The official website of Nathaniel Lee Hansen
Last week I received some long hoped-for good news: my university awarded me a generous summer research grant to work on the next draft of a novel. When I submitted my application in October, I included a proposed timeline of May and June. But now there’s another challenge, beyond that of the actual writing.
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be a guest in classes taught by a colleague. As a part of her Religion & Literature courses, she assigned my poetry collection, Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life. I visited both of her sections twice, with the one class session focused on the first half of the book and the other session focused on the second half.
The other night on Twitter, a writer vented her frustration with building her author platform via social media and how that activity takes energy from the same pool as her energy for writing. She said that she feels less able to do the slow thinking and creative work necessary in first drafts and in deep revisions.
People offered suggestions: set aside a narrow window for social media promotion and then move on; hire someone to do it; and some said not to even bother with it at all. Several people complained about their publisher pressuring them to keep building their platforms.
Plainswriter 