The Writer’s Round-Up 7
The writer’s round-up is a weekly column that provides reflection, advice, and articles in the skills I want to develop as a writer: reading, writing, blogging, and marketing.
This week:
How will you know your work is worth promoting?
Tips to streamline your editing.
Vanity metrics vs. meaningful metrics in marketing.
If you want last week’s entry, look here.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash
February is over—and with it, most people’s resolutions. All that’s left is the dead of winter. It’s a good time to reflect. To that end, I’ve completed my monthly retrospective. On the whole, I’m doing fairly well in terms of maintaining my pace. Like you, I’m looking to reach the next level, though. Check out this week’s round-up of tips.
Writing
I stumbled across an interesting post on r/writing a few days ago. There were several questions embedded in the lengthy post, but the salient one was "how will I know my work is worth promoting?" Simply put, that would require a working crystal ball and the talent to use it. It is truly a matter of trial and error. Short stories can provide insight into what resonates with people, but the auspices of agents and publishers are much harder to predict reliably. Writers must be prepared to endure a lot of rejection in a variety of forms. By my estimate, a writer should spend 2-3 years querying before quitting (during which time the next novel should be in progress). Full response here.
Blogging
Editing is a chore for most writers. In Make Your Editing Less Painful, Sean Kernan provides a few tips that can streamline your efforts. My favorite one is the checklist. Checklists and cheat sheets are the perfect places to reference collected knowledge--especially if you collected the knowledge yourself. To that end, follow his advice and make your own checklist. The reflection involved in making it will prove invaluable.
Marketing
With any decent retrospective comes the discussion of metrics. Now that I post daily on social media, I can consistently expect 1 or 2 likes. This is better than nothing, but I need to reach higher. Many marketers are concerned with views and followers. Dustin Stout provides a less superficial take on metrics with his discussion of engagement and the metrics thereof. Engagement is a better measurement of how much impact your work has. I'll be looking at ways to increase engagement in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.