What an interesting few days it has been venturing into the world of novel writing and ebooks. It has been quite and experience for me personally but also interesting observe how social media is influencing the world of book writing. Writing a novel used to be such an intense thing in the past where you had to prepare a story and then try and get it into industry format and then shop it around to publisher. If you were lucky enough to be one the chosen few that the publishers like, you would have the opportunity to get you work featured.

This is one reason why I never ventured into the world of novel writing before, I had this image in my mind that it was such a serious and intense thing where only few could survive. Social media has changed all that and have made it possible for so many great writers to get featured and for so many great reads to be accessible.

Not everyone is in the writing world to get a publishing deal. I believe social media has helped create another category of writer, one that is serious about putting out good quality reads and works hard but may not necessarily have a publishing deal as their ultimate goal. For me, writing is an incredible art form and I write for the joy of it. Simply because I have a story to tell and I want to put it out there.

It's been a nice surprise to see how easy and convenient the systems of wattpad and Bookrix are to get your stuff online in a readable format. Not only that, they community at both wattpad and Bookrix has it set up in such a way that makes it easy for community members to find your work.  They definitely support the growth of writers all kinds and there are all kinds of contests, articles, online workshops that community members have access to. And finding a good read is free, easy, and fun :)

All I can say is that in the last few days, the joy of writing has really come back to me.  This ebook that I am putting out would never have been possible a decade before.  If I have writers block, inspiration is just a click away as I have access to thousands of great reads out there. I may never be an avid novel writer but if I wrote only one great story that so many people have access to, that's more than enough to make me happy.

I really want to encourage as many people as possible to sign up for a wattpad or bookrix account. You don't have to be an author, it's for people who are looking for a good read as well. I don't see myself pumping out novel after novel and for the most part I'll probably be using just to find a good read as well.  I pour out so much of myself through blogging so it is nice to access an online community where I can read somebody else's work after I work so hard to make sure that people are getting a good read on my blogsite.


http://www.facebook.com/notes/book-nerds-are-sexy/interview-with-bookrix-author-angelina-khoo/254864767860562

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

In light of the recent scandalous events that have come to light regarding facebook's attempt to smear google, I feel I should write something to give perspective.  The feeling I am getting from the public is that people are feeling quite uncertain and insecure about the area of social media. This breaks my heart because I know so many good people out there who have tried to do eveything right and play it safe and take time out to set their privacy settings but still are getting their privacy compromised because there was some change to facebook that nobody told them about.

There is no easy answer anymore on how to stay safe on the social media world. Of course there is the obvious like "don't share personal information". And while those people work so hard to not give out personal information, meanwhile one of their facebook friends is tagging them in photos and checking them into places without their consent.

As you know, I have a public blog where I talk quite frankly on one of my relationships as it has become a hit item on my blog. What's important to keep in mind is that we are real people, we are not filming episodes from a scripts. People love hearing every single blogposts that we have a healthy flourishing relationship but if I want to keep being able to talk about a having a good relationship, I need to maintain a good relationship. Or there will be no more blogs about us having a great relationship.....

This woman trusts me with her heart, soul, and being that I'm going to protect her and maintain her privacy. That puts an incredible amount of responsibility on me that I see to it that my fans are happy reading inspiring blogs about us but at the same time the both of us still enjoy a level of privacy. The more public that I go, the more sacrifices I have to make about what i will or won't do in the social media world.

For example, location based games like facebook places and foursquare are out of the question. Don't get me wrong, I can still play them if I still want to. But if you are ever waiting for me to "check in" to the house of Marisa, you can forget it!  In fact, whenever I visit Montevideo, it is highly unlikely that I will check into any place in that city simply because we need to maintain a level of privacy. If I wasn't public, I could do it and have fun like everyone else. But having a blogsite with more than 10 000 page views, at that level of publicness, games like foursquare and facebook places are out of the question.  This is the sacrifice I have to make so that I plunge our relationship into the social media world and still have peace of mind. I want people to know when or if I've visited her, you'll find out on my blogsite. Tweets about where we are or what we are doing are going to be few and far between.

A big reason for success on my blog is because she has been OK with me writing stuff and never once has she complained or told me to stop writing. Of  course if that was what she would have wanted, I would have done it even to the dismay of fans. But because she's been so good about it, I really want to honor my friend by making sure that she would be safe in all of this. Of course after becoming more public, I set my facebook privacy settings to the absolute MAX. Her safety and privacy was a large part of this.  And I don't put personal info about her life and background firstly because it would be intrusive and secondly because the public really wants to read about our blossoming friendship, not about her past, history and family.

My blogs and tweets may sound spontaneous at times but in actual fact, they are not. Alot of them are carefully worded and orchestrated to be pleasing to the public yet not too personal.  It is hard to walk that fine line and truth be told, even with all this experience, I still get nervous because I don't know what's going to happen next in the social media world. I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you the future and tell you what to do or not do with your accounts and how you should play safely in the social media world but I don't.

All I can say right now is that sometimes if you want one kind of social media form, you may have to sacrifice another. The more you have, the less you will be able to have. I have a blog with an amazing amount of hits, more than I could ever dream of. And I have an amazing personal life and a healthy functional relationship that I feel has a great level of safety when it comes to talking about us to the public. However, because of the uncertainty of all that is going on, I already have a plan for further steps if safety should get compromised.

If it ever came down to it, I would have to resort to "defending by defriending". In other words, if my live got really public and I felt that I wanted to write about us some more but felt that facebook had too many loopholes, I wouldn't think twice about defriending her. Already she and I don't actually use facebook much to communciate so it wouldn't be much of a loss. And I can still send messages her way via FB. But I am more than prepared any day to go the extra mile for someone I love and do "defending by defriending".

The Veritas Forum is a debate that started at Harvard, and it's a event that is now held annually in around 60 Universities and it encourages different kinds of debates in the public sphere with Christian themes. The topic this year at oxford is The Social Net(works?) : Friendship, Community and the Social Media Revolution.

This cheeky video was put together by my sister and her collegues. It pretty much sums up social media, friends, enemies, and frenemies....


Do you need a social media detox?