Notes to Aspiring Writers» Blog

5 things to do when you don’t love social media

Brooke McGlothlin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:02:49 +0000

I got this email from a friend this week and thought it was such a good question that we might like to explore it together.

I love writing on my blog, but unlike some people, I really dislike the social aspect of it mainly because it stresses me out. I feel like I don’t have time for that part of it. I also love reading other people’s blogs, but feel pressured to read so many a day, comment, follow-up, etc. in order to build a platform. I have read that commenting and responding to comments is important in order to build your platform. I do want a platform because I figure that if my writing’s not reaching people, then it’s not much of a ministry.

Anyway, do you have any suggestions about how to stay engaged in other people’s blogs, find time, build a platform, etc. when that’s not the part of blogging you love. I just love to read and write!

As someone who has ridden the social media roller coaster for a few years now I can say with all honesty that I often feel the exact same way as my friend above. In fact, one whole chapter of Notes to Aspiring Writers shares the story of what happened to me when I stepped onto the social media ride. Don’t get me wrong…social media has been good to me. As an Indie author, I wouldn’t have any platform at all without it. Twitter has brought me opportunities I would never have had otherwise and Facebook has given me a vibrant community of like-minded friends with similar goals and aspirations.

photo credit: stock.xchng

But sometimes I don’t love it.

Sometimes, I just want to write and not worry about posting links here or there, moderating comments, or entering keywords. But my friend above is right…if you have a heart to write for ministry to others, then “others” need to see what you’re writing. And if you’re self-published, you are going to have to do “platform-building” work at some point. At least some.

With that said, I also believe it’s important to note that God is sovereign over our platforms. I refuse to embrace the thought camp that says “if you build it, they will come.” I don’t believe that. What works for some, doesn’t work for others. Your sure-fire method of gaining followers and blog readers may work for your topic and niche, but it may scare people away from mine. That’s part of the reason Notes to Aspiring Writers is NOT a how-to book. God lifts up those He chooses to lift up. And His reasons for doing so belong to Him alone. You just can’t get away from it.

So what do you do if you find yourself hating social media and community-building more and more by the second? Here’s some food for thought:

1. Take a break. A TOTAL break. Don’t write, don’t blog, don’t tweet or facebook or answer emails for at least a week, if not two. Jeff Goins wrote an excellent piece on this very topic, explaining why writers need REST. It’s vital for your health and long-term commitment to your calling. Read it. Don’t be afraid that you’ll disappear if you take a week or two off. That attitude could mean that you think you’re too important

2. Only comment on blogs that mean something to you. I tried commenting on every blog I could find for a while, and it does bring traffic your way. But I burned out on this quickly (I have two small kids that like to see their mama every once in a while!) Now I rarely leave comments. If I comment on your blog it’s because you’ve touched me deeply with your post and it’s ignited something in me (or it could be because I feel led to be a blessing to you that day…either one). Pick two blogs you love and comment on them once a week or whenever you’re really inspired by the author’s article and call it done.

3. Promote someone else. Tired of tooting your own horn all the time? There are seasons when you just have to get a message out. I’m in one now as I’m preparing for the next 21 Days of Prayer for Sons challenge, but if you’re not in that season, stop promoting yourself more than once a day and decide to promote others instead. And not just any others, but those who really inspire you. Those you would like to see succeed. Don’t have an agenda. Don’t do it because you want something in return. Just be a blessing.

4. Turn off your comments. I wrote an article after the 2010 Relevant Conference about how the Lord led me to turn mine off for a season at A Life in Need of Change. Maybe it will help you understand why this can be a good thing. I still turn mine off from time-to-time. It’s amazing how this one act can totally change your day.

5. Stop looking at your stats. Seriously…stop it. Take, dare I say it, a MONTH off from looking at your stats. Just walk away and decide you don’t care. You’ll have withdrawals for a week and then you’ll find that you really don’t care that much anymore. Really.

Try these tips on for size and see how they feel.

Do you have other suggestions for overcoming the social media beast? I would love to hear them in the comments below.

A Deeper Study {Day Five}

Brooke McGlothlin — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:00:58 +0000

{Welcome to a deeper study of the book Notes to Aspiring Writers; Your Dream, God’s Plan. Each day this week we’ll discuss what God is teaching us about having clean hands and a pure heart in our writing or blogging endeavors by highlighting things from the five chapters in the book. If you’re just joining us today, please read here to find out how to participate!}

The Last to be Chosen

Did you ever experience it? The gut-wrenching feeling of being the last one chosen during gym class because you just weren’t all that athletic? I did. Athletics were just never my thing. I was a good swimmer once upon a time…won a lot races…but no one in my school even knew about it because it was a summer-only league.

Do you trust that God knows what is best for you?

In the midst of rejections, watching others succeed and get opportunities you can only dream of, do you trust that God knows what is best for you?

Maybe you’re not ready to handle all of the pressures that come with your dreams?

Maybe your family isn’t ready to handle all of the pressures that come with your dreams?

And maybe, just maybe, God has not chosen you to bring the message of your heart to His people in the way you dream.

Maybe He wants you to live your dream and its message in front of your family and friends…making an immediate impact for His Kingdom. Can you be faithful with the mission He’s given you when it doesn’t measure up to your dreams?

Hard questions. Hard work to get to the answers. But it’s worth it.

“God is sovereign and He does what He pleases. Our life plans are less about us, and more about how He receives the greatest glory.”

Thoughts?

A Deeper Study {Day Four}

Brooke McGlothlin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:00:22 +0000

Can you truly be happy for the person who gets what you want?

Sometimes it feels like the answer is no.

It hurts to see someone try his or her hand at what you’ve already done and hit the ball out of the park, when you barely made it to first base.

I’ve known from the beginning that God would make of my books what He wanted, how He wanted. I’ve never bought into the thought that what works for one person works for another. My platform is different from yours. The time I can devote to marketing my books may be less or more than yours. God’s calling for me may look different than His calling for you.

A + B doesn’t always equal C.

For a brief season of my writing career, it seemed that every great idea I had God gave to someone else. I literally watched as people I approached to help me turned me down and helped others instead. It can really make you feel like you’re worthless. Like what you have to say doesn’t matter…isn’t important…isn’t worth investing in.

Being a writer isn’t easy.

I’m reading Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing. In it, Ann describes the lifestyle that accompanied her father’s writing career and her own desire to write. This simple description of her father made me laugh out loud:

I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.

Why did I laugh? Because this describes me! All of my good friends growing up were around ten years older than me. I read all the time and loved being alone so that I could have the time to do it. And I have always thought that I must see the world through slightly different eyes than my peers. Glad the Lord saw fit to make me a writer and not a career criminal!

As if we didn’t already struggle enough just by feeling different, we also have to endure watching our peers hit a grand slam, while our efforts barely produce a base hit.

Being a writer isn’t easy.

Thankfully, the Bible’s instructions on how we ought to live when we love the Lord go across professions. When we’re told that jealousy and selfish ambition bring disorder and every vile practice, we can take heart that God is speaking to us as writers. Over time, as I’ve confessed my jealousy and bitterness over someone else’s success, brought my sin to the throne of God, He has allowed me a measure of victory over them. I won’t be consumed, but content to minister where God has me. Even if only one person hears.

Have you ever struggled with wanting what someone else has? What is God showing you about this through our study?

Going Deeper {Day Three}

Brooke McGlothlin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:00:55 +0000

I don’t have to do this…

When you’ve got nothin…

I sat down to write yesterday and just couldn’t do it. No inspiration. No nothing. So I closed my laptop and took a nap. How’s that for dealing with writer’s block?

The feeling I had as I stared at my laptop could best be described by one word: Yuck. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write…I just didn’t want to. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to tweet. I didn’t want to Facebook, market, or build relationships with anyone except my family.

So I napped. And when I woke up streams of inspiration were coming at me from all directions.

There will be days in your writing career where you just have nothing to say. I personally think it’s ok for a writer to stop writing…for a time. There is wisdom that says that the more you write the better you get, and I know that some writers find weekly prompts to be great skill-building exercises. But sometimes, when we just don’t have any inspiration, we need to stop and fill our tank.

If you’re giving and giving and giving, and not putting anything back in, your well will run dry.

Marketing your book…

As I marketed my first eBook, Warrior Prayers: Praying the Word for Boys in the Areas They Need it Most, I committed to seeking the Lord for each step. Do you believe that God cares about such things? Here’s an example…

I wanted very badly to advertise the 21 Days of Prayer for Sons challenge on a particular blog. But one month of advertising was $100 (for a small 125 x 125 button). I simply didn’t have the money, but I knew that advertising there would produce good return. I could have spent my family’s hard-earned money on the ad, but we really didn’t have it that month to spend. I approached the owner of the blog, told her I wanted to advertise with her and that I was praying for the Lord to give me $100 within the next 24 hours so I could.

He did.

Now I’m not saying that God will respond this quickly or decisively every time we pray, but I had a sense that I needed to advertise with her and I pressed into that leading in prayer…and God moved. I had thousands of hits from her page during the month 21 Days was listed there. In terms of marketing, there was only one decision I made that gave 21 Days more exposure. It was simply that good.

So what do these two totally different topics have to do with each other?

Two things…

Sometimes God will lead you to a season of rest. Ask him to give you discernment, but commit to following His leading when you get it. Don’t strive when God says rest. Trust Him to do with your writing what He pleases and in His own way. He can move through your words in whatever way He desires and He doesn’t need a blog, Twitter or Facebook to do it.
Commit the process of marketing your book to the Lord. Ask HIM for ideas on getting it to your audience. Ask HIM to show you the right places to advertise. He’s faithful.

Live in God’s Leading.

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Discussion:

Answer the study questions in your book. Write your answers in a journal or printed out copy of Notes and then share below what concept of the book resonated most deeply with you at this point in your writing journey.

Extra! Extra!

I’m opening a brand new page here at Notes to Aspiring Writers to show off your books! If you have a book (traditionally or self-published) that you want to show off do it here for just $10/mo! Email me at notestoaspiringwriters (at) gmail (dot) com. Offer includes space for a 250 x 250 button and elevator pitch. First come, first serve.

Going Deeper {Day Two}

Brooke McGlothlin — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:00:37 +0000

How did you start your writing journey?

Is it something you’ve always done? What did writing look like for you as a child? A teen? An adult? Why do you love it?

One of the comments yesterday reminded me of why I love writing. It’s a way for me to express the quietness of my soul. I’ve always written…and most of the time I wrote out my dreams, my prayers, my hurts. I grew up in a day and age where there was no such thing as texting. We wrote notes (remember the special folds?) I have journals full of my life. Things I hoped for, things I hurt from, and ways that God worked through it all.

I wrote for an audience of One.

Blogging took that away from me. While it has made me a better writer, brought wonderful people and opportunities my way, and made me into who I am today, comparing and striving in my blogging world stole the quietness of my soul. In its place there was the constant chirping of the tweetdeck stream (until I learned to turn the sound off!), the constant reading of other people’s blogs, commenting, pressure to always have a new post, and being consumed with the desire to want what someone else had.

The process I describe in Notes to Aspiring Writers is God redeeming the quietness of my soul. What a beautiful thing. What a beautiful Savior.

Why do you love writing? Have you ever lost the love of the art of writing for the desire to be great?

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Discussion:

Going Deeper {Day One}

Brooke McGlothlin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:00:32 +0000

What is your life’s mission?

I got the idea for the first chapter of Notes to Aspiring Writers: Your Dream, God’s Plan after getting a bad case of positive message-itis. All of my life I’ve heard that I can do anything I put my mind to. I’ve been told that the only thing standing in the way of my dreams is me. I’ve been reminded that hard work and determination are all that’s required for success.

These things might be true, but at what cost?

In her Blogger’s Prayer (which I HIGHLY recommend), Ann Voskamp says, “May the only words that matter in my life not be the ones I write on a screen — but the ones I live with my skin.”

In Notes to Aspiring Writers, I said it like this:

“Because my dreams are bigger than just writing, and my life’s mission is more than a book.”

There was a time early in my writing career when I thought my life’s mission was to write a book. I just knew it would be the way that God took all of the fragmented pieces of my life and wove them into a beautiful tapestry of His grace and truth.

You might’ve peered in the window of my house and thought my dream was a noble one…sharing my heart with the pen so that other women could be lifted up. But it wasn’t noble. Something that started good, quickly turned into idol worship as I gave writing, or more specifically, getting published, the place of preeminence in my heart.

What would it have cost me if God had allowed me my dream? Your answer to that question might be different from mine, but for me, I’m sure that my personal gain would’ve been a massive loss for my family.

In this season of my life, God is calling me to gladly spend and be spent for the souls of my family (2 Corinthians 12:15) — to give those fragmented pieces of my life, and all that I’ve learned about Christ through them, to my family. While I truly love being here with you, my family needs me more than you do. There will be time for a more significant writing career later — IF that’s what God wants for me. But for now, I know He wants me to primarily spend and be spent for them and be content with whatever He brings me in the form of writing.

The message I have on my heart isn’t wasted on my family. No, it’s trained there, watered there, pruned there and will grow into all that God longs for it to be…there.

Service. Sacrifice. The upside down kingdom. Where the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Maybe you’re not a young mother. The message is the same. God has placed people in your life, in your inner circle, so that you can serve them and be served by them. They are always more important. Christ built us for relationship…to strengthen each other and lift each other up.

You know what happens when I read a book that changes my life? I want to move in with the author. When I read Hal & Melanie Young’s Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, I literally longed to move in next door to them so that I could see them in action. My point (aside from the fact that I just admitted to wanting to stalk someone?? )? I long for relationships in which I can be mentored and challenged as a person. And the best situation for this type of challenge comes in the package of one-on-one relationship.

If there’s anything we can count on, it’s that God cares more about how we function in the little things He brings us than He does our dreams for greatness.

Much to ponder today.

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Discussion:

Answer the study questions in your book. Write your answers in a journal or printed out copy of Notes and then share below what concept of the book resonated most deeply with you at this point in your writing journey.

join me for a deeper study of notes to aspiring writers

Brooke McGlothlin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 05:05:16 +0000

Notes is a little book with a big message. Feel like you need some deeper study in order to digest its message more fully?

Join me August 1 – 5, 2011 as we explore the deep places in the heart of an aspiring writer using the study questions in your book.

We’ll host our study here each day and encourage each other in the Lord. I might even create an opportunity for us to lovingly critique each others’ work.

Sound good?

All you need to get started is a copy of Notes and a heart that longs to hear from the Lord. Sign up to participate by leaving a comment below.

PS…this is a great study for aspiring bloggers too. You don’t have to want your name on a book in order to participate.

PSS…help me think of a snazzy name for our study?

Do you have a writing schedule? Or does writing schedule you?

Brooke McGlothlin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:52:27 +0000

I have little children.

And because I made a decision many months ago to keep the laptop shut when they’re awake, I’m left with two main chunks of time each day that I can write. Both occur when they’re sleeping.

This “system” worked well for me for the first year or so of writing for my personal blog, A Life in Need of Change. But when I began to add in other writing opportunities like guest posts, managing the MOB Society writing team (and writing monthly there myself), leading the 21 Days of Prayer for Sons challenge, and writing three eBooks in seven months (did I mention I also homeschool my sons and have a husband who works shift work?) the system began to crumble.

For the past week my children have been attending a morning VBS (Vacation Bible School) from 9 AM – 12 PM. Each morning I’ve dropped them off and come home to clean and work on the launch of Notes to Aspiring Writers: Your Dream, God’s Plan. I picked them up at noon, fed them lunch, snuggled and giggled with them for about an hour and then put them down for a nap. They got up from their nap around 3 PM and were usually back in bed for the night by 9 PM.

So my writing schedule for this week has been as follows:

9 – 12 (3 hour writing chunk)

1-3 (2 hour writing chunk)

9-? (2-3 hour writing chunk)

That’s a lot of writing…

Granted, not every second of that time was spent writing. I’ve been planning my launch, fighting with this website (because I’m code handicapped) and going back and forth with my wonderful designer Erin, of Design by Insight (and others who are generously helping me through this…a more formal thank you to them later). And trying to remember my name…

But the thought occurred to me last night, as I had a rare hour alone in my car, that in my efforts to control the chunks of writing time I have, what I’ve really done is allow this writing gig to control me.

Not a good feeling.

This needs to change. I’m planning on at least two new eBooks before Christmas (one from me and one a combined effort from the MOB Society writing team). The writing season I’m in isn’t going to change soon (although I am taking a week off in August), so I need to find a schedule that works for me (and allows me to do normal things like the laundry, and feeding my children). There is always more to do…but I absolutely refuse to sacrifice my family (or my sanity) in order to write a book.

So there.

Can you relate? Wanna give me some advice on how you make it work? What does your writing schedule look like?

a {specific} note to aspiring writers

Brooke McGlothlin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:09:25 +0000

I’m having a terrible case of “they’re all gonna hate it.”

My new book is due out next week (July 19th) and I’m experiencing yet another case of the dreaded “they’re all gonna hate it” disease. I know it’s a good book. The message is solid and true and writers need the offer of hope and transformation it provides. I’ve had many people tell me it’s valuable and something special (people who don’t have to tell me this – family doesn’t count here) and yet I still feel a measure of fear as launch day looms close on the horizon.

Why?

I felt it in the days before launching Warrior Prayers: Praying the Word for Boys in the Areas They Need it Most too. This sinking feeling that my words don’t really matter. That no one is going to want to read what I have to say and that the book will be a failure.

Can you relate?

Holley Gerth wrote an article on fear today that spoke volumes to me. (Ironically enough, she is one of the writers who endorsed Notes to Aspiring Writers). In it she says these words, “Isn’t that always the way it is? The fear is so loud and faith is always the still, small Voice?”

Isn’t that always the way it is? The fear is so loud and faith is always the still, small Voice?

Fear says, “you’re no good.”

Faith says, “You’re good because I said you were (very) good.”

Fear says, “Everyone will hate it.”

Faith says, “You are my beloved and my love is all that matters.”

Fear says, “You’re a failure.”

Faith says, “You are mine, and I have lifted you up. Your worth depends on Me, not on your works.”

Fear says, “No.”

Faith says, “Be faithful and I will do a new work in you.”

I’m choosing faith.

What will you choose?