Do Authors Need an Online Platform?

Plus: finding a writing routine that works for you, and making the most of the time you have

Dear I Have Notes,

Social media feels like a waste of time to me, but I’ve heard that you have to do it if you want to sell your book. How much do you think “having a platform” matters? Is it really necessary to have a “brand,” or to be on Twitter at all? How have you balanced the demands of self-promotion with doing the actual work?

— I’d Rather Be Writing in My Cave

Dear I’d Rather,

Your social reach could potentially signal to a publishing team that you know a bunch of great writers who will be excited to talk about your book, or help them determine how much online outreach they’ll need to do on your behalf if you don’t engage much there. Having a gigantic following has probably helped some folks get larger advances. I know a few authors whose publishers have asked them to give social media a go, or reconsider their decision to leave. But your online presence is only one of many factors involved in the decision to make an offer or not—and far less important than others, like the actual quality of your book, how many copies a publisher thinks they can sell, etc. If they love and believe in a writer’s work, a small Twitter following shouldn’t be a dealbreaker.

I think one key to maintaining an online presence, if you decide to do so, is finding a platform you can tolerate, and only following people whose writing and opinions you actually want to read. You’re not going to get anything out of it if it’s an unqualified misery for you. (This is why I deactivated Facebook a while ago.) If you can’t stand Twitter but still want to try to directly reach and engage with readers in some other way, maybe Instagram, or a newsletter (hi), or some other platform is how you do that.

It’s worth noting that being on social media won’t benefit you much if you’re only there to talk about your writing, or the book you’re hoping to sell—for us non-famous writers, it’s not an effective tool unless you spend time following, chatting with, and interacting with others. Even if you enjoy certain aspects of this, like seeing people’s very good dogs and connecting with and sharing the work of writers you admire, engagement does come at a cost. Every moment you spend scrolling is a moment you’re not writing. It can be wearying to spend a lot of time on sites where lies, misinformation, and threats often spread without significant checks. You might be subject to harassment or abuse. Self-promotion makes many of us cringe—and others of us anxious—and when the distinctions between followers and thoughtful, engaged readers blur, we might be tempted to put too much stock in retweets and approving replies instead of keeping our focus where it needs to be: on creating and sharing work we are proud of and can feel good about.

Just as I’d never tell a writer that they have to be on a particular platform, I think it’s also hard to say what the right “balance” might be for anyone else—you’ll need to try different things to find out what social-media practices, if any, work for you. My own ability to be visible and engage online ebbs and flows: When I have less emotional energy or more work to do, I consciously try to spend less time on the apps. I’ve set boundaries so that I don’t overshare or get sucked into arguments that will waste my time. I turned off notifications ages ago, and I won’t open social media feeds if I’m on a tight deadline. I do my best to spend no more than an hour or so on social media a day in total across various platforms, though in practice it usually works out to less than that. All this makes it doable for me—for now. But I know other writers whose social media tolerance is pretty much zero, no matter what rules or guardrails they set up, so they’ve stopped using these platforms altogether, and that’s the right choice for them.

Do I find having an online platform nightmarish at times? Sure. I won’t make any sort of case for its necessity; the cost-benefit analysis seems to worsen by the day. But I can’t deny that, over the years, it has allowed me to connect with editors and agents and publishing professionals, given me non-gatekept access to an audience, and helped me find and follow writers whose work has enriched my life, who I might never have come across otherwise. When I went on tour for my first book, the Brooklyn independent bookstore Books Are Magic hosted one of my earliest events, and at some point I looked around the packed room and realized that I probably knew half the attendees from Twitter or Instagram. During the signing, I kept trying to match faces with tiny avatars in my head, hugging people once I’d made the connection. It didn’t feel superficial. It didn’t have anything to do with performance or “branding.” I was just glad to see so many people I already thought of as colleagues or friends, even if this was our first time meeting in person. Whether or not I’d have a writing career without social media, there are folks I’ve gotten to know there who I’d miss hearing from if I left, and I know that I couldn’t possibly keep up with all of them and their work individually. This might not be enough to keep me there forever, but it is one reason I’ve stuck around.

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Dear I Have Notes,

I know it is different for professional writers, but for people like me, who want to write but can rarely have the opportunity to sit down and think uninterrupted, what processes or routines have you found that work for you in establishing writing as a priority?

— Doing My Best

Dear Doing My Best,

At the start of each week, I take a look at my calendar and commitments, and note the hours or days when I know I’ll be able to set aside time to write. Sometimes I block off those windows and set up reminders to ensure the time isn’t lost. It’s important to set achievable goals, especially with limited time—you may want to try writing for, say, 15 minutes at a time, three times a week.

It might help to focus on just one piece at a time, at least initially—whatever feels most exciting or urgent to you at the moment—and keep a list of things you want to write about in the future, so you don’t lose track of good ideas. Try writing at different points in the day to see what works best for you. Tell yourself that you’re not trying to finish a story in one big gulp; you can write just one scene, or a tricky bit of dialogue. Stop when you feel that you could write more if you had to keep going, so you’ll have momentum when you sit down to work again.

If you’re someone who can give yourself deadlines and work toward meeting them, even when not contractually obligated to do so, great. If this is a struggle for you, you could consider asking a friend (perhaps a fellow writer) to assign a deadline. I have at times belonged to small writing groups and needed to have work ready to share. I’ve mentioned this before, but having an accountability partner or group may be helpful—long before I had an agent or an editor, I had a friend who’d check in with me at the end of the week to see if I’d met my objectives. When all else fails, I am not above a little bribe (today I told myself, Okay, Nicole, if you write for two hours, you can have a muffin).

Most of us have to learn how to prioritize our writing before we know whether it’s going anywhere. I’ve actually found that the busiest periods, when it’s hardest to find or justify writing time, are precisely the times when it feels most necessary to me. This might have been especially true in the beginning, when writing was more of a hobby—sometimes it was the only time I had all week to focus on myself, my own curiosities and ambitions, as opposed to my day job or my family’s needs. It was not an escape, exactly, and certainly not without its frustrations, but it was one way I attempted to care for myself at a time when that was difficult to do.

I realize this may not be how you think about your own creative pursuits, and I don’t mean to suggest that a cognitive shift is easy or that it would solve all your problems. But so much of writing is about finding an approach and habits that will allow your practice to take root and flourish over the long term. At the same time, your routines and processes are naturally going to change as your life does—when my writing time was a limited resource, I knew I had to make the most of it. Over the last year, I’ve had to figure out how to establish and maintain a daily routine. (Turns out it involves taking a lot of breaks to move my neck.) Some questions you might think about: Given the other demands on your time and attention, how can you make writing something that you really look forward to? What might you need to change about your time, setup, current projects, etc., to want to grasp it with both hands?

There’s a person in my neighborhood who I often see writing on a clipboard when I take my dog out for a walk. Somehow he doesn’t trip or bump into people, the way I absolutely would if I tried to write while walking. I’ve never asked him what he’s working on; I don’t want to pry. Whether he’s writing a journal entry or a letter, a cozy mystery or a memoir, he seems as dedicated to his routine as any writer I know. What matters are not the details of your writing routine, but whether it works—and whether you stick to it.

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