Intoducing Monthly Themes

My New “Hack” to Keep My Social Media Content Fresh

I’m a writer, not a content creator. Even so, I’ve found myself spending lots of time recently generating social media content so I can stay connected with readers, fans, and fellow writers. I gotta be honest: coming up with loads of fresh content to share is difficult.

Full transparency—I have been dabbling a bit with AI to help come up with ideas. It is great for churning up tons of ideas. They aren’t all fresh and novel, but they’re better than nothing. I asked ChatGPT for story ideas, and it gave me the outline of a cool short story which I ran with and only realized was a modern reimagining of Portrait of Dorian Gray until my writing critique group asked me if that was my inspiration.

However, after asking ChatGPT for some more writing tips and getting the same three tips over and over, I realized that AI would not be the endless fountain of original ideas I want it to be. I would have to lean on my own creativity. Drat.

So I came up with the idea of using a theme each month to force myself to create new content for my social media. I hope to get the process a little more streamlined so I can focus more on my writing, but I’m having fun dabbling in cool images and inspirational ideas for Instagram and Facebook (and whatever that “X” thing is).

If you hadn’t noticed, the theme I used for July was “Poolside Reading,” with a focus on fun light literature and summer blockbuster movies. For August, I’m focusing more on sci-fi with a “Traveling through Outer Space” theme. All my book and movie recommendations this month will feature space travel, and all the writing tips I’ll share are about sci-fi world-building.

In the future, I hope to incorporate a website post about the theme (does this one count?) and photos of me that tie into the theme. Although I’m currently focusing on writing tips and book recommendations, I’d like to find other types of posts to share that people might enjoy.

I’m really looking forward to the fall. I’ve spent the summer on the west coast and can’t wait to be home, have school start, and watch the seasons change. Once the kids are back in school full-time, I’ll be able to get back to work on my current puzzle book. I hope to publish it by the end of the year. I’d also like to put together a short story collection, work on a new novel, and write book three for the In the Lurch series.

If you follow me on social media, let me know what you think of the new themed posts. And if you aren’t following me, you totally should!