. You’re basically applying for a job. When you put in a job application these days, they want to check you out on things like Facebook, LinkedIn, even your own website. So why wouldn’t an agent?

While a lot of people say that Facebook is obsolete these days, there are still a lot of people forming writing communities on there, and I have managed to get a lot out of connecting with other writers through those groups. But I realized that in order to hook an agent, I needed better understanding of the social world. What is going on in the literary world? Where are the readers that I will one day hope to grace the bookshelves of? So the first thing I did, was join Instagram. This one was pretty straightforward to me, once I figured out the tags that were relevant to me and my work, I just posted interesting pictures. All good.

So, where’s the problem? Twitter. Twitter is like a foreign language to me. I feel like I’m putting out interesting content. I’m retweeting other people’s interesting content that might help others, I’m putting out my own content through questions, and funny thoughts. Well, I think they’re funny. But I’m not getting a whole lot of community interaction. So what am I doing wrong?

If you have Twitter tips or advice, please leave it in the comments! Or hit me up on Twitter, @BrittanyMCrowl

Please, teach me how to Twitter!

As always, I appreciate you.