Tuesday 28th July 2020

A combination of having worked my ass off the last few weeks and still having a flare up of a medical condition meant yesterday was largely a lazy day.

Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to myself.

One of the things I want to do is to set up Twitch.  The problem when you say something like this is that people automatically think you want to be a game streamer.  And yes, I might stream some World of Warcraft, but down the line, I might like to do some writing streams, or use the platform for author chats.

I did some Warcraft streaming a few years back, and I wouldn’t say I was particularly good at it.  So going back to it really is like starting afresh.

Going back to it, I have to start somewhere, so with a few more days before I go back to the day job, and no active writing project, maybe now’s the time to play with things.  The idea is to use the time to be bad at it, to learn nuances of the platform and even work on public speaking (I say umm and urgh ALL the time).

I’ve ordered some kit to do this which should show up tomorrow.  I can also use this kit if I want to do something audio related like a podcast.  I’m conscious that I don’t want to do too many things at once – I only have so much time – but before I can decide what to focus on, it requires me to play around with things.

The way I see this is that it’s a way to explore both video and audio content, not because I necessarily will do vlogs or podcasts in the future, but so that I have the skills if that’s what’s needed.  It’s all valuable experience.  I did those vlogs when I went stormchasing a couple of years ago.  There wasn’t really a need (or time) to carry them on, but I learnt so much from that, if I did ever want to do a vlog in the future, I could come back to it.

As an author, I want to find new and different ways to market myself.  And that means sometimes biting the bullet and trying these things.  It’s very easy to get sucked into these new social media platforms such that the priority of actually writing  gets lost, which for me, means, now’s the perfect time to play with these things.  Where I think a lot of people go wrong is that they don’t start these things before they have a professional career, and then they’re play catch up.

The Climb as it stands right now, is a little more than a blog.  HOWEVER, if books do get picked up and do well, it suddenly becomes this massive resource giving an insight into how the book was written.  Likewise, being able to hop onto Twitch to do an interview or Q&A in the future, will be a useful skill.

So the plan is to suck at Twitch, but at the same time have some fun.  I won’t deny there are nerves, and the procrastination that comes with it, but getting a new microphone to play with tomorrow will hopefully get me over the fear barrier and eager to start playing.

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