What Lily did
It’s been almost five years so my memory of exactly when I decided to stop posting stuff on Wordpress as the Banana files or The Queen of Random (others had that title too) I’m not sure. I think it was before My Father’s Daughter came out in 2020.
2019 was a busy year. I joined Twitter and was amazed to reach the milestone of 1k followers. A friend wrote for prompts so I tried that too. I met writers and helped my new friends by sharing their tweets during the first pitmad I experienced. I’ve only pitched once in 2023 (we will tackle that later). My follower numbers grew and I made more friends so I kept sharing posts during pitch events.
I entered a 50 words writing competition and won a day. As a result of which two things happened. My prize was a free course on FutureLearn where I met poets. At the same time I joined the Open University Write Club (the Twitter person liked my posts and I got brave) where I met my very first poet who floored me by asking what type of poetry I wrote. I felt like an imposter already having described myself on entry (thinking they’d refuse to have me) as a poet chancing her arm at fiction and bragging about my win. I felt like I didn’t even know anything about poetry. (I’d been writing almost 40 years at this point you think I’d know something!)
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The poets I met on FutureLearn were incredibly helpful and some of us formed a group on Slack to carry on for a while. I also joined my first writer DM group on Twitter. Write Club also had its own space for writers and poets to help one another. I went from knowing zero writers and poets to being surrounded!
When I published my first book I posted on my socials (Facebook and Twitter) and told people I knew. I’d been advised by a kind supportive writing human to have a website, a newsletter and a Facebook page. I was blogging sort of and sharing the posts on Facebook. I signed up for newsletters to see what writers wrote in them and somehow learned I needed a reader magnet to get people to sign up for my newsletter.
The first image is the original cover I made with a lot of advice from Facebook friends. One of whom took the photo. Even the title was workshopped.
The second was created I think the following year by an artist friend I met on Twitter.
https://mybook.to/MyFathersDaughter
My reader magnet was A Taste of What’s to Come. But I was advised reader magnets don’t work (remember marketing is not one size fits all and they do work for some people) and I should publish it. So I did in ebook only. The first image is my cover with an image I got from somewhere. The second is the one my artist friend made. (Another friend’s husband took the photo. ) They also taught me about image copyright. After talking to my writer friends I eventually published it as a paperback too.
http://mybook.to/ATasteofWhatstoCome
I did get a domain as lilylawson.com and moved to Wix at some point during this time.
I joined a post sharing group for Twitter on Facebook. ( I was new at this thing so didn’t even ask). We did move to Twitter and although I went my own way eventually I learned a lot from the admin and will be forever grateful.
In the dying embers of my first Twitter DM group I met one of my favourite humans and somehow ended up in her group and I am still there. She shoved me back on the newsletter horse (she has had to repeat this action more than once) and dragged me not quite kicking and screaming more moaning and groaning and ‘Do I have to?’) into promoting my books. I do not know where I’d be without this human who supports me and my writing every day. Through her directly and indirectly I have met yet more lovely humans who have also made a huge difference in my life.
I have moved on from two of the original groups (Twitter and Slack) but I am very grateful for all they taught me and the wonderful friend I made on Twitter as a result of that first group who I talk to every day and is very much stuck with me.
Part two next week (bet you can’t wait lol)
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