Tag: platform

Is it time to start the manuscript from scratch?

Published on by Carla Doria6 Comments

It has been several months since I haven’t posted a blog post. And today was the day that I decided I would not go to bed until I finally did it. Work and travel are the excuses in general – and I won’t go to discuss them more since I want to jump into blogging pools as soon as possible without lamenting why I didn’t blog these months.

My manuscript continues to be a manuscript. However, it seems it was for the best. After going through multiple reviews and editing rounds, I decided it needs a complete makeover. The story is nice, the theme topic is interesting, but it is not the book that I think it could be. I’ve struggled so much to keep the same characters and to bring to life all situations in the book, but I reached a point where I need to acknowledge that my characters might not strong enough, neither interesting enough and some situations feel awkward and forced into the plot. Maybe leaving the manuscript to rest for a long time was a good idea after all.

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At this point, I’m not completely sure how to target this. Should I work on revamping the book, adjusting situations, and changing the characters over the existing framework, or just start from scratch?

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Starting from scratch sounds good, but if I were to start a new complete book, then why insist on this “theme topic”? I have a couple of other better theme topics to explore. However, I cannot simply give up almost two years invested on this manuscript. Somehow, deep inside, I still want to rescue it and rescue all the time invested in it.

I guess I relate to this:

Have you experienced something similar? Any Advice?

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Finally understanding Twitter – a short post on connecting with quality followers

Published on by Carla Doria10 Comments

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about twitter: Struggling with a place where people don’t use Twitter. In this post, I talked about how I had decided to start using Twitter as a way to build up my Author platform and how I was struggling with it.  I was using the guide: Build your Author Platform: The New Rules: A Literary Agent’s guide to growing your audience in 14 steps, which I completely recommend. The book suggested that I start following friends and coaxing them into following me. But being in a country where Twitter is actually not popular, didn’t help much.

I must confess I considered buying Twitter followers. But I was scared of two issues:

  • I would pay for a scam
  • I would buy fake followers that would disappear later (which I heard happens a lot, one day you got 10000 followers and a couple of days later you don’t have them)

In the end, I desisted from the buying idea, and I’m proud to say that I’m about very close to get 700 REAL followers with just hard work.

www seoclerk com

Image source: http://www.seoclerk.com

Why am I so proud of this followers?

Because I know they are:

  • Nice people who tweet nice things
  • Active twitter users – not just accounts that were opened once and then their owners just forgot about them

I’ve managed to engage with many of them. I know most of them are bookworms like me or are struggling writers as me. So when I review my Home feed, I always get very interesting tweets. And I know that when I tweet, I get interesting replies or retweets.

Of course, Twitter is not only about getting followers. Mostly, in order to get followers, you also have to follow. That’s why I’m very careful who I choose to follow. I really want to get good decent Twitter users to interact with. I don’t want to be guided by just numbers. I want to get quality followers.

www steamfeed com

Image source: www.steamfeed.com

Why am I so interested in the quality followers?

I’m into social networking because: I truly believe you can network and build contacts than later can turn into good advisors, supporters, and even friends.

Through this blog, for example, I’ve managed to get in contact with many nice bloggers. I have managed to find people who have the same struggles as me and who are also looking for support and encouragement.

So if anybody of you is highly worried about getting numbers, just try to forget that side, and concentrate on the quality of connections you get. You’ll see how those numbers will just grow little by little.

And you, do you ever question yourself how to grow your numbers in your platform? Do you even care about this? Feel free to post your opinions.

P.S. Just in case, my twitter handle is: @carlisdm, leave yours to connect!