Social Media Update

I have really been struggling with the social media aspect of being a writer. In today’s day and age, you have to build up a platform for yourself in order to get the attention of a literary agent and publisher. It’s not enough to have a good idea and be a good writer; you also have to prove that your book will have readers and buyers. And in order to build up a platform, you have to play the social media game. Follow a ton of accounts and hope at least half follow you back. Post consistent and aesthetically pleasing posts to get engagement. Interact with other accounts to maintain relationships. Stay on brand. Have a color palette. Maintain a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. etc. etc. 

I am so over it. 

I am tired of sending out a proposal projecting thousands of followers by the end of the year. I am sick of playing the follow/unfollow game because it feels insincere. I am worn out by the pressure to have content to post on every platform every single day. I feel like a failure when I can’t follow through on the goals and projects I’m discussing on social media. 

So I’m making a change, in my attitude, my focus, and my social media presence. 

I went through my professional Twitter and Instagram accounts and unfollowed all the people I had never personally interacted with. Now my timeline is just full of people I know and love in real life, and fellow writers/Christians/nerds I’ve met online. It is encouraging and life-giving and similar to my own content. I decided to combine my personal and professional Instagram accounts so I wouldn’t have two newsfeeds to deal with, two post schedules to feel guilty about, and two personalities I felt I was portraying. Now I’m wholly me, my writing, my plants, my friends, and all my random nonsense on just one account. I’ve limited my Facebook to only my very best friends and family, to cut the scroll time and life-draining posts I had been seeing. I unfollowed most pages and groups, only keeping the ones most important to me. And I deleted the app from my phone because I was spending way too much time looking through that platform even though I don’t even like it very much.

The whole point of this post was to let you know what’s going on with Keela Dee Subcreations on social media (you can still follow me as my unashamed, authentic, sporadically-posting self on Instagram and Twitter @kdsubcreations). But I also want to encourage you to assess what is life-giving and life-draining in your world. For me, pitching my book proposal and desperately trying to keep up with bogus social media protocols was life-draining. So I’m stopping. I’m not giving up on my writer goals or the hope of getting a literary agent; I just think now is the time to focus on what is life-giving until God points me back in the direction of querying a book idea. 

What has been life-giving to me lately has been nurturing the positive relationships I have made through social media. Getting guest bloggers and reading books by fellow up-and-coming authors. Writing my blog and providing my existing content for FREE on my website (if you haven’t checked it out lately, there is a lot more cool stuff there to download). I know I made a commitment to work on my writing career for the entirety of 2021, but now that we’re nearing the halfway mark, I think it’s okay to reassess. So for the remainder of the year I’m going to be focusing less on the pitching and the social media game and more on the writing and the relationships. I have a lot of projects bouncing around in my head and I just need to work on them, rather than try to sell them to random people I’ve never met. And if God wants me to really work to build my platform so I can get a book deal one day, then I’ll try that again. But now is not the time for that.

So I encourage you, whether you have a business or a side hustle or an Instagram for your dog, to really think about the time you are spending on social media. Is it life-giving or life-draining? Are there pages and accounts you could unfollow to help your mental health? Could you delete some apps from your phone to lessen the time you spend on it? Can you give yourself some grace to just be yourself and post what you want when you want, as opposed to trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing? I encourage you to do that, because life is slowly starting to get back to normal and screen fatigue is real. I am so ready to put my phone down and start living and writing and engaging with others in person, and I hope you do that as well.

UPDATE: since I posted this blog, my Instagram account was disabled for a week (due to overuse, basically) so I’m taking that as a God-given sign to log off for a while. Don’t worry- I’ll still be writing and blogging and hopefully staying connected to those of you I know offline. But @kdsubcreations may be silent for a while. Thanks for sticking with me through this roller coaster ride of my writing (and personal) journey.