This Friday guest post is brought to you by one of my close friends and author, Shelby Smith. I’ve followed her writing and personal growth as an author for many years, and she continues to impress me. Today, she is talking a little bit about her writing style and processes, as well as a new poetry series she has released via Instagram. I hope you love it as much as I do!
I began posting my prose and poetry on social media eight years ago as a means to publicly showcase emotions that I could not otherwise express. Since the sites I used, first Myspace and later Facebook, were not created for users to share creative writing, my pieces were placed in sections of my profile that received little traffic from other users. After several years, posting my writing online merely served the purpose of backup storage. I rarely carry a physical journal with me anymore but always have my phone with me. Social media allowed me to easily move spontaneous writing from my palm to my hard drive once I got home. I had a small following of close friends, family members, and the occasional Facebook acquaintance, but I rarely posted with the intent of being an agent of change through my words.
With the increasing visibility of cyber-activism, exemplified by opinion pieces and informative articles on social media, I started wanting to place more importance on my own writing. Instagram provides a unique platform to share creative ideas. The focus on visual expression, over written or auditory expression, challenges individuals to create multidimensional posts. One week ago I launched a typewriter series on my personal Instagram account, @sjeffra. I have been using a Royal DeLuxe typewriter that was one of my boyfriend’s family heirlooms. Though typewriter poetry is a popular trend in the social media subculture of freelance writers, I was drawn to the idea of using a typewriter in order to transform my writing into something that required physical, not solely mental, faculties. I now have the opportunity to dust off previously written pieces and transform them into visual art pieces. The process involves reformatting, typing, photographing, and editing poems to be posted. I typically complete three to four posts, several nights a week, in order to build a collection from which I can pull daily posts. I’ve focused on shorter pieces as I begin to build my following because they are succinct, enabling quick reads. While my series is only a small side project, I am excited about joining the community of online writers and the prospect of having my work appreciated by other users.
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Shelby is a twentysomething with skeptical eyes, a fickle heart, a feminist mind, and a penchant for psychology. College undergraduate author and poet. Follow her here.
