Being a very new “real” author, as you’d expect, I’ve been reading about what I should do to promote my book. (which is why I’ve got this blog...you can all suffer my musings while I procrastinate around writing book 2) All the advice is that I should split my Twitter account, to have one for personal matters and one for book promotion, because otherwise it’s unprofessional.

I get the theory behind that. In my previous life as a senior professional finance type, I didn’t have anything on line in my real name, to avoid it being linked to my work self. Of course, I didn’t exactly want my writing linked to my work self. Didn’t exactly fit that image. Finance versus romantic crime with steamy scenes...well, it doesn’t match, does it?

But somehow I keep thinking...well, but, I’m not just the author of my book. I’m a spouse. I’m a parent. I’m a friend. I’m my past, and my present, and my future. I like pictures of cute kittens (okay, it’s a cliché, but I do. I just don’t want to own one), I need a support network to force me to exercise, and I get worked up about the news, worried about the world, and made happy by the good things in life. (Especially chocolate.) I am the person who wants to tweet a pat on the shoulder or share amusement. To quote another, or misquote the Bible: I am Legion, I contain multitudes – and all of those multitudes are me.

So I wonder, if I split the personal from the “professional”, does that take away some of who I am? Does it mean that I’m hiding? Should a writer only be their professional self, and leave their personality behind?

But then, my personality is in every word I write: in my style, in my word choice, in the tone I use. So why should I care if I’m tweeting today’s flowers of procrastination (when I wrote this, it was marigolds), because that’s me too.

I contain multitudes, and each of them contributes to my writing. So why should I hide them?

Death in Focus