How To Figure Out Your Target Audience for Authors

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If you’ve been doing this author-ing thing for at least a few minutes, you’ve probably run into the advice: “know your target audience.” Whether you’re trying to write to market, setting up your social media, building a newsletter list, or choosing a cover design, this advice seems like it is constantly rearing its ugly head.

I have a few thoughts, of course, but if you’re looking for really solid, actionable, tactical, tangible things you can do to narrow down your audience as far as possible, BookBub has a really good article and you should check that out. After all, they have a lot more experience with the process than I do, as narrowing down audiences is really their thing.

But I do think that writers, especially ones who are just starting out, tend to agonize over this question far more than is necessary.

Yes, know your audience. But I don’t think you need to know everything about your audience all the time. As authors, particularly indie authors, we have to remember that we are just one person. Or maybe two if we have a PA or spouse to help. We can’t do everything all the time.

Which means, it is important to ask first, “Why do I need to narrow down my audience?” and then “How narrow?” So, for example, if you are trying to write to market, it’s critical to know your audience. You need to understand the market and understand exactly what different types of readers are looking for. But, if you’re trying to decide which social media platform to prioritize as the next step of your marketing, does it really matter what income level your readers are? Does it matter what they do for a living? Does it matter if they have a college degree or not?

The truth is, you can always add another social media platform later. You can always narrow down your audience more. You can always do more. So my first tip for writing your ideal target audience description is this:

Start wide.

Start with a wide understanding of your audience. For example: what genres do they like to read? This is probably the easiest audience descriptor.

You don’t want to be writing books for sci-fi readers using romance techniques. Similarly, you don’t want to be marketing romance books to sci-fi readers.

So you might begin your target audience description with a statement like this:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys sci-fi and fantasy.”

[Note: I’ll be basing all of the examples in this post off of myself, my books, and my audience.]

You should also think about the way they like to experience stories. It’s less important to target a sci-fi movie watcher or TV buff than someone that likes to read.

“My ideal target audience is a person who reads books.”

How do they consume their books? E-book? Paperback? Audio book?

These things matter to your production choices and your marketing tactics. You don’t want to market an e-book to audio book listeners. You don’t want to market a paperback to people who prefer e-books.

“My ideal target audience is a person who reads e-books.”

This matters because it can help you determine where you’re going to market your book, whether you’re going wide or staying in KU, and figure out where your readers buy their books.

So a general target audience might look like this:

“My target audience enjoys scifi and fantasy, reads, and prefers e-books.”

And this is a really great place to start. If you think this is all you need for whatever question you’re trying to answer, then just start here. After all, as I said earlier, you can always come back later and define your audience more.

But, if you want to deeper than this, then your next step is to:

Draw some conclusions.

Just with this basic, wide audience, you can begin to make some sweeping generalizations. A person who reads sci-fi and fantasy probably also watches TV shows and movies that are sci-fi and fantasy. Perhaps they attend comic cons and wear shirts featuring their favorite characters or slogans from their favorite series.

A person who reads e-books is more likely to hang out online. They probably spend time on social media, or platforms like Goodreads or Wattpad. They are more likely to sign up for services like Freebooksy or BookBub than someone who only reads paperbacks.

A person who reads paperbacks, on the other hand, is more likely to walk into a bookstore or a library (at least when there isn’t a pandemic). They are more likely to order signed copies or come to an in-person book signing.

A person who listens to audiobooks is more likely to be signed up for services like Chirp. They’re more likely to prefer longer books so they can get more out of their audible credits.

All of these details can be used to find your audience, to know where to market, and to decide how to spend your time and money.

And honestly, this amount of information is probably enough to do most of the things you want to do. A wide audience with a few conclusions drawn can help you set up Facebook ads, figure out what content to publish on social media, and keep writing books in your genre.

Your target audience may now look like this:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They hang out sometimes on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts, and they are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting.”  

Yes, I jumped to a bunch of conclusions based on my own experiences with people I know. But honestly, at this point in my career, this can provide enough direction for most of what I do. And digging down to develop a completely thorough description of my ideal target audience isn’t really going to help me that much more, and it will use up time that could be spent writing.

Look at other authors like you.

The other most helpful thing I think an author can do is to look at other books and authors who are similar to you, and figure out what else their potential audience is reading. We all think we’re special and unique, but I guarantee you that there is someone else who writes something similar to you.

Start with the authors who are super famous and you want to emulate. For my first series, that was Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. If there is a writer that your readers compare you to, start there. For my fairy tale series, this was the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer. You can also start with your genre or sub-genre. For my monster series, I classified it as post-apocalypse. Or maybe review your BISAC categories or Amazon keywords.

And then look around.

Browse Goodreads lists. Check out the Amazon bestsellers in those categories. Sift through the reviews of the top books—what other books are readers comparing those books to?

Eventually, your audience can look begin like this, but with as much detail as you want:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They hang out sometimes on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts, and they are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting…

…and they also enjoy books such as: [insert list of list of books and authors here] Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine; the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers; Ash by Malinda Lo; and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.”

Again, you can stop here if you want. This is a really good picture of your ideal audience, honestly. It will give you a good place to start for choosing what to write next, figuring out what social media content you want, determining which formats you want to release your book in, and doing the research for most different types of paid advertising.

Or, you can keep going and narrow it down even more.

Sift through your data.

If you have a website, a social media page, a newsletter, published books, or have run any ads, you have data. All of this data can be used to get a closer look at your current audience. It may not be a perfect match to your ideal audience, but it’s a good element to add.

Reviews

Let’s start with your reviews.

Reading reviews sucks, I know. But try to focus on the 4- and 5- star ones. You want to know what your audience likes, not what they don’t like.

Here are a couple of mine from my book, Midnight Wings, that give me helpful information about actual, real-life reviewers that could potentially apply to my ideal reader:

This review indicates that this reader was a regular reader who went through a reading slump. Perhaps my ideal reader is one who reads several books per month. The reader also indicates that they love fairy tales and retellings (and in fact, most of my reviewers on this book confirm this same thing, even in the lower star reviews), and spends time on Instagram.

This review confirms that the reader enjoys fairy tales and retellings. But the reviewer also suggests that they liked the twist are excited that this book is part of a series. So perhaps I can add into my target audience description that they like twists and read series as opposed to standalones.

This reviewer reveals that they enjoyed the Lunar Chronicles, which is a very helpful tidbit that I have used many times over in my marketing. They also revealed that they prefer character-driven stories, or at very least that this was one thing they preferred about this book.

So let me pause here for a moment and update my ideal target audience description:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They hang out sometimes on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular scifi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts, and they are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting, and they enjoy books such as: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine; the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers; Ash by Malinda Lo; and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

They spend time on Instagram, prefer series to standalones, like fairy-tale retellings, and enjoy character-driven stories.”

Keep in mind that these last two paragraphs would really be more specific to my fairy tale series, and less relevant to my monster or soft sci-fi series.

Website Data

Next, take a look at your website. Most website platforms offer analytics; you can also set up Google Analytics if you want to. I have both.

I’m not an expert at analytics, but here are a few things to look for:

• Your top pages

  • Mine are: 20 Weirdly Specific Words, Home, How To Write Taglines For Authors. The important thing for me to notice here is that these are author-specific pages, not reader-specific pages. I probably wouldn’t use these to add nuance to my target audience description.

• Where your audience is primarily coming from

  • Mine come from (this year):

    • Google search and direct traffic

    • Mobile and Desktop

    • Chrome, Safari

    • iOS and Windows with Android as a close third

    • Facebook as my top social media traffic driver, though I’m also getting a surprising amount of referral traffic from tumblr

• Days of the week where you get spikes

  • Most of the spikes I’ve had this year have been Thursday, Friday, or Sunday

• Geography—countries and cities where you’re getting the most traffic

  • For me, it’s the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia; and in the US, it’s mostly from CA, WA, MD, and NY.

• Keywords people are using to find your site

  • Mine are mostly “specific words” or “oddly specific words,” and “tagline for writers,” both of which point to two the specific blog posts listed above, and “ariele sieling” (Again, I probably wouldn’t use this information as part of my ideal target audience description.)

Facebook, Amazon, and Other Platforms

Facebook has this convenient feature on your public page called “Insights.” In the left-hand column is a button called “People.” You can find a lot of information about the people following you—gender, country, city, languages they speak. My audience is 65% women, mostly ages 35 – 54, from the United States.

You can also find out what content is resonating the best—my top video this year was for my launch of Hook’s Regret. The second video was an interview I did with the I Thought Ladies. I can also see that my audience is more likely to comment or react to photos rather than videos or links.

You can extract similar information from Instagram and MailChimp. You can dig around and look for patterns on your Wattpad or on Goodreads. You can sift through the data Amazon or Facebook provides when you run advertising.

And each time you draw a conclusion, you can add it to your picture of your idea target audience:

“They live in the United States, primarily CA, WA, MD, or NY. They are mostly likely a woman between the ages of 35 – 54. They speak English. They enjoy images on social media more than videos or links. They tend to spend more time online later in the week, Thursday - Sunday.”

Again, you can stop here if you want to. This is a lot of information. It’s not the end-all be-all, of course. But it’s a really good start, and should give you more than enough information to really craft social media content and the like.

Do external research.

Now that you know what you think your audience should look like, and have a picture of what your current audience does look like, it’s time to take a look at industry trends and other authors’ audiences.

I want to talk about the romance genre for a second here. Did you know that the biggest genre in fiction is romance? It’s a billion-dollar industry, and it is now primarily run by indie authors.

One of the things about this specific genre is that romance readers know what they like, and they are voracious. As in, they read a lot. They talk to each other. They leave reviews.

And as a result, there is a ton of data out there.

According to the “Romance Book Buyer 2017: A Study by NPD Book for Romance Writers of America,” the marketing focus should be on younger readers, who are:

”…diverse in sexual orientation and in ethnicity; more male; frequent readers; listening to audiobooks; reading e-books on smartphones; shopping at a greater number of online retailers; and extremely engaged on social media and willing to experiment with new authors.” [Source]

(Members of RWA can access this entire study.)

All I did to find this was google “understanding romance readers,” and voila!

The RWA (before it’s epic collapse at the end of 2019) was one of the biggest and most influential organizations in the book industry. There are thousands of romance writers and millions of romance books. Romance readers are known to be voracious, reading ten or twenty (or more!) books per month. Which has led to a lot of interesting strategies that romance writers use to access their audiences.

My point here, is that because the romance genre is so big and influential, many of the marketing strategies floating around the aether come from them. And those strategies were developed because they know their audience.

But it gets a little tougher if you’re a scifi writer. Or fantasy, mystery, thriller, horror, memoir, self-help, or whatever.

I can’t post pictures of scantily clad men and have that turn into actual book sales. I’ve also found that repeated posting in reader groups doesn’t work for me. Creating a FansOnly account is probably not going to get me new readers—it might make me money, but it doesn’t really fit my brand lol. Sexy tips and tricks aren’t going to make the type of reader I’m looking for hit buy.

So what other information is out there to help figure out your ideal audience?

Well, you can talk to other authors, for starters.

Join some Facebook groups and start engaging. Ask other authors what their target audience looks like. Ask them who follows them on Facebook or what their website traffic looks like. You can also do a little stalking (figuratively, I mean!). Join some reader groups. Sift through the group members. Pay attention to conversations. Look for trends.

You can also go to comic cons or events focused around your genre (post pandemic, of course). Talk to people. Be friendly, not creepy. Ask them if they like to read and what types of stories engage them. Take notes.

Sift through posts on relevant hashtags on Instagram and Twitter. Look for conversations about books, tropes, market trends. Follow bookstagramers and book bloggers. See what readers are saying about books—but also pay attention to their other interests. Do they like cooking? Dogs? Gardening? Hiking? Civil War reenactments?

Buy industry publications. Jane Friedman puts out a monthly newsletter called the HotSheet about what’s going on in the world. The Pew Research Center regularly releases new reports on a wide variety of things. Check out research from the Association of American Publishers or the International Publishers Association. Bowker puts out a report every year outlining trends and patterns in book sales and reading. (Though, keep in mind, some of this information costs money.) Follow Mark Coker, Joanna Penn, Kristin Katryn Rusch, David Gaughran, Mark Dawson. Listen to podcasts, read articles, follow influencers in the publishing industry

The information is out there—you just have to pay attention and take notes.

Ask.

How can you really, truly know who your audience is if you don’t ask them?

When I was ideating on the concept for this post, I decided to pick my spouse’s brain. He works for UnderArmour, and I wanted to know what types of things a big company might do to figure out their target audience.

His answer: Consumer Insights Survey. Big companies will often hire out third-party consultants to dig deep. They will survey thousands of potential customers to determine who they are, what they do, where they live, how much money they make, and what their interests are.

And while it is much more difficult for an individual writer to do something like this (you should be writing!), it is certainly possible.

You can always pay someone to do this for you. Otherwise, the simplest method would be to create a survey using a platform like SurveyMonkey or MechanicalTurk, and spread it around to as many people as possible. Post it on social media, send it to your newsletter, email it to people you know, ask other authors to share it with your audience (they’re more likely to do this if you offer to share the results with them)—and in fact, you could even get together with a few other authors and all do this together.

Don’t lose sight of the main point.

As you do all of your research, no matter how deep you decide to go, never forget that the #1 most important characteristic of your ideal target audience is this: they like your books. They like books like yours.

Know your own books. Know what’s unique about them and what’s similar to other books. Know the common tropes. Know your main character. Have your blurb and your elevator pitch crafted perfectly. Make sure you have a cover that represents your genre, your style, and your brand.

Make sure the story is a good story. Well-written. Edited.

And make sure that all of the things that you choose to do—your social media posts, paid ads, videos, website, public appearances—point back to your books.

My ideal target audience description:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They sometimes hang out on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts. They are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting, and they enjoy books such as: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine; the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers; Ash by Malinda Lo; and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

They spend time on Instagram, prefer series to standalones, seek out fairy-tale retellings, and enjoy character-driven stories.”

They live in the United States, primarily CA, WA, MD, or NY. They are mostly likely a woman between the ages of 35 – 54. They speak English. They enjoy images on social media more than videos or links. They tend to spend more time online later in the week, Thursday - Sunday.

Mostly, they like books like mine. Books with engaging, interesting, female main characters. Books that explore ideas, my own thoughts, and the universe. Books with vivid descriptions of the natural world, and books that try to pick apart what the role of humans is in a world that is so much bigger than us.”

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Developing Unique Social Media Content for Fiction Authors

Social media—a great tool and a terrible cesspool. It is a fascinating microcosm of existence, one which I have to take regular breaks from because it is stressful and overwhelming.

But social media, despite it’s many (MANY) flaws, is a fantastic tool for reaching an audience. It can be difficult to sift through ALL the people to find the RIGHT people, but the truth is: there are people on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram who would enjoy reading your work if they knew about it.

The trick is, of course, finding them.

There are many, many strategies for using social media effectively. There is advice out there on frequency of posting, times of day to post, which platforms for which type of content, how to most effectively use the tools each platform offers, advertising on those platforms—all kinds of things.

But the one thing that has always been most elusive for myself and many other fiction writers I know, is content.

It can be extremely difficult to come up with unique content, and it’s frustrating because it seems like it shouldn’t be. After all—we’re writers! We’re creative! Why does it seem so impossible?

I personally have been developing social media content for years (for myself, companies I’ve worked for, and clients). The first thing that I had to get over was the idea that it should be easy. It’s not. The second brain block I had to get over was that people cared. They don’t (at least not until you start posting something they actually want to see). And the third hurdle I had to make was the idea that it’s enough to post a lot of content, because eventually someone will get someone’s attention. That is false—quality over quantity, always. Especially when you’re all on your own and don’t have a team to manage it all for you.

A few things I’ve learned:

• People don’t care about my content unless they get something out of it.

• Content that engages people but doesn’t make them curious about me as an author is not helpful and wastes my time.

• The number of likes (on a post or a page) is ultimately irrelevant—what matters is the quality of engagement. Shares and comments are 1000x better than likes. As a social media user, I like people’s content all the time just to make them feel good—not because I care about what they’re posting. Not everyone is like me, of course, but the point here is that every user is different and has different goals and reasons for using social media. Hence, quality of engagement is the best indicator of whether content has value or not.

So, the trick is to create unique content that is not just a copy of someone else’s content, but a true reflection of you, your brand, and your books.

So that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

First, please be aware:

There is no magic formula.

Sorry to disappoint. What content you produce will depend entirely on you and your books. However, I do think there are a few best practices, and I’m going to throw out as many examples as I can think of throughout this blog post, with the hope that something (anything!) will trigger that creative switch in your brain, and at the end of this, you go AH HA, and all your problems are magically solved. If this does not happen for you, I humbly apologize. ;)

Following this introductory section, you will find three steps, then several examples, and then a few more strategies and other ways to think about it.

Step 1. Know your genre and audience.

Alright. You probably hate this piece of advice by now (because everyone says it all the time), but it’s really crucial.

So, why is it important on social media?

One billion people use Facebook. One billion people use Instagram. 330 million people use Twitter. 2.95 billion people worldwide use social media [Source].

I know I said at the beginning that there are a lot of people on social media that would really enjoy your books. But the majority of people won’t give a crap. Even if they read your book they probably wouldn’t like it. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but focusing on getting everyone to read your book is only going to waste your time and money, and be very disappointing. One of my first one-star reviews on Goodreads was from a historical romance reader who for some reason decided to read a monster-apocalypse and then give me two-stars because it wasn’t historical romance.

And let’s say you are one of the few people in the world who’s book everyone will like. Well, there’s no disadvantage to starting small. You’ll garner a group of early super-fans who will pull in their friends and family and your book will take off all on it’s own, right? Starting with a targeted, focused approach makes sense in every scenario.

For the rest of us who didn’t write the next Harry Potter or Eat Pray Love or The Bible, the majority of people in the world probably won’t like your book, and that’s okay. We don’t care about the majority of people. We care about finding the right readers.

In 2018, Washington Post reported that only 18% of Americans over the age of 15 read for pleasure [Source]. And out of that 18%, the majority of them don’t read in your genre.

So the trick becomes to narrow down your target audience to find not just readers in your genre (although that’s a good start), but to also find readers who enjoy your specific type of style, voice, sub-genre, and themes.

But you can’t find them if you don’t at least have a general idea about who they are.

So, what does this have to do with social media content? Well, the content that you produce is going to resonate with certain people, and not with others. So you want your content to be relevant to the same people who are going to read your books.

I could post pictures of hot guys on my social media all day, and probably get a lot of romance readers to follow me. But guess what. I don’t write romance! So my social media content would be irrelevant to the scifi readers I’m trying to engage with, and might actually turn them away.

Step 2. Focus on your value proposition (unique or not).

When you write the blurb for your book, what is the main point of the book? What makes your book unique? What makes it stand out from other books in your genre/the world? When you write your ad copy for Amazon ads, what is that one line that you always put at the beginning? What are the stakes? What is the one thing that will make a reader pick it up and try it out?

For my monster apocalypse, I often use the phrase, “monster apocalypse.” Why? Because I know people like apocalypses already (zombie, nuclear, environmental, disease, alien)—but the “monster” part is what makes it different. I also tend to use the phrase “Set 40 years post-apocalypse” because most apocalypse stories are told as the world is ending, not so much later.

Another way to look at this is exactly the opposite: what concepts in your book will make your reader feel comfortable? What details will remind your reader of other books that are similar, or something more popular than your own book but in the same genre?

For my fairy tale series, I often go with “A fairy-tale retelling of Cinderella.” I’m not talking about what’s unique about it—I’m talking about how it’s the same as everyone else’s. Yes, another fairy tale retelling. And yes, I’ve done Cinderella again.

Why? Because I know that’s what this particular audience is looking for. They want another fairy tale retelling. There can’t be too many fairy tale retellings as far as they’re concerned.

Okay, so what does this have to do with social media content, you ask?

Because you want to develop content that will engage with readers who are interested in similar things to your “unique” value propositions or to the “comfort” value propositions. What similar ideas can you draw from? What interests would a reader of your work have besides your work?

Step 3. Think about emotional impact.

First off, how do you want your reader to feel at the end of your book? Whether or not they will is mostly irrelevant (unless you’ve written a bad book) because everyone is different. But what is your intention?

Do you want them to feel happy? Satisfied? Scared? Powerful? Excited? Horny? Battle rush? Focused? Motivated? Awwww? Warm and fuzzy? Angry?

If you need help, you can use the Pluchik Wheel of Emotions:

Or this helpful list for putting words on emotions from Hilary Jacobs Hendel (and there are tons of lists like this one if this one doesn’t do it for you—just Google “lists of emotions”):

Once you’ve figured out how you want your reader to feel, apply that same concept to your social media posts. Ask yourself, “how will this post make a person feel? Is it relevant to the emotional impact of my book?” (Note, it doesn’t have to be the same, but it should at least be relevant. If you write HEAs, you probably want to avoid posting dark and depressing memes.)

There’s a reason romance writers post so many pictures of hot, sexy people on their feeds, or quotes from the steamiest parts of their books. It’s because they’re targeting a specific emotion: they want their reader to feel horny or satisfied or anticipatory—and those types of posts create those feelings in the viewer. Which means that hopefully, over time, a social media user who wants to experience more of those emotions via reading will say, “Well, if this author’s social media posts match their books, I’m going to love them.”

The catch is that the emotion the social media posts evoke need to align with the book or else the reader will be disappointed. Like the person who gave me a 3-star review because they thought my books were going to be about a dark sea-faring apocalypse, not a hopeful land-lubber apocalypse. Their expectations didn’t end up matching the book.

Examples of Social Media Content That Match The Book

Next up, examples! Examples are honestly the hardest part. I don’t want to steal any other author’s hard work, so I’m going to make these up off the top of my head, based on some things I’ve done, some things I’ve seen other authors do, and just random whatever pops into my head.

These examples are not designed to tell you what to do, just to give you a starting place to brainstorm your own social media content. If I had to categorize most of what talk about, I pretty much focus on:

• Images

• Discussions

• Questions to ask your audience

• Themes

• Articles

But keep in mind, you can also do stories, videos, group stuff, games, giveaways, Live events, and all kinds of things on social media. It’s all about what you like doing and what you’re comfortable doing—and of course, what platform you’re on.

A Romance Novel with an HEA and a Motorcycle Gang

Audience: romance readers, probably women, that like motorcycles

Unique value proposition: It’s set on a small island in the Caribbean, as opposed to a small US town

Comfort value proposition: Girl next door trope, enemies to lovers trope, motorcycle romance

Emotion: happy, horny, and satisfied

Ideas for social media content:

• Pictures of motorcycles

• Pictures of hot dudes/women on motorcycles

• Pictures of the Caribbean (or whatever island the book is set on)

• Discussions about vacationing in the Caribbean (invite audience to share their experiences)

• Posts about other motorcycle romance books

• Pictures of author on a motorcycle/in Caribbean

• Invitation for fans to share pics of themselves on a motorcycle

• Discussion of enemies to lover trope/girl next door trope

• Discussion of cruising in Caribbean

• Invite audience to discuss brands of motorcycles

• Invite audience to share their best motorcycle/cross country trip experience

• Why are motorcycles sexy discussion

• Quotes from book about sex/motorcycles/tropes

• Quoted reviews of book, book cover, the usual

A Scifi Horror Novel set in Space with Aliens & a Lot of Death

Audience: dark scifi/fantasy readers, 50/50 men women

Unique value proposition: author has degree in Biology, made aliens super realistic, no FTL

Comfort value proposition: outer space & spaceships, explores the frailty of human existence, existential philosophy woven through

Emotion: thoughtful, curious, fear, horror

Ideas for social media content:

• Images of space from NASA

• Discussions of biology, zoology

• Images of the real-life biological creatures/concepts used to create aliens

• Any sketches done of said aliens or world-building

• Map drawing

• Share other books by authors who have done similar things

• Discussions of favorite space travel TV shows

• Discussions of alien depictions in TV shows (that you both like/don’t like)

• Discussions of representation of FTL spaceflight/time dilation

• Ask audience if they think aliens are real

• Images of yourself doing real-life biology work (if you have any)

• Any philosophical discussions based off of some of the questions in the book (i.e. is everything just a giant simulation? why are we so tiny in comparison to everything? human ego in relation to the natural world)

• Music that you think reflects the overall feeling of the world you’ve tried to create

• Quotes from other authors who explore some of the same philosophical concepts as your book—Pascal for example (“Let man, then contemplate the whole of nature, in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him…” -Pensees”

• Quotes from book that demonstrate descriptions of aliens, descriptions of world, philosophical discussions

• Book cover, reviews, the works

Historical Fiction set in 1920s Los Angeles with Coming of Age Arc

Audience: people interested in history, anti-racism, and personal growth

Unique value proposition: MC is a Black woman who becomes a doctor, vivid descriptions & imagery

Comfort value proposition: flapper period, feeling like you get to experience that time period

Emotion: anger, sorrow, thrill, suspense, satisfaction, hope for the future

Ideas for social media content:

• Images/drawings of clothes from the era

• Historical photographs or articles about era

• Things you learned as you did research for the project

• Picture of you dressed in garb from the era

• Discussion of coming of age trope

• Discussion of readers’ own coming of age stories (what was your tipping point when you finally realized you were an adult)

• Discussion of race in the 1920s and now

• Discussion of what conceptions/misconceptions people have about the 1920s/ race/ flappers/ prohibition, etc.

• Quotes from book that focus on descriptions of the period or illustrate the challenges the MC faced

• Black Lives Matter, anti-racist educational content

• Content focused on unlearning and becoming a better person

• Philosophical discussions of how understanding the past can help influence the future and the individual decisions we make

• Discussion about the lies society taught us during our own coming of age period

• Discussions of the history of medicine, what it looked like in the 1920s vs now

• Discussions about “what makes you angry,” “what gives you hope for the future”

• Articles/posts about the impact of history and the way that we understand history

• Book covers, reviews, all that jazz

Cozy Mystery with a Bakery & Cats

Audience: mystery lovers, women, happy people

Unique value proposition: set in a bakery that focuses entirely on round food, features a mortician turned baker

Comfort value proposition: cozy murder mystery with cats

Emotion: satisfaction, warm & fuzzies, curiosity, excitement

Ideas for social media content:

• Pictures of cats

• Cat memes

• Memes about cozy mystery TV shows

• Recipes of round baked goods

• Pictures of cakes, muffins, and delicious things of that nature

• Bakery pinterest boards

• Bakery playlists

• Ask audience to share their favorite recipes of round food

• Ask audience to share their favorite cat picture of the week

• Discussions of favorite mystery books/TV shows/movies

• Quotes from book that focus on baking, mood, cats

• Pictures of author’s cats/cooking

• Live videos of cooking (“Author’s Murder Mystery Cooking Show”)

• Blog posts about weird things my cat did this week

• “Tips and tricks” on knife usage as if from your mortician MC

• Book covers, reviews, and the works

Urban Fantasy Thriller with Witches, Mythical Creatures, and an MC Who Likes to Paint Their Nails

Audience: young adult, women, and Neil Gaiman fans

Unique value proposition: the mythical creatures are takes on traditional ones, but all mixed somehow with dogs and the MC keeps finding cursed items

Comfort value proposition: always happy endings and lots of mystical, mythological creatures

Emotion: excitement, fear, cheerfulness, satisfaction, curiosity, mystical-ness

Ideas for social media content:

• Mystical, foggy stock photos with quotes from books photo shopped over them

• Sketches, drawings, photo-shopped concept illustrations of mythical creatures

• Articles about said mythological creatures by other people

• Sketches/concept illustrations of cursed objects

• Discussions of mythological creatures

• Live video series where each one you talk about a mythological creature used in your series

• Discussions of the way old myths are used in pop culture

• The philosophy of mythology—what are old myths supposed to teach us or how are they encouraging humans to behave

• Videos of cats

• Cat memes

• Discussions of witches, modern & historical

• Recipes for spells to cleanse a house of spirits or bringing peace into a home

• Mystical music or playlists

• Mood boards on pinterest with lots of foggy streets and candlit vigils

• Pictures of fingernails done interestingly—either the author’s or partner with a fingernail person

• Custom fingernail mood boards to match the book

• Author’s fingernails custom painted to look like the MC’s

• Discussions/ blog posts/ re-shared content of interesting fingernail painting design

• Discussions of other books that feature mythical creatures

• Ask audience to share their nails/cats

• Polls on most interesting historical witches

• Discussion of any weapons used in book

• Pictures/stories about historical cursed items in museums

Non-Fiction Books

Now, I know I said this article was for fiction writers, but just in case there are any non-fiction writers here—I want to say that it might seem hard, but you actually have a world of content to pull from to create social media fodder. You can totally use the system outlined above, but you can also just focus on the actual content of the book and use that as a basis for your social media.

If your book is about science—anything, literally anything from that field is relevant. If your book is about animals [or a specific animal or species]—share articles (research or otherwise) about animals, pictures of animals, other books about animals, recent news stories about animals, scientific diagrams of animals, drawings you or your kid or your class did of animals.

If your book is self-help—every chapter in the book has content. Talk about philosophy, post pics of inspirational quotes, write short posts about other influences in the topic. (Body positivity? Write about Jameela Jamil or Jessamyn Stanley or Tatyana McFadden. Over-coming alcoholism? Write about Annie Grace or Catherine Gray.)

If your book is how-to—literally write about how to do the thing. Share strategies from the book. Share articles you wrote or someone else wrote about the topic. Share short quick tips. Share testimonials. Share personal anecdotes of how your own life changed using the strategies in the book.

If your book is memoir, share content about the place you were. The time period. The overall theme. The concept. Coming of age in the 1960s? Share content about the 1960s, coming of age, the politics of the time. Road trip across the US? Share pics of all the places you visited (even if you have to buy stock photos) or write anecdotes about your experiences in those places, or tips for sitting in a car with another human for three weeks. Personal experience with abuse or depression? Share resources for getting out of a situation, working with a therapist, or finding help.

A Few Extra Strategies for Developing Social Media Content

All of the stuff above, I came up with off the top of my head. But I assure you—it’s much harder when I’m doing it for my own books. And I think the reason for this is that I know everything about my own work, and it can be hard to figure out what content to prioritize—what will people actually find engaging?

It can also be difficult to figure out what to save as a surprise in the book, and what to be open about. But the truth is—don’t get too hung up on spoilers. Obviously don’t tell everyone the main plot twist at the end, but it’s not going to ruin the book if they know what the monsters look like beforehand. It’s not going to ruin the story if they know the main character sucks at decision making, or that the universe itself is an upside-down version of our reality. And these details are what engage the curiosity of potential readers and may eventually cause them to pick up a copy of our book and read it.

So a couple extra tricks:

Ask.

Even if you have a small audience, ask what they like. Ask what discussions they have enjoyed having in the past. If you have a few readers, ask what they liked about your book. What concepts they found interesting. What their favorite parts were.

No response to your queries? Never fear. You can still…

Experiment.

I’d argue that you have no idea if something will really work until you try it. We all get excited about an idea or a strategy, but the truth is, just because you’re excited about it doesn’t mean anyone else will be. Likewise, you might think an idea is terrible, but it might be the one thing that takes off. So don’t be afraid to try something, and don’t be afraid to quit doing something that doesn’t work.

I did a series of “Question of the Week” posts for about 6 months, and I almost never got replies. So I quit doing it.

My monster drawings, on the other hand? Almost always get a series of likes or hearts, and almost always get at least a few comments. So I keep doing it. And I built an entire Patreon around it.

Keep doing the stuff that works, quit doing the stuff that doesn’t. Don’t get hung up on an idea and waste half your life doing it.

Brainstorm.

Pretty much all of the stuff I listed above is just an extended brainstorming session, right? But here’s the thing—there are tons of brainstorming strategies available for all different kinds of people with all kinds of different brains.

What brainstorming strategies work for you? Bubble maps? Singing? Sketching? Writing on the wall? List-making? Poetry? Here is a list of 15 brainstorming methods from HubSpot. Do whatever brainstorming method works the best for you.

Here’s what I did for my fairy tale series. I made a bubble map, starting with my main concept, and brainstorming as many ideas or concepts that could be made into social media content as possible. I won’t use all of these, but it gave me some ideas for future blog posts, as well as some ideas for some images I could post that are relevant and related to my work.

At the end of the day, just post stuff. Or don’t.

You don’t have to use social media to have a successful career as an author, no matter what anyone says. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of different ways to market your book, and if you hate Facebook (or Twitter, Instagram, Wattpad, Tumblr)? Don’t use it. If you don’t want to spend time coming up with social media content? Don’t bother.

Your best marketing strategy is always writing the next book. And if that’s all you want to do—do that.

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Strategies for Productivity For Writers

Right now, at this very moment, I am not feeling very productive. I have a project (more like 12 projects) that I want to work on, but every time I pick one and get started, I either get distracted on Facebook, or I end up staring at my screen for twenty or thirty minutes and accomplishing nothing.

So, right now, at this very moment, I am utilizing one of my many strategies for jump-starting productivity, by picking a project that I kind of already half-started, and just going for it, even though it has nothing to do with the projects that are currently at the top of my list to work on.

I’ve had the idea for this blog post for about two months now, based off of a conversation my friend Ali and I had, where she asked me what strategies I use when I’m feeling less than productive. So I started listing them off… and listing and listing and I discovered that I have a rather large number of strategies and sub-strategies that I use.

I want to make it clear that not all of these strategies are created equal. Some of them work for me on a regular basis (like sprinting), while others (like yelling at myself until I start working) have worked for me exactly once. I would guess that the effectiveness of a strategy will depend on the person—their working habits, their environment, and their personality.

This picture has nothing to do with anything, but I found it while browsing a free stock photo site and decided it needed to be on my blog somewhere. Alternatively, consider it a metaphor for unpacking why you’re feeling unproductive or distracted. Take a closer work at the “inner workings” of yourself to figure out whats “making you tick (or not tick)” to help you “get back into gear.” Ok, I’m done now lol

In addition, I think it’s helpful to consider why you are lacking productivity. In my experience, being productive isn’t the problem. It’s not discipline—after all, I’m doing what I love. I want to do this work! Most of the time, my “lack of productivity” is actually something else—I’m hungry, have too many ideas, distracted, or anxious. It’s the same with writer’s block. Most of the time, being “blocked” is really not about the writing at all, but about me.

I’ve ranked these strategies according to what is most effective for me, but you might rank them in a completely different order, or never use some of these, or use strategies that I haven’t included.

My method for choosing which strategy to use in the moment is to start with the top strategy and use that; if that doesn’t work, I do the next one or the third one, and after that, I kind of pick randomly based on my mood and what I’m trying to get done.

1. Doing Sprints

If you are not familiar with the concept of sprinting, it basically means that you set a timer for a short period of time and try to write as many words as you can during that time. I tend to prefer somewhere between 15 – 30 minutes, and I usually land on 20 minutes. I find that an hour is less of a sprint and more of a 5k, and longer than that is like a marathon. Shorter than 15 minutes is just annoying, personally.

Sometimes, I also use sprints for doing other stuff. I call them focus sprints, and I aim to focus for 20 minutes or whatever amount of time. I might say, “I do not want to write these emails, but I need to, so I am going to set a timer and do just this for the next 20 minutes.”

I also use a sprinting bot to help in my Discord server. In the server, many of us sprint together at the same time, which provides a little bit of social pressure to do the work and stay focused. Participants simply input their beginning and ending wordcount, and the bot does the work. If I’m doing a focus sprint, I just input random things, or I might attribute a value—say, 50 for every email I send, or for every page I edit—and then I just start at 0 and do my own math.

Sprinting has helped me write hundreds of thousands of words, and I will swear by it as an effective strategy until my dying day.

2. Goal Setting

This is more of a long-term strategy, but it can also be used in the short term and mid-term. So, for example, I participate in National Novel Writing Month and their Camps every November, April, and July. I set a goal of anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 words, and I do everything within my power to achieve it. I’ve only failed once so far—and I still landed at 42,000 words in a month. I have also set more minor goals; for example, the NanoWriMo site has a badge you can get if you update your wordcount every day. I’m bad about that, so last time, I made that my goal. Another time, I made finishing the book I was working on my goal, no matter what the wordcount was. I’ve also set editing goals.

In the short term, I find it really helpful to set next-day goals. So I might say, “Tomorrow, I need to send out three emails, write 2k words, and post to my Patreon.” That gives me a very clear path to follow, even when I’m feeling distracted. I even sometimes do this within the day—I might say, “In the next hour, I am going to write 500 words or create a graphic” or whatever.

When I set these goals, I usually give myself permission not to finish, though I know that some people need the opposite to be true.

Once, I sat down with someone that was helping me with some goal setting. And after I wrote out what I wanted to accomplish, he said, “So, you’re going to finish these by the end of the year, then?” And I said, “that’s the goal.” To which he replied, “Well, are you or aren’t you?”

I think he was just trying to be motivating, but it really annoyed me, because the whole point of goals is that they should be a stretch. They should be something the requires you to have to work at it, to try, to be consistent and dedicated—not something that you can achieve by staying up late the night before the deadline. So I tend to make my goals possible to achieve, but difficult, and then even if I don’t actually achieve them, I’ve still made significant progress as part of the process—basically, I’ve still been productive.

3. Keeping Track

I think keeping track is really important, especially with ginormous goals like writing a novel. I have several different ways of doing this:

• Spreadsheets

• Reports

• Journal

• Check-ins

Spreadsheets are great for things that involve numbers. For example, in the past I’ve tracked how many hours I wrote, what project I worked on, and how many words I wrote or how many pages I edited. It gave me a good sense of my speed as well as kept a running tally of how much work I’d gotten done.

I also now write up quarterly reports where I look at the last three months sales, words, publications, etc. No one actually reads the reports except my spouse, but just the act of doing it gets me excited about my projects and how far I’ve come since the last time I wrote one. Even if I’m doing worse, it still motivates me to do better, and usually after working on one, I’m raring to go.

Another related sub-strategy is my “Encouragement Binder.” I have a physical, three-ring binder, in which I print and paste demonstrations of my progress. I might book cover images in it, newspaper articles, screenshots of my most popular social media posts, printouts of fan emails—and then if my lack of productivity is the result of feeling like the work I’m doing is pointless, I can just flip through my Encouragement Binder for a small emotional boost.

I also have a couple different types of journals. I don’t write every day, but I like to check in periodically and see what was going on last time I wrote in it, and then add a few more details of things that I think are important that happened in between. If I’m struggling to write, sometimes I will just pull out one of my journals, write a few sentences, and that was all I needed to get the engine to restart.

Regular check-ins are basically just moments where I sit down and make a list. This is a super helpful strategy for me in the moment when I’m struggling with temporary distractions. I will make a list of all the projects I’m doing including writing, editing, marketing, publishing, and anything else, and I will highlight the ones I’m most excited about. Often, I will even post my list in my Discord server to add a little social pressure to get the work done.

Alternatively, I will go back to a list I already made and check off anything that I’ve finished. Frequently, what happens is that I see something on the list that I forgot about, get super excited about it, and then am ready to jump on board that project immediately.

That’s literally what I’m doing right now. I couldn’t focus on the projects that actually have deadlines, and so I scanned a list of other things I could work on and was like—this one! Blog post about productivity.

I’ve been working on this for 30 minutes now, and have 1300 words written—so I’d say that this strategy was a success. [note, wordcount might be different after editing]

4. Tangible Stuff

I’m a big stuff of real-life tangible stuff. I know a lot of people use tools like Trello or Google Docs to organize and keep track of themselves, but I really like binders (like my Encouragement Binder). I have a Project Binder where I make a new sheet for every project I’m working on. It has a checklist for everything that needs to get done on the project. I also have a Marketing Binder, an Ariele University Binder, and a Patreon Binder, as well as several world-building binders.

Now, I know this sounds more like an organization strategy than a productivity strategy, but it’s both, I swear. On one hand, it means that I never do the same work twice. On the other hand, if I’m feeling slow and sluggish, I just pull out my checklist and voila! I check off a few things and suddenly it makes me feel re-invigorated about the project.

I also really enjoy stickers. Sometimes I make sticker-charts, and every time I accomplish a thing, I get a sticker. Right now, I have a piece of paper on my wall that is split in half, with one half labeled “2k Days” and the other half labeled “15k Weeks.” Every time I write 2k in a day, I get a sticker; every time I get 15k in a week, I get a sticker. It makes me feel good and want to keep going.

In fact, I can already put a sticker on for today, because I wrote 2.5k on a project before this, and now I am… checking… 1600 words into this blog post, which puts me at 4.1k words for the day (that’s 2 stickers!), and less than 2k away from my daily goal.

Tangible strategies go a lot deeper than just sticker charts, though. For example, one of my favorite options is drawing. If I get stuck, I just draw a picture of the scene I’m working on. It takes my eyes off of the computer for a moment (and Facebook, as it turns out), and helps me refocus on the actual story. I keep all of these drawings and put them in world-building binders. I also have a chalkboard wall where I can write, scratch, scribble—sometimes a simple realization about my project can reinvigorate my inclination to work all over again.

Writing by hand is also helpful at times. I usually hate writing by hand because it’s too slow, but sometimes slowing down really helps me shift my focus back into the story and start to feel excited about it again.

You can also make binders, write your plot out on a chalkboard, make something out of clay, roll dice, clean your office—these sorts of things can often give your brain just the right amount of space to get rolling.

5. Freewriting

I hate freewriting. Hate it. Alas, it works. One of the reasons I get distracted is because I don’t know what to do next in a story. I don’t know where it should go, or what the next words should be—some people call this writer’s block. So, what I’ll do is sit down at my computer (or by hand, if you want to double-down on strategies) and just write whatever comes out of my head. Usually it’s really, really, really stupid. For example, “I hate freewriting because it’s boring and uninteresting, but I really need to get started actually writing because all I’m doing is wasting time and Askari needs to get to the next scene…” and that’s all it takes for me to suddenly know what to write.

Similar to free-writing (but different), sometimes I will try to take an alternate angle on a project. So, I might imagine I’m being interviewed on a TV show or by a reporter, and they will ask me questions about what I’m doing and working on. Sometimes I imagine it’s the future, and the reporter asks me how long it took me to complete the project, and I answer, “Several months. In fact, there was one week in mid-June when I couldn’t get anything done...” and I make up a whole story about how I got started again. This works surprisingly often.

Imagining the future can also help, by picturing where I’ll be when I have ten or twenty or fifty books out, or when I have my first TV show premiere launching.

6. Rewards

When I was little, my mom kept a jar of M&Ms on the back of the toilet for potty training. Anytime we used the toilet properly, we got candy.

Giving yourself rewards for answering 10 emails or writing 1k words might seem ridiculous, but it really can help. Sometimes, acknowledging your distraction and promising to give it to yourself later is all you need. For example, all I want to do right now is play Elder Scrolls. I’ve promised myself that if I can hit 6k for today, then I can play for a couple of hours this evening. Honestly, half the time I don’t even take myself up on the rewards—but just having them in the back of my mind can help.

I use food, stickers, movies, TV time, social media, and all kinds of things to motivate myself to keep going. Sometimes, I’ll even bribe myself with another project—“If you write 2k on this project, Ariele, then you can work on that other one, too.”

One thing to remember about writing books is that it’s a marathon every time. There aren’t very many mini goals on the road to focus in on, which means there aren’t very many things to reward yourself for accomplishing. So just setting up the smaller goals and celebrating those can go a long way towards helping you stay motivated for the long haul.

7. Positive Affirmation and Self-Care

I’m sure you’re familiar with this as a common psychological tactic designed to restructure negative brain processes—like thinking, “I am strong, I can achieve my goals” when actually you’re kind of feeling like a failure. Here’s a link to a helpful article about positive affirmation.

Well, guess what—the same tactics work when you’re feeling distracted!

The first step: identify the feeling.

Is it really distraction? Or are you just labeling it as distraction because you can’t focus? You might actually be feeling sad, hungry, bored, anxious, depressed, nervous, or any other emotion—even positive ones like happy or excited. Any emotional state can be distracting.

Once you’ve identified the feeling, then you can decide how to respond to it.

For example, if you’re hungry—eat! Problem solved. If you’re sad, maybe take a few minutes to acknowledge why you’re sad, write a little bit about it, and then try working again. If you’re anxious, try to think about why you’re anxious, and if you can’t let it go, then engaging in some self-care might actually be more productive than sitting and staring angrily at your computer monitor.

One big distraction for me is anxiety caused by a messy desk, but often I don’t even realize it’s bothering me. My desk gets messy really slowly—like I cleaned it this morning, but there are a couple of books and some headphones still out of place, and while they’re fine for the moment, I might set down a piece of paper and an empty bottle and a couple of dirty dishes, and I’ll start to feel… just off. Like something isn’t right. But if I recognize that feeling, then I know all I have to do is clean my desk or office, and I’m on track all over again.

Taking stock of how you feel, identifying those emotions, and then dealing with them, can often enable you to be far more productive than just ignoring them or trying to work despite them.

Another example: I was feeling bad about one of my Land of Szornyek works in progress. I didn’t realize it at first, but every time I sat down to work on it, I got anxious. And it was the project itself causing the problem. So, once I realized it, I got up and wrote on my chalkboard wall: “I love my universe. It is great. It is exciting. It has value. I want to FINISH it.” Now, every time I walk by it, I read it and think, “Yes!” and slowly get more and more excited to finish the project—and in fact, I did finish the next book and publish it.

As part of this, I will also indulge new ideas. Sometimes, a new idea is bugging and bugging and bugging me, distracting me to the point that I can’t finish anything else. I then take a deep breath, open a new word doc, and write about it. I usually give it between 2k – 5k words, enough to really get a handle on whether the idea has merit or is just being annoying. Then, I can go back to what I’m supposed to be working on, knowing that the idea will be there when I have time for it.

8. Location, location, location.

Sometimes things start to feel the same—boring, dreary, same old, same old. So one thing I like to do is switch it up. This might be as simple as going into the bedroom and sitting on the bed with my laptop on my lap. Or writing on the couch with a notebook and pen. Sometimes I might go to the park or a café somewhere. I even sometimes will move around all the furniture in my office or house. Once I even moved around all my furniture, decided I didn’t like it, and then moved it back. It was a lot of work, but then it turned out all I really needed was to clean my office.

Another, even simpler thing is to change up something that’s always been the same—like a poster on the wall. A candle on your left—move it to the right. Or actually light it, if it’s one you don’t like. Rip a picture out of a magazine that you like and hang it on the wall beside your desk.

Even intentionally making the smallest change can sometimes shift your brain into gear.

9. Abstinence

Sometimes I simply get tired. I know that the popular advice write now is that we should all be writing every day, or at very least, every week. But sometimes, not allowing myself to write is actually more effective—so long as I start back up again. Not writing for a period of time, a few days or a few weeks, causes the creative pressure to build and build and build, and when I start back in again it all comes rushing out.

I think short breaks can really help, too. Going for a walk or a run, taking a shower, reading a book, or meditating—simply giving yourself permission to relax and your brain room to breathe can really help. I think there comes a point when I try to force productivity out of myself, that it actually causes the opposite to happen, and my productivity worsens over time. So plan in breaks, plan in vacations, and remember that it’s okay to not be working all the time.

Your creativity isn’t going anywhere, and neither are your ideas. They’ll be there when you’re ready to start back up again.

10. Permission to be distracted

I think one of the most helpful things I’ve done is given myself permission to be distracted by things. Sometimes, I allow myself to be distracted by another project or organizing or world-building. But I also have a list of things that I am always and forever allowed to abandon my work for:

• Other story ideas (for up to 5k worth of words)

• Cats

• Birds

• Food

• Exercise

• Daydreaming

• Plants

This list changes over time, but I think it’s important to remember that my brain is a brain, and it will get distracted… and that’s okay.

Ultimately, the most helpful thing I’ve ever done is to experiment. If I can’t focus, I’ll say to myself, what should I try? And then I might try one of the things I’ve mentioned here, or I might go online and Google “Tricks to be more productive” or “how to stop getting distracted all the time” and I’ll let myself get distracted trying to figure out how to stop being distracted.

And what works for me has changed over time. Sometimes sprinting (though it is my #1) just doesn’t work. Sometimes what I need is a nap and a meal. Or a chance to work on a different project. Or time to answer a bunch of emails so I can stop feeling stressed about the fact that I haven’t been emailing everyone back. Or just a few minutes to check Facebook or Instagram or whatever.

There’s no one right answer. But once you’ve decided you want to be more productive, you’re already on the right track.

Separating the Art from the Artist

TW: discussions of fictional depictions of rape, physical violence, transphobia, suicide

Not to beat a dead horse with a stick (what a terrible saying), but J.K. Rowling… am I right?

For those of you who are unaware, J.K. Rowling has revealed herself (again) as pro-binary gender, meaning anti-trans and non-binary people. And while this is nothing new, it has sparked a fresh wave of outrage and lost her another slew of supporters and fans. You can read more about it here.

Every time a well-known author, artist, or musician does something terrible or controversial, the same old comments tend to resurface. On one side you have die-hards who will bend over backwards and flip themselves inside out to defend the creator, and on the other side are those who are prepared to completely abandon the creator and everything they’ve ever done.

You might hear things like:

• “She/he/they are dead to me.” or “She/he/they has done nothing wrong.”

• “I’m never supporting this artist again/reading their books/listening to their music.” or “I’m going to go buy everything they’ve ever created.”

• “What a [fill in your favorite insult].” or “What a [fill in your favorite compliment].”

I can understand both of these responses. We should never feel obligated to support a creator if we disagree with their morals and values. And if we agree with a creator’s morals and values, it is to our credit to defend and support them.

But what I really don’t like is the in-between effort to cling to the artist’s work while disassociating it from the artist. The most frequent phrase thrown around by ex-fans is:

“I just like to separate the art from the artist.” [1]

There are a few variations on this one. In the instance of J.K. Rowling, I’ve seen comments like:

• “I guess Harry Potter doesn’t have an author anymore.”

• “Her work was always greater than she is.”

• “Sometimes the art transcends the artist.”

This, to me, is a very problematic, and if I may add—irritating. I do not think you can separate the art from the artist.

Why?

I’m glad you asked.

Reason #1: All artists are problematic.

There is no such thing as a perfect artist and there is no such thing as perfect art.

Part of being human is growth, meaning that have to learn and change and grow throughout the course of our lives. And one of the most wonderful parts of art is the ability to reflect on our growth, to examine our imperfections, to explore new thoughts and ideas, and to change as a result of the work that we do.

One of my favorite things about being a writer is the fact that I get to use my art to explore things that make me uncomfortable. I get to use my art to learn, formulate ideas, and express my feelings. I get to be imperfect—and I get to express my imperfections in my work.

As an artist, I am also very aware of how my art is created. I think about my process a lot. I know that what I think, read, and consume makes its way into my work via my subconsciousness, even if that is not my active intention.

That means that the things I think and believe will be expressed in my work. It means that my flaws will be in my work.

The ideas, themes, images, characters, settings, motifs, and plots in my books came from my brain. I have stamped myself onto them. They are a part of me, and I am a part of them. You cannot simply remove me from the equation or else the work never would have existed.

Likewise, you cannot remove J.K. Rowling from Harry Potter. Her thoughts, feelings, and attitudes at the time of writing are reflected in that work. Whether we like it or not.

Also, speaking as a creator—I do not want anyone removing me from my work. If you find me personally problematic, I hope that you also find my work problematic. I put a lot of thought, effort, and consideration into what I write. I want my values and beliefs to be clear in what I write.

On being problematic.

I think some artists fear being problematic—or at least, the backlash that sometimes comes with being problematic. But there are three types of people in the world: those that agree with us, those that don’t, and those whose views on a topic are currently in flux.

I try not to spend too much time worrying about those whose views are in flux (unless my own views are in flux, in which case I try to spend some time learning and thinking about the topic in order to come to a conclusion).

However, people who disagree with me on an issue that they find important will likely also find my work problematic. The question I ask myself is this: if a white supremacist finds my work problematic, do I really care?

The answer is: no. I don’t give a flying f*%#.

The real fear is that the people I agree with, people I care about, people that I am trying to support and uplift will find my work problematic. For example, what if a Black person thinks that my work is racist, even though I am actively working to be anti-racist?

There are of course preventative measures I can take. For example, I can avoid topics I don’t feel confident about, or at least explore them in my private art, not my public art. I can do research. Listen. Hire sensitivity readers. Run my work by people whose opinions I trust before I release it.

If I do make a mistake, this is where humility comes in. If someone whose opinion I care about says, “I have a problem with your work,” the trick here is to listen, apologize, correct (to the best of my ability), and make amends.

Let me go back to J.K. Rowling. Trans people and allies have long had issues with her work. Of course, she probably can’t go back and republish Harry Potter with corrections (a flaw in the traditional publishing system, imo). But she could have said, “When I wrote that, I didn’t realize the impact it would have. I am sorry for any harm XYZ statement caused; I stand with trans people.” And then taken some steps to demonstrate her support, such as donating to a trans community non-profit, deleting harmful tweets, attending a protest, or something like that.

Not everyone would have forgiven her, and the mistake still would have been made, but an action like that would have gone a long way towards repairing the harm she had done.

What she did this past week was absolutely the wrong choice, if she wanted to show support for trans people. Not only did she NOT apologize for her tweets (and the problematic issues within her novels), but she doubled down and published a blog post which revealed so many more problematic (and traumatizing to some trans people) views on the topic, that it’s now almost impossible to even look at her name without cringing.

Most illuminating to me have been the resulting discussions about the anti-trans concepts in her work. You can read more about those here and here and here.

The only other point I want to bring into this topic is that of money. Many creators try to cater to everyone. They say, “Everyone is a potential fan. I don’t want to say or do anything problematic or political in nature because I don’t want to turn anyone off or lose a sale.”

My feeling about this is if you really want to make an impact in the world, which most creators do, this is never going to work. In the elegant words of Lin-Manuel Miranda: “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”

Reason #2: The flaws of the artist are apparent in the art as well.

I believe the act of “separating the art from the artist” is a form of false cleansing. It’s like repainting a house when the real problem is the crumbling foundation. Or sweeping the floor when actually you’ve got termites.

If a person says “J.K. Rowling is terrible but Harry Potter is fine,” it implies that the person doesn’t want to admit that the thing they are a fan of might also be problematic. It is sort of like sticking your head in the sand to avoid uncomfortable conversations (and I have certainly been guilty of this in the past).

In reality, flawed artists and flawed art (especially popular art that has been read/consumed by a large number of people) actually provides a launching point to begin conversations about difficult topics—which ultimately can bring about real-world change.

Think about how many people have read or watched the Harry Potter series. It has opened up plenty of opportunities for discussions about rising up against injustice, standing up for what is right, and good versus evil. Well, it now can also be used as a reference point to talk about issues such as transphobia, gender roles, and sexism.

One of the things about Harry Potter is that it has had a significant impact on many people, particularly millennials. I personally loved the stories as a teenager. I’ve read all the books probably 20 times. I found the world engaging, the characters interesting, and the immense depth of details easy to get lost in. When life was hard, I found comfort in the series. When I was stressed, I was able to immerse myself in another world.

But even back then, as a youth, my own community found Harry Potter problematic. I was raised in an evangelical, Christian world. Their number one issue with the series? Witchcraft. They said it promoted evil. Necromancy. I had close friends tell me that by reading the series, I was opening myself up to the devil.

Of course, I disagreed. But I still listened to the people that said they had an issue with the series. I considered the Bible verses they shared that supported their perspective. And I developed my own conclusions about it. By acknowledging that the work itself might be problematic, it forced me to really consider my own thoughts and beliefs on the topic, and it created a reference point for me to have discussions with the people in my community about a difficult subject.

And because of Harry Potter’s widespread popularity, I’ve been forced to reconsider my feelings over and over and over, each time I was exposed to a new perspective on the series.

Ultimately, I believe that both the series and the creator are problematic (though not because of witchcraft). That doesn’t change the fact that I found comfort in it as a teenager or that I enjoyed it previously. But I cannot ignore the problems within the work that I now know are there. And, I now have an opportunity to use the series as a reference point that many people understand when discussing complex and difficult topics.

On being a fan of problematic things.

This is a frequently discussed topic in the scifi and fantasy world, and a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to attend a panel about it at a local comic con. It was informative, to say the least, and I have adopted the ultimate conclusion of the panelists (though, I am always willing to discuss this topic and reserve the right to alter my view if other perspectives sway me).

The main question was this: Is it okay for me to enjoy a problematic thing?

Essentially, the panel participants came to this conclusion: It is fine to be a fan of a problematic thing, so long as you do not blindly defend an artist or their work, are willing to acknowledge the problems inherent within the work, and do not dismiss people off hand when they bring up a problem they have.

The main works discussed at the panel were HP Lovecraft (a raging racist), Supernatural (so many problems with this show I can’t even list them all), and Orson Scott Card (homophobic).

Most works have a combination of good and bad elements. It’s unfair to a creator to focus entirely on the bad and not on the good; but it is also unfair to focus entirely on the good and be unwilling to acknowledge the bad. For example, Supernatural has some horribly sexist undertones and scenes, but some great monsters and fun story lines. HP Lovecraft writes beautiful prose while simultaneously exploring the darkness of the universe—and he’s a blatant racist. Harry Potter had a significant impact on culture—and also JK Rowling is transphobic.

If we agree with the idea that all humans are flawed and thus the things we create are flawed, then it’s unreasonable to say that we can’t be fans of flawed things. But I do think that it is important to be able to have the difficult conversations, acknowledge the flaws in our favorite shows and series, and to be willing to learn from them.

3. Dismissing problematic parts of artists or their art is gaslighting.

Let’s talk about George R. R. Martin for a moment. Lots of people are huge fans of Game of Thrones. When the TV series came out, I decided I would participate by reading the first book in the series, and if I liked it, then I would finish the books and then start watching the show.

Well, I got halfway through the first book, came across the scene which includes the rape of a minor (a 14-year-old “marries” a 25-year-old and they have sex which she is portrayed as enjoying), and I quit. The fact that a grown man thought it was okay to include a scene like that while presenting it as “okay” because the child “wanted” it, makes me more angry than I can even express. Since then, I haven’t read a single book, haven’t watched any of the series, haven’t bought any merch, and generally try to avoid talking about it.

And yet, the series has gained a lot of acclaim, is insanely popular, won awards, etc. And because I write scifi, go to comic cons, and am vocal about my enjoyment of the science fiction and fantasy genres, I have been asked a number of times whether or not I enjoy GoT. When I reply honestly that I couldn’t get past the rape scene, I get one of two responses: either the person says, “I totally understand that,” or they say, “Well, he wrote it in the 90s” (as if it was okay to abuse children in that decade???), or “Well, I don’t think that’s what he intended,” or “People make way too big a deal out of that,” or “Yeah, that’s a problem but the rest of the series is great, you really should give it another chance.”

Essentially, they dismiss my feelings about the work, tell me I’m overreacting, or ignore my concerns entirely. Basically, they gaslight me.

I personally have not been raped, so while these types of responses irritate me, they don’t cause me any additional trauma. But this response is also dismissive of something that is very personal, very traumatic, and very horrific. And no one—let me repeat, NO ONE—should be required to reveal their personal trauma just to help someone else understand why they find a book problematic. This goes for any issue—sexism, racism, abuse, assault, homophobia, transphobia, violence, or anything else.

You are allowed to find a book problematic. You are allowed to find a piece of art problematic. You are allowed to find an author or creator problematic.

Period.

On responding to problematic things.

Let’s say I am at a comic con and say, “I’m a huge fan of XYZ,” and the person I’m talking to replies, “Didn’t you know that XYZ is problematic?” (Problematic here could be anything—racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, etc.)

I am immediately horrified, because no, I didn’t know.

I have a few choices:

1. I could say, “I’ve never noticed anything problematic about it, you must be wrong,” or “I don’t care.”

2. I can vow to never watch that TV show again, boycott it, never recommend it, and make sure I communicate to all of my friends that it is problematic so that they also stop watching it.

3. I could say, “Wow, I didn’t realize that,” and then go home, do some research, learn more about the problematic elements, and then make a decision about how to proceed.

The choice I make is going to depend on a few things: who I’m talking to and my relationship with them, the nature of the problematic content, my own personal priorities, my own values, etc.

For example, if someone tells me that a show or book has swearing in it, I might legitimately say, “I don’t care,” even if that other person finds swearing problematic. Because swearing doesn’t typically bother me.

However, last year I started watching 13 Reasons Why, and my friend told me that the entire thing was a dramafication of rape and suicide, so I stopped watching it immediately, without doing any research or reading about it anymore. I trusted my friend, and those are things I find problematic and didn’t want to consume.

Alternatively, I’ve had many discussions about the problematic themes in Supernatural with friends, the way the writers have changed the show and tried to address the critiques, and analyzed the effectiveness of their efforts, and the process been very informative and educational for me. So I’ve chosen to continue watching the show.

Whether or not and how much art or an artist is problematic is a personal decision, and so is determining the way in which we respond.

At the end of the day…

I honestly don’t think we can separate the art from the artist. And I don’t think we should.

Art is not created in a vacuum, and when we consume it, it is always important to remember the context in which it was created—the era, the culture, and the creator.

Art has served so many functions in society, from expressing emotions such as joy or sorrow or pain, to shining a light on the injustices of society, to exploring a variety of ideas and concepts, to simply providing a form of entertainment or escape.

If we find art or an artist problematic, it is up to us to decide whether we will abstain from engaging with that person’s work ever again, will do so only privately, or will do so openly with a willingness to have a discussion about the flaws—or whether we will dismiss the concerns other people have about it entirely.

We are also allowed to change our minds—to stop consuming something if we decide we can no longer stomach the problems, to restart if the artist works to make amends, or if we change our feelings on a particular topic for any reason.

Flaws, feelings, growth, and art are all very human. And one of the most beautiful things about art is the ability to represent ourselves authentically and to experience other people’s perspectives on the world—flaws and all.

[1] This is an explanation of the historical precedent for this concept.

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The Launch of Book 3: Lamplighters Society

The last couple of weeks have been interesting at best, and horrifying and stressful at worst. Between the virus, the murder of George Floyd, and the protests, it feels like the world is upside-down and backwards. 

And here I am, launching a book.

Frankly, launching a book amid all this feels quite trite. It feels pointless. It feels a little ridiculous.

But I’m doing it anyway, because I know that my work has brought pleasure to quite a few people and is a form of escape. A few moments stolen here and there to read, relieve stress, and hopefully get a small emotional boost.

I also want you to know that I don’t write these books in isolation from what’s going on in the world. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many of the decisions I’ve made regarding the books have been with an eye on the future.

I’ve written a couple of posts about my process and efforts to become more anti-racist. You can read them here and here. But this work I’ve done on myself has not ended at the doors to my business. Quite the opposite—I would argue it started there.

When I began my anti-racist efforts, I wanted to make a difference but I had no idea how. And my first idea was simply to write books with diverse characters. I knew I couldn’t truly represent the experiences of Black people in our contemporary world, but why not envision a future or another world where things were different? Plus, if I ever managed to accomplish one of my far future goals of making TV show, then I knew I would be able to hire Black actors, directors, etc. and help put more money into the Black community. I started small, with Kaia and Quin in my first series, and have been working to expand ever since, not just with Black characters, but also with Asian, LGBTQ, Hispanic, and more.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but this is supposed to be about my book launch, so I’ll just end with this: when I developed my core purpose and values, I went though a lot of steps (which you can read about here), and one thing never wavered. My focus was on respecting and honoring other people.

It came down to this:
My core purpose is to tell stories that reflect the wide range of human experience.

That means working to create not just white characters, but black, Hispanic, Asian, transgender, gay, lesbian, disabled, parents, kids, homeless, and any other number of characteristics you might think of. The human experience is wide. Very wide. Very, very wide.

I might not always get it right. But I will always do my best. And I’ll take it one story at a time.

If you have any thoughts or questions, you can send me a message. I am happy to have a dialogue with you.

In the meantime, if you’re here for the new book, click here.

If you would like a free copy of the ebook, please make a donation and send me the receipt to either the Black Visions Collective, to George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery’s GoFundMe, or to your local bail organization.

Thank you. And stay safe, stay healthy, and #blacklivesmatter.