Eight months ago, I wasn’t on social media. Now I know why.
My manuscript, The Hidden, is a psychological thriller based around the dangers of social media and the judgements we make about other people and their lives. Essentially, it’s about the judgement of mothers towards other mothers. Or females, towards females.
To really appreciate the area I was writing about, when I was almost finished with The Hidden, I signed up to Instagram to grasp the concept of what a ‘Story’ was or how people gained followers. What started out as a harmless little lesson in social observation, resulted in me becoming quite obsessed with it. This was good, though. I wanted to feel that way to get into the mind of my protagonist who is obsessed with watching a group of mothers from her daughter’s new school.
Prior to January I really felt smug about the fact that I didn’t own a social media account. My year 11s and 12s would often have to discuss the impacts social media had on their esteem, relationships with peers and sense of self. Prior to Jan, I used to shrug and tell them that I wasn’t fazed by other people and their lives, or how they constructed their own poke bowl, or how frothy their coffees looked in the morning with their golden-hazed filter. Last year, I didn’t know what a filter was, let alone what a hash tag was used for (um yes, I’m serious). And my brother would probably laugh at this, especially since his team designed this website for me. #clue
And yet, here I am. With my very own blog. And it seems so natural now. Like I’m used to people snooping into my life and the lives of others.
Louise Allan is a Western Australian author of The Sisters’ Song. For the whole of 2020 Louise has been mentoring me, assisting with editing my manuscript and even been generous enough to recommend me to two well-known Australian literary agents. She believed in The Hidden. That’s why she told me to “come out of the closet” and post about it on Instagram so people who never knew I wrote could finally see where my goals, passions and aspirations lie; and have done since I was a young girl. She also told me that “it’s really helpful if you start a blog, so that you can network and send agents there to find out more about you.”
Therefore, this blog will focus mainly on writing, my manuscript, The Hidden, and my journey to publication. Since social media is a theme that’s embedded in The Hidden and the next manuscript I’m working on, every now and then I’ll comment on that.
Now that I have Instagram and a blog, I guess I can finally have an opinion on it— much to the amusement of my year 11 and 12s!
See you soon and thanks for stopping by!
Holly
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