#i post tons of wips to my story on instagram! You can check it out if you want ;]

[rayjeff]

After unfollowing you because I don't know anything about fnaf, I am proud to say I am back for your Alastor and Rosie art. Just....slay

lol

welcome back man! =v=

[mrberrybooks]

An Introduction...

Hello!

My name is Madeleine Berry and I grew up between two large cities in Texas, USA. I’ve always had big dreams, starting out with wanting to be a professional princess at the age of five. (Yes, this was what I wanted to be when I grew up. Yes, this was read to the parents at my kindergarten graduation ceremony.) From there, I wanted to be a professional singer. This dream died when I went into high school. Then, I wanted to be a photographer, then a nurse, then a teacher—

As you can see, I wanted to be a lot of things before I got here.

What is here?

Let me explain.

When I was in 7th grade, I got into a certain boy and that was formed on the X-factor in 2010 and became the world’s biggest boy band regardless of losing. I found the oh-so-mysterious world of fanfiction via an Instagram page, and I was hooked almost instantly.

I started writing my own fanfiction, both in class and online. I had two supporters at the time. My “in real life” friend (that will remain nameless because I do not know if she wants to be named) who read the fanfiction I passed to her in a notebook during religion class, and Emma (generic enough a name to not remain nameless) who managed to find my terribly written self-insert fanfiction and somehow found it amazing.

Although my writing was terrible, they still managed to push me to write. They got excited when I wrote. They encouraged me to keep going! And from there, I started writing fanfiction and posting it on Wattpad. (I think every modern fanfiction writer started there.)

As I kept writing and kept reading, I began to notice the progress I made. And by 2014, I was promoted by Ouija (2014) on their Wattpad page. I was ecstatic! The story that was promoted got a total of 7k votes and almost 150k reads. I know that isn’t Anna Todd level (by any means, holy cow) but I was a fourteen-year-old in high school. It was an accomplishment.

I continued to write, and write, and write, and by 2016, I moved my platform over to Tumblr. At this point in my life, I was beginning to discover who I was and tumblr was more informed about social issues than Wattpad was. This was the same time I got into that really popular musical about founding fathers. I was so into it, I got into this really obscure ship and managed to pop out a 300k word, 90 part fanfiction in 82(ish) days. (This is probably my biggest accomplishment, but looking back on writing it, it definitely needed editing.) (I wrote, re-read it, and uploaded.) From this, I got tons of fanart, fanfiction, and followers. Fans, even. People who supported me and the story. This was when I decided I wanted to be an author.

Going back to the personal side of things, I had this revelation when I was wanting to be a nurse. At first, I thought I could be a nurse and an author, but while I was in A&P, writing about why I was joining a medical profession, I had a breakdown. My A&P teacher let me leave and I vented to my choir directors for a good hour.

I decided I wanted to be a teacher from that “epiphany,” which would make writing more manageable. So, I took a teaching clinical and decided I didn’t want to be a teacher, either.

Now, I’m an English Sophomore minoring in Creative Writing! Hello! We’re here!

Alongside writing, I want to work in a publishing house either as an editor or a literary agent.

Now, about my WIPS!

Almost a couple of years ago, I started writing the first book I plan on publishing. It’s in the editing stages right before I send them to lit agents and I couldn’t be more excited! It started out as a fanfiction (typical), but when I write, I always find myself making the characters into their own. So the Kpop boy and members became Taylor and Noah. (They’re my boys. I love them.) The book itself has an Instagram page, so if you want to check it out, you can here! I’m planning on calling it Stigma, and it’s about mental health, love, and recovery. (I could go on and on, but I would digress.)

This second WIP is on the shelf for now, but it’s another LGBT romance about a theatre kid and the preacher’s son. It’s called Who You Are at the moment, and it’s about discovery, acceptance, and family (and what constitutes what and who family is).

The last story I’m in the process of outlining right now is a modern fairytale! It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s about a bored wizard in human college that decides to necromance someone to create an assistant (kind of like frankentein but with magic). Per usual, there’s a curse.

Right now, I don’t have too much to write (even with the entire COVID-19 thing). I was supposed to be studying abroad in Korea, but instead I was sent back after a week of being there and am catching up with classes that started in January. (Yeehaw!) Despite it, the future is bright and I am excited!

Thank you so much for spending your time reading about me. Just for that, I reward you a picture of my face as it currently is. (I promise I’m not narcissistic, just so you can put a face to the words.)

That’s all for now!

-Madeleine

[vrenaewrites]

How to Win Writerly Social Media.

Social media is a necessary evil for a writer in this day and age. You’ve got to find your community and cultivate an audience, long before you ever publish anything. I touched on this in my video a few weeks ago about mistakes writers make. And then I remembered: I have never made a blog about Buffer.

(For full transparency this was also a video on my YouTube channel but it was a screen recording of my phone, and iMovie formatting cut off most of the important stuff, so I scrapped it.)

Believe it or not, this is not sponsored.

I did list Buffer as one of the apps that save my ass on social media in a blog, but I’ve never gone into detail on how I use this and how it takes so much pressure and stress off the social media game for me.

Basically this app allows you to schedule posts ahead of time across multiple platforms, including links, hashtags, photos, etc. So I want to walk you through how I schedule my content for an entire week in no time using Buffer.

On Sunday mornings, I have time set aside in my google calendar for content brainstorming.

I usually do it on and off while watching tv or something, whereas if I really focus it only takes me like an hour from creation to queue.

My first step, and the first step in simplifying a social media schedule, is deciding what days are for what. I’m going to give you my tips for why I post what I post.

Monday’s are #motivationmonday (which have kind of turned into #mememonday because well, memes get more engagement and I’m a millennial sue me).

Tuesday’s are #tuneintuesday - these used to be podcast recs but turned into theme songs for BFAS or songs that were inspiring me in my writing process. They’re all in a highlight on my Instagram because along with the post itself, I share a snippet of the song in an Instagram story post. Double engagement, y’all.

Wednesday’s are video days - I post a video and I share the thumbnail (for insta because insta doesn’t allow caption links) or the link.

Thursday’s are aesthetic days because twitter does the #Thursdayaesthetic hashtag - this is a major piece of advice: check out the big hashtags on your platform of choice and play into them! Instagram loves amwriting - twitter had a huge push for lgbtwip during pride month, and since my book had lgbt characters and was written by me, a bisexual, I used that when speaking on it. These hashtags actually grew my following big time and introduced me to some authors I love.

Friday’s are blog days - I post a blog and I share the graphic I’ve made with the title across all social media. While I’ve begun to use the blogs as more of a companion piece to the videos, the blogs go way more in depth since...you know...writing is easier than talking.

Saturday’s are a mix - #selfieSaturday, #ShelfieSaturday (my shelves are trash atm so I haven’t shared many of those), or a photo of my dog or something. Relaxed, personal, perfect for a Saturday. My caption includes what my plans are for the day, writing related if possible. And I always ask my audience what they’re up to as well. Questions = responses = comments = engagement!

Sunday’s are #onelineweekend - I share a line from my WIP to keep my audience interested in my project. I give a little insight via the caption of who we’re hearing from and what it says about their character - or the tone of the WIP. I ask what they’re working on because well. Questions = responses = comments = engagement!

As far as hashtags go, besides the ones I use for the theme of the day, I tend to use these often: #BFAS (acronym of my WIP) #indieauthor #yaauthor #yafiction #amwriting - again, look into your preferred platform and build from there.

So we have our schedule. We have built in hashtags for a majority of our posts. Step two is to get your graphics in order. Instagram is my biggest and preferred platform, and since the point of buffer is to share stuff across all your platforms, all my posts for all my socials tend to have the Instagram format: picture, caption, hashtags.

I find things on Pinterest for Monday’s and Thursday’s - then I use PhotoGrid to make the aesthetic collages. I obviously share my own photos on Saturday and crop / blur a section of my manuscript in google docs for Sunday. But when I have to make thumbnails, quotes, etc. I use canva.

Again, not spon.

Canva is an app and a website where you create graphics. And I mean everything: thumbnails, channel banners, story templates, book covers, posters, business cards. Literally anything. They have tons of free stock photos as well, which is so useful for making an eye-catching post without getting sued for using a photo that’s not yours. If you guys want a canva expert to make you some awesome graphics for hella cheap go to vrenae.com/services k byeeeeeeeee

So we’ve got everything. Idea, photo, caption, hashtags. Then we get to the nitty gritty. Let’s schedule these posts.

Then you can schedule for a specific day or place the post in the queue to post at the time with the highest engagement on that platform. Yes, Buffer will maximize your engagement by posting at peak time if you want it to. This was very useful when I was promoting CIVIL BLOOD.

And that’s it! Let me know if you have any questions.