The future of social media: small, private gardens

by Elizabeth Tai 

Have you heard? Twitter is imploding and may disappear.

A couple of weeks ago, the idea of Twitter collapsing didn’t even occur to me. However, thanks to the wild managerial decisions of one over-entitled billionaire, advertisers are fleeing Twitter and the platform is slowly breaking down because the people that used to maintain it have been fired. 

There's a real possibility that Twitter may cease to exist in a matter of weeks.

(If you’re wondering what in the world is going on, you can read my essays Twitter Meltdown Part 1 and Part 2)

For authors, Twitter was a way to promote their books and connect with readers, authors and industry players. Where can they go if Twitter collapses?

That’s the question you should ponder soon but let me first steer you to a quiet, barely-noticed movement that is changing social media.

In the last few months, I’ve been stumbling on more and more writers who are moving away from their blogs to write elsewhere. Many say that they just “want to write more freely”. 

Once upon a time, that place was blogs. I'm sure you've heard about the oft-dished-out advice: Don't build your home on rented land. A website is "owned land". But many have come to realise that Google is increasingly prioritising advertising dollars. Writers have to write a certain way or risk being penalised and buried in Google search. And there's nothing more creativity-sapping than to abide by rigid rules on how content should be.  

 

People are getting tired of having their distribution channels dictated by the rules of the few.  So, they are now moving on to platforms that enable them to take more control of how they can reach their followers and readers.

So there's a move from corporation-controlled platforms to walled, private gardens or networks.  The main appeal of these tools is that they are not algorithm-driven. Meaning, whether your content gets seen or not does not depend on the platform’s distribution rules of the day. Because, there are no rules.

Of all the tools like that out there, Substack appeals to writers and artists the most. 

Substack's rise

Substack is a popular online tool used by millions of creators to send newsletters. But that oversimplifying it. If a blog and an email marketing tool had a baby, the result will be Substack. 

Substack appealed to many writers because they get to own  their mailing lists and yet are provided tools to build a community. Unlike other social media channels, it didn't have an algorithm-driven discovery engine. Instead, writers recommend Substacks to each other.

For almost a year, I used Substack as a glorified mailing list to notify people of new posts on my blog. My main motivation then was to move out of Mailerlite's clunky interface. Also, it appealed to my frugal heart: I could send out newsletters to my readers free.

But I have since realised that I’ve been woefully underutilising Substack’s capabilities. In the last few weeks, I've pivoted, turning my newsletter, now named Tai Tales, into a hub where people can interact with me and get my fiction, essays and updates about my work. It's also a place where I can find other writers and finally be a part of a community.

Yes, I'm actually publishing my fiction there! To my delight, there's a growing number of fiction writers sharing their novels chapter by chapter. I'm planning to do the same. 

Writers like Elle Griffin, for example, shared chapters of her novel Obscurity weekly. After the novel ended its run, she released it as an ebook and also mailed a beautiful hardcover version to top tier subscribers. I love this personalised approach to novel creation.

Recently, I've re-published my horror short story, Blood of Nanking, in time for Halloween. I plan to publish many of the short stories that have stayed neglected in my hard drive. Finally, they can get out there into the world.

I’ve never felt freer as a writer, more energised. For so long, blogging or writing my novel, felt like shouting into the void. It was such a lonely, demotivating experience and I almost wanted to just quit. Here, I get to organically build my audience, interact with fellow writers while getting feedback on my writing.

And as a reader? Boy, I’m really thrilled by the content I’ve been reading from fellow writers. I realised how much effort it was to find content like this on Google search.  Why? Because this content did not fit into the rigid SEO framework set out by Google, so they are buried under heaps of marketing material.

Like so many creatives, I’ve come to the conclusion that the world wide web no longer belongs to the common people — especially artists. It has not been for a long while. The latest Google update only cements the fact that corporations and ad dollars will continue to dominate search engine results.

Aren't you tired of listicles and marketing-slanted content? Don't you long for out-of-the-box, human, raw writing? I miss the words of ordinary Joes and Janes. Don't you wish you didn't have to do all the things to reach even one reader? Substack is giving me this opportunity to write and savour them once more. 

I believe we’ve reached a crossroads in the social media/Internet space. What I call the “fed up” point. The Twitter meltdown is probably the last straw for many. Users want alternatives. They want more control over their data. They want to be free of the domination of billionaires and corporations. They want  to stop wading through a algorithm-manipulated feed to find content they want to read. And they want freedom to create spaces where they can reach their audiences without jumping through hoops. 

More than ever, there’s an urgent need for a service or a platform that is free of “algorithmically curated feeds” that won’t reduce our visibility.  

So the question you need to answer is this: Are you ready for the change?

Elizabeth writes Tai Tales, a Substack where she shares essays, flash fiction and short stories. She will be serialising her three-novel series, Distant Stars, in 2023.

Writer Burnout: How I am accepting that I'm not a machine

By ELIZABETH TAI

I write for a living.

I also write for fun.

This has caused a few problems.

When you write during your day job and free time, you never get a break from the keyboard. Unsurprisingly, writing my fiction has been a difficult task for me, because it felt like work. But over the years, I came up with a system that enabled me to handle that.

When I was a sub-editor for a newspaper, I worked nights and wrote my novels in the morning. Because all I did at work was editing, I was using different mental muscles -- writing my novels, while difficult, was doable.

But things changed when I decided to switch careers, hopping from journalism to the glitzy world of digital marketing. I am a content strategist, and I spend my days writing, editing, analysing data and thinking about new content to create for the companies I work for.

The effort of trying to make my career change a success and trying to build a fledgling indie author career at the same time, took a toll on me.

I have not written a new book for nearly two years.

Writer’s block aka writer’s burnout is real. Don’t let the gurus tell you otherwise.

Crispy on the inside and outside

First, I tried to write at the fringes of my day. I would stare at the blank screen early in the morning or after work, hoping something would come out. It usually didn’t work and what words that emerged felt like tiny droplets squeezed out of the dry, hard rock that my brain had become. 

It didn't make me look forward to writing. In fact, it did the opposite, I began to put off writing. It used to be fun - now, it’s just work. Worse, sometimes it was torture.

I blamed myself. Why was I so lazy, so unmotivated? My friends said that my eyes would light up when I talk to my novels. But if my novels meant so much to me, why couldn’t I write them? I felt like a defective machine. 

Then, I stumbled on Becca Syme’s series of podcasts on YouTube - the one about writer burnout was a revelation.

The road to writer burnout

In the indie publishing word, the word “hustle” reigns supreme. Get your butt in the chair. Write 10,000 words a week. Write a novel a month. But Becca was not about that. 

According to Becca, everyone is gifted with certain strengths. If your writing process is not aligned with your strengths, it often results in burnout.

She also says that people write in different ways. They ideate in different ways. And we should not blindly follow a publishing guru’s prescription on how to “write better”, because what worked for them may not work for us.

“When burnout is the problem, no amount of discipline is going to get the writing to happen again. It has to be a recalibration or a filling of the tank or a rest. There is no other fix,” she wrote in her book, Dear Writer, are you in writer’s block?

Image by ergoneon from Pixabay

Forgiving myself for being human

I believe part of the reason why I suffered from writer burnout was because I blamed myself for not being able to level up as fast as the superstars of the indie world. You know those - the one-book-a-month wonderkids that earn six-figure incomes. 

I used to have an indie author acquaintance who once told me this: “I have a full-time corporate job and I still write a book a month, you have absolutely no excuse!”

It turns out that I do.

My brain worked differently from hers and comparing myself to her was futile.

In the last two years, although I didn’t produce anything new, I learned ways to realign my strengths to my writing processes:

Guard my emotional reserves

Due to my highly empathetic nature, I tend to get blocked when things are not stable in my life or in the world, or when I'm going through emotional turmoil. All my mental energy would go to maintaining my emotional stability. There'd be no energy left for my writing. 

These days, to protect my mental reserves, I avoid unnecessary stimulation and negativity. I write when the day is young and the pressures low. Keeping this up takes a lot of discipline, but it has made a difference in my life.

Give myself time to dream

I prefer to “think over” a story in my head for some time before putting it on paper. Sometimes, for months! I know a story is ready to be written when I can picture it vividly in my head - as if it’s a movie playing in my head. So I have learned not to pressure myself to write, but to dream more instead.  

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Seek inspiration to refill my well

One concept I discovered that made me go, “Aha!” was that the ideas for fiction doesn't come from some magical void with inexhaustible resources. 

Writing nonfiction is very different from writing fiction writing. When you write nonfiction, you have references such as interviews, research and more. That’s why it’s often easier to write non-fiction.

However, when you write fiction, you're literally recreating something out of nothing. And that takes a different kind of mental energy. But saying that we create something out of nothing is not quite right either. 

Fiction is the culmination of the observations, insights, information and inspiration that we absorb in our day-to-day lives. So, what happens when you stop this flow? Your resource for your fiction dries up.

Ask yourself: What makes you go, “Oh gosh I need to write that?” 

What makes your imagination go, “Wow!” 

For me, filling my creative well meant watching movies and television shows - experiencing stories. (I wrote one of my short stories, Blood of Nanking, after watching the Christian Bale movie, The Flowers of War.)

Music also spurs my mind to imagine amazing scenes for my books.

In the last two years, I've been so busy with my career transition that I stopped reading books and watching television -- at least things that were not related to improving my career. 

Revitalising the creative wells

So where do we go from here? 

One of the first things I did was to forgive myself for not being a machine. 

That’s a funny way to put it, but yes - we often get angry that we are human being that’s can’t write like machines! (Incidentally, I did come across a how-to-write book called Be a Writing Machine. Hah!)

I also try to stop guilting myself to write.  

I have learned to accept that this is where I am right now. I am literally building my career from the ground up again and that takes a lot of energy and I shouldn't expect miracles from myself.

I also decided to take one tiny step at the same time towards making my indie publishing dreams a reality.

I am now at the editing stage with two of my novels. I'm so close to completion that at times, I want to rush towards the finish line, but I tell myself: Edit one chapter a day - that's all I can manage now. And if I can’t meet that schedule, I'm not gonna blame myself. 

I am also curbing my tendency to jump into new, shiny projects. I have been a little obsessive about my blog because, perhaps, I felt so paralysed with my fiction that I wanted to feel successful in something creative. My blog was a convenient outlet and writing non-fiction was easy for me. I think that’s great, but I tend to use it as a way to distract myself from my problems with my novels.

But best of all, I’m now watching more television without guilt, knowing that I'm actually filling my well. I'm taking walks. I'm trying to dream about my characters -- perhaps I will try free writing again; it worked well for me last time. (Free writing is where I just let my mind wander and my hands type whatever my brain dreams about.), 

If you are struggling with writer burnout or writer’s block, please realise that it's not your fault. It's not because you're lazy or unmotivated.

Perhaps your writing process is not aligned with your strength. Maybe something’s happening in your life right now and you need to focus on that. 

We are humans, not machines, and we have to accept that we can't do everything -- no matter how much you want it.  

Refill your well, friends. Well-being comes first.

Elizabeth Tai writes for profit and pleasure. She blogs about personal finance and simple living at elizabethtai.com and you can learn more about her fiction at taiweiland.com

CWD Member Interview – Elizabeth Tai aka Tai Weiland

Most Thursdays this year we will be interviewing one of the members of Christian Writers Downunder – to find out a little bit more about them and their writing/editing goals.

Today’s interview Elizabeth Tai (who also writes fiction as Tai Weiland)

Question 1: Tells us three things about who you are and where you come from. 

I am Malaysian but lived in Adelaide for about 3 years before returning to Malaysia. I was a journalist for 15 over years for Malaysia’s biggest English daily, The Star. I’m an avid gardener who dreams of having her own urban homestead one day where I can organise writing retreats. 

Question 2: Tell us about your writing (or editing/illustrating etc).  What do you write and why?

I write across many genres.

I currently write non-fiction as Elizabeth Tai and science fiction (space opera adventures) as Tai Weiland. I decided to use a pen name for my fiction because I spent many years building a career as a journalist and non-fiction writer as Elizabeth Tai. I’m also a personal finance blogger in real life, so it’s helpful to have a totally separate brand to write under. I also came up with a pen name because, in the past, I preferred to be more “under the radar” with my fiction. Now I wondered if I should’ve just written under one name because having two pen names is like managing two companies!

Tai Weiland is currently working on the space opera series, Distant Stars. I’ve always wanted to create a universe that I can write endless stories from, and this was my way of doing that! My first novel was conceptualised in 2013, during Nanowrimo.

The first book, a novella, is a prequel to the series - Heretics of Thran. The second is Book 1 - Shadows of Corinar. I’m editing the second book of the series, Nexus Point and hope to publish it by September. You can find out more about Tai Weiland at https://taiweiland.weebly.com

Question 3: Who has read your work? Who would you like to read it? 

The whole of Malaysia has read my articles as Elizabeth Tai the journalist, I suppose, but not many people know me as Tai Weiland. That’s because I’ve not gone all out to promote her. I plan to only do that once I’ve uploaded the second book of my science fiction series, Nexus Point.

Question 4: Tell us something about your process. What challenges do you face? What helps you the most?

I am a semi-planner. I would have a certain vague framework for my novel and it’s off to the races I go.

Just kidding.

I notice that I need to be able to imagine a scene in my head before I could write the words. I have to be able to connect with my characters emotionally before I get fired up. When the details of the scene and the emotions of the characters connect, I can write really fast. I can complete a novella in a month - but that’s if I have a good idea of what I want to write.

But in general, I get  frustrated at the pace I come up with ideas. My life is so full that I don’t have enough “dreaming” time to come up with the plots of my books. And since my career involves producing words as well, a lot of my creative energy is used up by the day job. 

 I’m also currently in the midst of changing careers and it takes a lot out of me. I spend so much of my time learning about my new career job and industry that it leaves leaves me little time or energy to spend on my books. A lot of times I feel as if I have to choose between my books and my career, and it’s never an easy decision.

If I had one wish, I wish I could stop time so I can just finish all my books and then hit publish!

Question 5: What is your favourite Writing Craft Book and why? 

Ooh, this is like asking me to choose a favourite child! I’d say of all the books I’ve read, Editor-Proof Your Writing by Don McNair has brought my fiction writing and editing to the next level.

Question 6: If you were to give a shout-out to a CWD author, writer, editor or illustrator – who would they be?

I’d like to give a shoutout to Sue Jeffrey who has been my steadfast friend, counsellor, agony aunt and prayer partner! (She’s also an author, writer, editor and illustrator in one package!) She was a literal answer to prayer. When I came to Adelaide in 2012 and started my writing adventure, I asked God for a writing friend, and boy did He deliver! We met during Nanowrimo when Sue and her husband Marc decided to pop in at a Glenelg cafe for a write-in I organised. In the end, we ended up talking more than writing. In fact, we’ve not stopped talking and I’m ever so grateful for her friendship.

Question 7: What are your writing goals for this year? How will you achieve them?

Two main goals: 

1. Finish the second book of my series  
2. Lay down a solid foundation for my author business. Meaning, I want to set up my mailing list, tidy up my website, set up my reader magnet and finally do some book promotion - all that jazz. I would also like to start connecting with fellow authors.

The last 2 years has been very tumultous for me, career wise, and it was hard for me to focus on my authorpreneur business. Fortunately, I came across Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing 101 course - I’m using it as a blueprint to accomplish goal #2.

Question 8: How does your faith impact and shape your writing?

I’m still working on this, to be honest. 

I’ve always been a truthteller. I once wrote a fairly popular Christian blog called “Messy Christian”, and many readers tell me they liked my blog because I was honest. I was the kind of person who called out injustice, even if the person I’m highlighting is a well-known Christian figure. I asked difficult questions and poked a lot of rigid mindsets.

But with fiction, the journey has been a little challenging. In my early years I felt really, really constricted by the need to adhere to certain “rules” in writing fiction. I thought a Christians can only write Christian fiction, and that we shouldn’t show violence or even sex. So I felt a lot of guilt when I write fiction and try to “hide” that part of me from God. I kept thinking that God would be mad at the fiction I want to write! I think that’s why I write under so many pseudonyms - on some strange level, I didn’t want people (and God!) to know I was writing them!

But eventually my understanding of faith and my writing evolved, and I realise that I can communicate the truth and the values of the gospel in a unique way via my fiction, even if I had sex and violence in them. 

In fact, my science fiction stories has a faith component in it. It always disturbed me that science fiction worlds are often atheistic, as if that’s the pinnacle of progress. Faith is very much present in my worlds, and God takes an active part. The message of my stories is this: You may have all the technology and wonderful science, but you will still need God to truly be complete.