187: Updates on Social Media, Editing My Book, and More

 

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Updates on Social Media, Editing My Book, and More

Hi friends. Welcome back to your big creative life podcast. Oh, this lighting is a little weird. Oh, okay, think that's better. I, like, can't have to move. So I'm not in the sun. I'm sitting on my floor upstairs in front of a window, and the blinds are making the light look weird. Okay, this is gonna be, I think, a quick episode. I was thinking that last week, but we had our Q and A episode, and that was like 30 minutes. And so I was like, All right, this week, I gotta make a quick one. I can't be yapping for too long. But I just wanted to share an update on some things and like what I've been processing and learning and dealing with in real time related to writing and not related to writing. So yeah, I don't have a big update on my book. Unfortunately, I'm still plugging away, but I'll on edits, but I'll talk about that in this episode. But first I want to talk about social media.

 

Social media update, we just need the app about social media for a minute. I talked about this a couple weeks ago, that I made a decision to switch my social media accounts so @KatieWolfWrites will stay the same. It's writing content tips. And then all the podcast content for your big creative life will go on Katie Wolf writes. And then @theKatieWolf on Instagram and Tiktok will be more personal content, just about my life being a mom, and then also author content, like my own book, once I have a book to promote, and I have been doing this for a little over a month now. I've been posting on @theKatieWolf, and a couple of months ago, when we did our social media episodes, I talked about like the fear of being seen, and how this comes up for a lot of a lot of us, right? I just realized I might be looking at the wrong side of the camera. It brings up the fear of being seen, because a lot of us like when we start writing, and like thinking about sharing content related to our book, and eventually having an author account, or like an author platform.

 

A lot of us have been posting on social media for years just to like family and friends. It's it's small, it's people we know in our real life, offline. And then you transition over from that to posting for people who don't know you in your real life, and letting your content be seen, and like having followers who don't actually know you in your like daily life, and that can feel a little bit jarring for some of us. It certainly it did to a small extent for me. But when I started posting on @theKatieWolf about a month ago, I realized that I had this really interesting block where, and I talked about this a couple weeks ago that like I noticed I was, I had this block on the business account, on @KatieWolfWrites, where it was. I was having trouble transitioning from like, tips and educational content and a business a professional account to sharing personal content where there was no takeaway, there was no like, three tips on improving this in your book, it was just me sharing about my life, and that was hard.

 

So I definitely still have, like, a bit of a block that I'm working through. But even in the five weeks I've been doing this, it's so much better because I set a challenge for myself. I will. This is something I would, I would pass on to any of y'all who are hesitant around social media or feel awkward posting content, do a challenge, and you can post about this and tell people you're doing this, or it can just be something private that you're holding yourself accountable for, like, like, let's say you do a 30 day challenge where you're posting one story to Instagram every single day, and you don't tell people that's what you're doing, but that's your that's your challenge for yourself. Or 30 days of doing sharing something about your writing, like the book that you're writing every single day. It can be this summer you're posting two times a week on Instagram. Doesn't have to be anything crazy, but I did a 30 day challenge for myself where I was gonna post 30 Get Ready With Me, videos, sharing about my life, sharing personal content, sharing lifestyle content, basically just like, not educational, writing content to force myself to do it.

 

And in the first week or two, it was, like, kind of hard, and I'm still, like, kind of navigating it a bit. I'm about halfway through, and I've actually had to switch my daughter was sick for she's home from daycare for three and a half days, and then also sick over the weekend, and so, like, I just my days were thrown off. I didn't get ready. I didn't get unready. It was just not happening. I wasn't putting on makeup so that that I didn't have the opportunity for that. But I still just shared personal content, and I am getting more comfortable with doing it, and I'm only I'm not even halfway through, maybe halfway through. I don't know what day this is off to check, but I. Yeah, and it was something I posted about. I was like, This is day one of me doing X, Y, Z, for some accountability, and just to, like, tell people, Hey, this is what I'm working on. And it feels vulnerable to do that. But I think it can be a good opportunity to just like, Well, I gotta do it. I said I would, I gotta do it.

 

So, yeah, it's, it's been, it's been going well. It's been really fun. I find that the more I just release pressure with it, and, like, not obsess about hashtags and SEO and, like, all of the strategy stuff, it just weighs down content for me, the more fun I can have with it. And then, honestly, the more fun that you're having with your content, people can sense that, and then they're, like, more likely to have fun consuming it, even if I don't mean fun in that. Like, everything is light hearted and funny, but you just like, find fulfillment and enjoyment in the process of creating. If you, if you could do that, it, it's just so much better. So I shared, um, I've just been sharing, like, the last week. I've just been sharing, like, whatever the hell I want. So today I posted a video about my shirt I'm wearing, which I got from Costco. I shared yesterday about my snack plate for lunch. It's just fun. It's fun. And I'm also tomorrow, I think I'm gonna do a writing vlog to talk about some edits I'm doing on my book and like, show kind of me writing, which actually leads into my update number two.

 

So I got some notes back from my agent about my book. We so she's so I have an agent who has an assistant who is like, kind of starting to take on some projects and some editorial work with with my agents clients. And this is very normal. This is how it works in the agenting world. It's kind of like an apprentice model, where someone will start out assisting an agent who's already established and learn the ropes. This is very much like a practice, like a hands on. You have to be in it to learn how to be an agent. So they get that experience that way, just like watching and assisting. And then they'll slowly start to to, like, take on work and to eventually take on clients of their own kind of under, under the supervision of this agent, and then, and then eventually fully transition to, like, having their own list and everything. That's how it works in the agenting world.

 

And so I had a call with her assistant on Friday, and we talked about, like a change that, at first it did seem like kind of a big change, because it's one, it's a change to one kind of, like thread of this story. This is a thriller, and it's a change that has like ripple effects, where I have to tweak multiple parts of the story in order to address this issue. So it seems like a lot, and it is going to be a little bit of work, but it's not as massive as I initially feared when we had the call. And I will admit, my ego got in the way a bit where I was like, fuck. I really thought this would be it. I thought this would be, you know, we'd just be doing like, a bit of polishing, and then, boom, send it off on submission to publishers. And we're not quite there yet, but that's okay. Like, I have to just remind myself, it's important to take your time. It's important to make sure the book is ready, and I want to make this book as good as it can be. And I do 100% agree with her feedback, like her bit of critique about this, this plot element.

 

So and this is partly just because I'm writing a thriller. If you're if you're writing thrillers or mysteries, or you read them, you know that there's everything is very tightly, kind of like planned out, even if the writer didn't plan everything out before they started writing. Eventually it got that way, right? Everything connects. There's a thread, there's twists, and so when you change one part of it, that can have ripple effects where you have to then address it at other points in the book. And that's kind of what this is. But it's basically just making it more of a mystery. Who's involved behind certain things, and like, one of the characters gonna be is gonna be investigating something a bit more. It's just kind of playing with the reveal of information too. So I'm having to move up some information that gets revealed sooner, which involves just tweaking it slightly and putting it earlier in the book.

 

So I have been working on that. I just started working on it today, and got a little bit of work done, I'm setting a lofty goal for myself that I'll be have these edits done in two weeks. Actually, I don't know if I should use the word lofty. It's, it's like, kind of ambitious, but I think it's kind of, it's kind of doable too. So that's my goal, is to have the edits done in two weeks. So by the time this episode comes out, I might have the edits done. We'll see. But then there's always, you know, I gotta wait and get feedback. And then she suspected that we do one more very light round of editing after that, just like polishing and tweaking anything that needs to be tweaked on a sentence level before we send out. So, but yeah, I think it's so interesting to note that what was.

 

Was what was my my first gut reaction was just disappointment and frustration and like, it was my ego. Like, Oh, isn't this just done? Like, can I just go into submission? I'm so close. Oh, and I didn't say that to her, but that was my internal reaction, so, but that's okay. It's okay that I had that reaction. It's okay. I can sit with it. I can feel that disappointment and know that, like, Yes, I can feel all that, but also like, this is one step closer to being on submission, and if I want to have the best chance of getting a book deal, I got to do the groundwork now to make sure that the book is solid. So yeah, I have not opened the book in a couple of months, and getting in there today was a bit like, Oh, yeah. I Okay, yeah. This is pretty solid. At least I got through page. I tweaked some stuff in the in the first I don't know six chapters, so I'm not, I haven't, I haven't sat and read the full thing in a while, and I'm actually, I want to build in some time to do that on this round of editing so that I can print out everything and review it before I send it over. So that's my book update also. Y'all okay, we said we decided on it.

 

Well, we have a tentative title. I don't even know if I want to share it. Yeah, I do, because I have to. Oh, let me Sorry, I just got a notification here. Okay, so the title is behind every man is the title behind every man I don't want to give too much away, but I will just say that that is a part of a larger phrase that comes up in the book. This, this idea of like a supportive woman being behind every man. So behind every man is that is the working title that we're going with, which I'm excited about. It wasn't titles are hard. I've talked about this before that like I'm just not good at coming up with titles, and so it's been a struggle to think about what to call this. But yeah, find every man is our working title. Okay, next update I have for you is just a, kind of a, not really a big update, but I had someone, I was DMing with someone about this, and I realized that I haven't, like talked about this in a while, so I just wanted to throw this out there.

 

I do have an email list. I have, like, a newsletter that I send out maybe once a month. It's not very frequently, but I'll include, like, if I release a podcast episode that I think is really helpful, I'll include a link to that and let y'all know what it's out if I have updates to share, if I've if I've learned something that I want to pass on, or like I don't know, a writing tip that I think is helpful, I've been noticing with clients, like, I'll pass that on, and my in my email to my email list. So if you want to get on my email list, when you click the link in the show notes of this episode, or you go to the link us in my social media, there's you get, like, a free character profile if you join my newsletter. So it's a character profile is a really great way to organize your thoughts around your main characters in your novel, and also just make decisions about them, about their backstory, their motivation, physical description, if you want. It's just a couple of pages.

 

So it's nothing too intense. It's not like a 50 page document where you have to, like, decide on all kinds of things about your character, but it can be really helpful in the brainstorming process and even in the writing process, if you've already started to write. So you get a copy of that for free. It's like a little Google doc where you can just make your own copy, and then you can create multiple copies to do multiple different versions for your characters, if you want to use that. So you get that if you sign up for my newsletter. Yeah, so I wanted to throw that out there, and it's free. What else? I guess those are the big updates I wanted to share. We'll see what happens with this Tiktok ban that's set to happen in a couple days. I'm recording this on the 17th. Yeah, we'll just see what happens. But, um, yeah, okay, one other, actually, one other, like lesson I just want to pass on. This is sort of random, but it's just, it's something I was thinking about. It's okay.

 

I was talking about this with a coaching client, and I had this realization that I have, I have this fear a bit as well, and I wanted to just name it and talk about it briefly, because you might have this fear too. A lot of us have someone in our life that we are worried about their reaction to what we're writing. This can be a partner, it can be a close friend, it can be your mom. It can be your dad, just someone in your life where, let's say, like you're writing a spell. Scene, and you're like, Oh my God, I don't want my dad to read this. Or maybe you're writing like something that you you're you're afraid that your family is gonna think is cringy, whatever it is. I think what I would advise you to do, and what I have advised this coaching client, is to do, to do is just to pretend that this person is literally never going to read it. You are never going to give them access to the manuscript. Before it's published. They're never going to be able to access a copy of the book. They're going to be proud of you. They're going to know that you wrote a book, but they're never going to be able to read it. They will physically be prevented from reading it.

 

Okay, I dealt with this fear more strongly when I was writing my first book, because the main character was an active alcoholic. And I just remember thinking about, like, how my family was gonna view this, or like people, my co workers at my nine to five job, or like, I don't know, because this the protagonist was like, you know, getting drunk and, like, sleeping with random guys. And I just remember thinking like, how are people gonna in my life, gonna think about the way that I'm writing about this or portraying this? And it did factor into how I was writing things. So anyways, if that's helpful for you, I just would, yeah, just encourage you to imagine that this person, like, cannot access your book, they will never read it. Because what you don't want to happen is like you're so worried about what this person is going to think, to the point where it impacts your writing, and you hold yourself back from speaking the truth that you want to speak in your book, and like telling the story that you weigh the way that you want to writing the characters the way that you want to because you're afraid of what this person is going to think, and it is impossible to fully separate that.

 

I mean, I think a lot of us who want to publish our work at various points in the writing process will think about, okay, what are readers going to think about, x, y, z, how is my work going to be reviewed or critiqued, or what is, what is the reaction going to be from social media. You know that some of that is inevitable, but there's this part about, like people in our real life, specifically, that that can be tricky, and it's also honestly why some people write under a pen name. I think that decision makes sense. It's not for everyone. But anyways, I just want to pass that on, because it's something I was thinking about, not an update. Thinking about, not an update, but, um, yeah, I guess that's everything related to client openings. I'm booking now for I have one spot open in September for editing, and then I'm booking. I have two spots for October, for the fall, so if you're interested in Fall editing, either a manuscript evaluation or copy editing, and you can reach out to me at the link in the show notes. There's all the ways we can work together and then coaching. I have one spot available in July for the six month program. You can get information on that the same link that just lists all the ways to work with me. Okay, that's my updated episode. I will keep you all posted as much as I can on the book and how things are going and when we're on submission. Fingers crossed. It will be soon, if I survive this edit, okay, I'll talk to y'all soon.

Katie Wolf