Or the Bull Kills You UK paperback
The UK paperback of Or the Bull Kills You will be published one week from now, on 1 March.Please help to spread the word!
Please help to spread the word!
THERE ARE NO FUCKING RULES
It's social, right? You don't have to sing karaoke every time you go to the pub, or play strip poker every time you're invited to a dinner party.
It's the same with social media. If you want to sit quietly in a corner listening to others, that's fine. If you want to strike up conversation with strangers, that's OK too. If you want to talk when you feel like it and then disappear for a few days or weeks, that's great. In fact, as a serious writer, that's not a bad idea at all. It's in those moments of slower quiet, removed from the noise of the world, that real ideas can come, as many others have commented, most recently Pico Iyer in the New York Times.
So ignore the articles out there promising to give you instant publishing success by following a few guidelines for Twitter, Facebook and the rest. Who cares how many followers Neil Gaiman has? So you've only got a few dozen. Let's hope they actually read your tweets. If you generally say something interesting, the chances are that they are.
What's important is authenticity. And you're either being yourself or you aren't. People can generally tell over social media as much as when meeting in a bar.
The thing is, there aren't any rules to be passed on about authenticity.
That's the beauty of it.