So here’s the thing, I’m an introvert.
It’s hard to tell which came first, my need to be alone, or my need to write. No, wait, I know the answer: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid hiding in my bedroom inhaling every word of James Michener’s Hawaii. I still can’t eat bananas, but I devoured that book.
Writing fulfilled all of my needs. It let me put on paper what I couldn’t say out loud, and it let me hide in my office with the door closed.
I thought I was safe. I didn’t have to answer the telephone, I didn’t have to attend business meetings or business lunches or have personal contact with anyone I was not interested in interacting with.
I was safe right up until I was advised, yes, someone actually had to tell me, that I needed to develop a public presence. People needed to know my name, what I looked like, a little about what a stood for. Maybe a little more about what I ate for breakfast.
So I introduced myself to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn and You Tube and Goodreads. And BookBub.
And I created a web site where I discuss books that I like and stuff about myself, again, like what I ate for breakfast.
Social media is important to my writing career: I think I get that now.
As an example of how far I’ve come, just this morning someone on Twitter asked Twitter-verse to cough up really-awful-why-did-I-buy-a-new-dress-for-this-wedding stories.
And I thought: I can do this:
Worst wedding: my first. Don’t judge, everyone needs a practice wedding. Hubs passed out at the altar breaking his two front teeth. My father and I were halfway to the altar: he muttered an unutterable word—if you happen to be walking down an aisle in a church heading to an altar. I looked for the nearest exit. My mother swore until her dying day that we were never legally married.
I hope no one actually read that post. It happens, right? Tweets go missing in the land of Tweets-ville. Had I paused for one bloody second, I might have stuck with what I had for breakfast.
I’m fairly confident I’ll get better at this.
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