Lets Get This Out Of The Way
Hi, I'm Meg Smith
Okay, I've introduced myself, they know who I am, can I go now?
No? Damn.
I don't love talking about...me, but I'm fairly certain that much is clear so let me make the rest of it as transparent as possible.
I was born in South Africa in March of 1988, I lived there for 30 years.
I went to the University of Johannesburg and got my degree in Visual Art, it was a poor decision; I probably should have done something useful like accounting, but I followed my dream and fell flat on my face. It's fine really, I'm over it.
I left South Africa at the end of June 2018 and came to Ireland as an asylum seeker. The political situation has made living in South Africa dangerous with little to no opportunity for success at life in general, so now I'm living in the small refugee town of Ballyhaunis as a ward of the United Nations until they decide what to do with me.
Five days after arriving in Ireland I began to write a story; now it's a couple months and 80,000 words later and I find myself - after reading all the blogs about author platforms - having to sell my story to my readers before it's even published.
So here we are, at my blog and my Pintrest and my Twitter and my Instagram - all of which I find to be completely awful as I'm one of those edgy people who don't have any social media, I'm serious, not even a Facebook - and I'm meant to ask you to believe in me and follow me and go completely fan-girl/boy over me.
No. Just No.
I'm going to ask you to join me on my journey as I finish revising my final draft, learn how to write a synopsis and introduction letter and spend goodness knows how many months trawling countless publishing houses looking for someone to fall in love with my characters and publish my book.
I fully intend to go the whole traditional publishing route, I will be posting articles on each step of the process including my rejection letters (assuming someone will be kind enough to tell me my manuscript has ended up in their recycling).
I'm nervous about all of this but at the same time I'm hoping that you will learn with me and that if I'm successful maybe one day a newbie author will find this blog and my social accounts and know that they aren't alone.
Okay so now they know everything, can I please go?
Oh wait!
My book is called The Chronicles of Jackal and Rabbit don't forget that title, one day you will see it on the shelf of a book store and you can point and say; "hey I once read a blog by this chick, she was super weird."
Okay NOW I'm done...until next time (I don't know when, don't give me deadlines) cheers.
-------
In Retrospect:
It's been two months since I wrote this post and I've learnt a lot about myself and how I feel about promotion has definitely changed.
After doing a fair amount of research on marketing and self-promotion I've learnt to embrace the idea more openly and am far less resistance to it, I find that if I focus on my strengths then I'm actually quite good at working my platform; I absolutely love writing my blog posts and making Pins that link to them, I'm consistent with my Instagram stories and posts and really enjoy engaging with people and sharing my journey. I'm less interested in Twitter, I find that there is simply too much going on and tweets are lost in a feed that is constantly updating but I do use it to follow publishers and book "influencer's" to see whats happening in the world of books.
I didn't expect to find any joy in this but sharing my wins and the l lessons I've learned with my Instagram and Facebook (yes, I gave in and got one) community has been a real comfort and I'm glad to be able to say that this journey is changing my perspective on marketing and self promotion.
Okay, I've introduced myself, they know who I am, can I go now?
No? Damn.
I don't love talking about...me, but I'm fairly certain that much is clear so let me make the rest of it as transparent as possible.
I was born in South Africa in March of 1988, I lived there for 30 years.
I went to the University of Johannesburg and got my degree in Visual Art, it was a poor decision; I probably should have done something useful like accounting, but I followed my dream and fell flat on my face. It's fine really, I'm over it.
I left South Africa at the end of June 2018 and came to Ireland as an asylum seeker. The political situation has made living in South Africa dangerous with little to no opportunity for success at life in general, so now I'm living in the small refugee town of Ballyhaunis as a ward of the United Nations until they decide what to do with me.
Five days after arriving in Ireland I began to write a story; now it's a couple months and 80,000 words later and I find myself - after reading all the blogs about author platforms - having to sell my story to my readers before it's even published.
So here we are, at my blog and my Pintrest and my Twitter and my Instagram - all of which I find to be completely awful as I'm one of those edgy people who don't have any social media, I'm serious, not even a Facebook - and I'm meant to ask you to believe in me and follow me and go completely fan-girl/boy over me.
No. Just No.
I'm going to ask you to join me on my journey as I finish revising my final draft, learn how to write a synopsis and introduction letter and spend goodness knows how many months trawling countless publishing houses looking for someone to fall in love with my characters and publish my book.
I fully intend to go the whole traditional publishing route, I will be posting articles on each step of the process including my rejection letters (assuming someone will be kind enough to tell me my manuscript has ended up in their recycling).
I'm nervous about all of this but at the same time I'm hoping that you will learn with me and that if I'm successful maybe one day a newbie author will find this blog and my social accounts and know that they aren't alone.
Okay so now they know everything, can I please go?
Oh wait!
My book is called The Chronicles of Jackal and Rabbit don't forget that title, one day you will see it on the shelf of a book store and you can point and say; "hey I once read a blog by this chick, she was super weird."
Okay NOW I'm done...until next time (I don't know when, don't give me deadlines) cheers.
-------
In Retrospect:
It's been two months since I wrote this post and I've learnt a lot about myself and how I feel about promotion has definitely changed.
After doing a fair amount of research on marketing and self-promotion I've learnt to embrace the idea more openly and am far less resistance to it, I find that if I focus on my strengths then I'm actually quite good at working my platform; I absolutely love writing my blog posts and making Pins that link to them, I'm consistent with my Instagram stories and posts and really enjoy engaging with people and sharing my journey. I'm less interested in Twitter, I find that there is simply too much going on and tweets are lost in a feed that is constantly updating but I do use it to follow publishers and book "influencer's" to see whats happening in the world of books.
I didn't expect to find any joy in this but sharing my wins and the l lessons I've learned with my Instagram and Facebook (yes, I gave in and got one) community has been a real comfort and I'm glad to be able to say that this journey is changing my perspective on marketing and self promotion.
Nice intro Meg, keep them coming!!
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