Might Delete Later - Ep 9: Emma Gannon

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Has your timeline crashed? Emma Gannon will help you out. The author and host of the CTRL ALT DELETE podcast is this week’s guest, and she’s getting down to business.👉🏼Remember you can find all posts discussed on Instagram @mightdeletelaterpod and we're on twitter too @mightdeletepodEmma Gannon’s debut novel Olive is out now. Buy it hereListen to Emma’s podcast Ctrl Alt Delete hereFollow Emma on Twitter @emmagannon and Instagram @emmagannonukFollow Gina on Instagram @ginamartin and Twitter @ginamartinukFollowing Stevie on Instagram @5tevieM and Twitter @5tevieMWant to help us make more episodes? Support Might Delete Later at https://supporter.acast.com/mightdeletelaterHosted by Gina Martin and Stevie Martin.Photo by Joe Magowan.Artwork by Zoe Harrison.Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell.Produced by Plosive Productions.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/mightdeletelater. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you love Mike Delete Later? I bloody hope you do. You can support our show by using the new ACAS supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there is no regular commitment. Just smash that link in the show description and support us now so we can keep making this podcast. Thank you. Welcome to Mike Delete Later with me, Stevie Martin, a person who feels social media is a soul-sucking comparison machine. And me, Gina Martin, who feels it gives as much to the soul as it sucks.

Okay. We go through people we find interesting social media timelines and we look at their first, worst and best posts while excavating their relationship with social and asking them, what do you really think, though? Our guest today started off life as a blogger. I've known her for years. She then became a social media manager,

which is when I worked with her, and she's now the podcaster behind a smash hit podcast, Control, Alt, Delete, as well as having her third book out, but it is her first novel, first fiction book coming out called Olive, which is about a woman weighing up the question of wanting children. That's going to be great. Yes.

When you think of yellow, you think of Emma Gannon. It's a pleasure to have her with us today, the woman in yellow. And we had a really, really good chat, didn't we? We really did. We talked a lot about kind of promoting yourself on social media, how sometimes that can be really hard. Also how, like, jealousy on social media as well. And I think that is something that I've struggled with a lot.

And Emma is very, very good. She's always used social media in a very professional sense. So it's sometimes really good to talk to her because it makes me feel quite inspired, you know? Yeah, it makes you feel less bad about shouting about your work and seeing social as a business tool, because I think we still see it as a personal thing, and then we feel uncomfortable if it goes into business,

whereas it makes you feel a bit less guilty when you sit and talk to her about stuff. You really understand why she does it that way. She's also a brilliant writer, so do go and buy her book, Oliver is out now, and it's a wonderful for anyone who's ever, any woman or anybody who's ever been like, I'm not sure I want kids and am I wrong?

Absolutely by it. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to reading it. Also, stunning cover. So for today's episode, you can go to Mike Delete Later Pod on Instagram and you'll find all the posts we discussed with Emma and more. But we hope you like today's episode and, yeah, enjoy. Just sit back, guys. Let it wash over you.

Take a seat, wash. Thank you so much for coming on Might Delete Later, Emma Gallen. Friend and I'm supposed to say lover, but not, but could be. Could be. Who knows? I'll see you later, Paul. It's the name of Emma's an actual lover. So, what would you, Emma Gannon, like to delete this week, if you could?

I would like to delete motorbikes that are so insensitive and just go past my window, basically polluting my eardrums. Yes. Why is that not illegal? I'm turning into an old woman that's like, turn it down. It's interesting though, because apparently they're not meant to be that loud. My boyfriend drives a motorbike and it's silent as a whistle, that's not a phrase. And he said, no, when people do that, it's just some show enough.

They haven't did something engineering to make them loud, which is so annoying and not fair. I genuinely thought, I'm going to text Gina and ask her how to start a campaign to stop it happening. Can you imagine if it was. It was like you literally turned into a campaigner against motorbikes. Everyone would be like, that's a bit left field for your brand. They'll be like, wow, you're using all your energy for that.

Great. Yeah, that's mad. All right, Stevie, what are you doing this week? I would delete mornings. Only because, only because I, it's deeper than one would think. It's because the entire world is set up for people to do 9 to 5s. And if you get up in the morning and you do like your writing in the morning before lunch, then that shows that you, for some reason we've been indoctedated to believe that that is better

writing than if you did it at like between 1pm and 6 p.m., which is technically more hours, but you, like, you need to be doing it at 6 a.m. It's like workouts. You have to be doing it at 6 a.m. Otherwise, it's just not as good as if you do it any else. It's like, no, that's not true. And I've spent a lot of my time being upset that I haven't got up at 6. And I don't think I've ever got up at 6. So you can understand how upset I am quite regularly. And tomorrow I have to do an interview at 8.30. And when she asked, she was, okay, it's about 8.30. I went, sorry? And she was like, and it was horrible pause. And it was like, oh yeah, that's like a normal time that people will do things.

We have names for Stevie in the morning. Because me and still do briefings on the podcast early. And Stevie's lover calls her the void. And I call her grumble. And this morning we had to do a 10 a.m briefing, which is like, let's be honest, quite late for most people. 10. And it was fine. Me and Stevie were just texting each other like, I'm really angry.

And I'm taking an angry wee because I'm so angry about being up at 10 a.m. It's like, oh my God, just get on with your lives, girls. It's so annoying. But the thing is, if you don't have to, you shouldn't have to. And I hate that I'm being forced into it by my own brain. Anyway, Gina, what would you delete this week? This week, I would delete summer clothes made of nylon. Yes.

When summer comes around, I get very anxious about the clothes I'm going to wear because obviously most and all women feel like their bodies being on show is an issue for a plethora of reasons. Or not all women, some women. But I feel very uncomfortable in summer. I got lots of more catcalls. I'm not particularly confident with my body. like a lot of women aren't.

You should stop being so sexy. See, this is why it's fun doing a podcast with you because no one would ever say that to me apart from you. And yeah, and all the summer clothes that you can buy. I mean, I haven't now bought fast fashion for years, but I feel like most of the summer clothes are made out of nylon and they're clingy, and it's like, when I wear a t-shirt,

I want a boxy-cut cotton t-shirt the guys get to wear. I don't want it to be like v-cutting tiny sleeves and, like, cinched in at the waist. I just want to wear comfortable clothes, and I'm bored of nylon clingy summer ones. And nylon smells as well, so you wear it for one, hour and you're like, I smell like a train? I was going to say.

I smelled like a beefy train. That's awful. Not good. Not good. Good deletions. Right. Emma. So I wanted to ask you a question.

Because I've only for a long time. Yes and yes. And I, the one of the first, actually, to be honest, it is too long. We need to stop. Take a break. I have always thought, especially early on, when not everyone was using Instagram and Twitter in the same way, whereas now lots of people use it like this, but I'd still say you are the best at this. You were very, very good at promoting yourself and your work, like talks you were doing,

just like things you were doing in your life. You were very good at presenting yourself in a very professional way in a way that made you look like you were always doing hot business. And in control. And in control of what your image was. Were you always so cool with that at the start? And have you ever had to be? any like pushback from it. It's a really good question. I guess I always knew from a very not a really early age that would be weird walking around to the five-year-olds being like I'm going to build my personal brand now. But I definitely felt like we were moving into an era where your online presence was going to be really important whether we liked it or not and I just

felt really lucky that it was something I felt naturally kind of inclined to do and confident with it. And I think I just always thought that, you know, the reason we buy magazines is because we love the columnist. I felt like that's kind of where I wanted to go is if I had some sort of brand that I could kind of own, then hopefully I would always be employed. And I don't know whether it's like this millennial fear that almost like it was an armour to protect myself to just make myself more employable. Yeah. Because I was just so worried that if you're just like employee number 5,002, you just, no one really, you just move around and just feel really lost. And I was like, right, if I have some sort of platform or like online presence or something that I own, like a website

or even the podcast now, it was almost like, oh, I can never like lose my job. That's always yours, yeah. So when I think back, I think it was, yes, it was like confidence and wanting to do it, but it was also wrapped in like a bit of fear, I think. I'm, for one, I'm so bad at promoting stuff that I've done. the best, now I'm okay with if I've written an article sharing the article. That's where you've got to, yeah. I've got to that. But obviously when I went to Edinburgh and I did a show, I had to like retreat praise and put all this stuff up.

And I would feel so hot and sweaty and embarrassed because I would be feeling like, but that's not how I feel today. It makes me look really good. But I actually don't feel good. And I would get messages being like, God, you're smashing it. I'm like, no, I'm really not. I've just put up the best things. How do you balance that and do you feel that sometimes?

I definitely feel that sometimes. And I love that about you, though, that you can't do anything that's like jarring with how you're feeling. And I think that's to be really respected. I suppose the way I think about it is like I do categorize it more as a business thing. Like my Instagram page is a way I do make money. And that's not to make me sound really heartless. But I can separate it out now and be like, this is something that I, that is a business. It just so happens that I am like the voice of that and the face of that.

and maybe that's why I can keep it quite professional and not feel bad about self-promoting because at the end of the day if you work really hard on something, the only way you're going to get to do more of that is if people know about it. And there's this phrase that's like no one's going to find you on like the third page of Google.

And like I do believe that. No one's going to like hunt you out and like come into your flat and be like, where's your novel that's in your drawer? Like you do have to put yourself out there. But I know so many people that find that super difficult and actually I've wanted to do more, you know, online courses to help people feel better about self-promotion. Because I think it's a feminist issue as well.

We've been told not to shout about our achievements for so long. So I think, yeah, it's important to discuss it. I said this in a job recently that it just like hit me really, really hard when I was doing the campaign. It's almost like I can't talk about anything apart from the campaign, but it's just because that's where all my like learning habits. happened. I've had at least two conversations with you in the last three years that I was going to say it our whole life about that good I'm so glad um yeah I realized quite quite quickly during that that a lot of the men that I was working with in really high positions and in very powerful positions

weren't actually that great at what they did but they had just the amazing sense of confidence and being able to talk their way around their work and promote themselves and all this stuff and how many women do I know who are absolutely brilliant and have amazing ideas and should be going forward and doing the things they love and just don't want to talk about it and are scared to say that they're good and celebrate themselves and feel like someone else should be doing that for them but they can't do it themselves and I definitely think that's gendered for sure. There's also I think it's there's one thing going into a room and being and talking confidently and basically blagging it. There's another thing being it because with social, it's like the

difference between having a face-to-face conversation where you have to think of a thing immediately or a WhatsApp conversation where you can kind of think about how you're going to present it. So I suppose promoting yourself on social media is a great way to start building that confidence in yourself because you can think about it.

You can have time to go, how am I going to put this up rather than walking and being like, here are my ideas, listen to the bitch. Whereas now it's like, he can be like, oh well, if I found that it's helpful for me

to make a silly joke when I am promoting something because it just makes me feel like, well, at least maybe someone will just be like, ah, fine. That's better. It makes me feel better for a reason. You know, you can do it in your own voice.

I always say it's like, how would you tell your best friend in the pub that you just did a show you were really proud of? You could do it in that voice. Yes, absolutely. Sometimes look at your Instagram stories and there'll be, like, you are just really putting yourself out there

in a way that doesn't feel embarrassing because you're, oh my God, I've used two phrases that I hate, because you're owning it. But you are owning it and you are putting yourself out there. And I think anything anyone does with confidence, it's only when people clearly find excruciating that you feel embarrassed for them. And when it's not like authentic or there's not the work isn't behind it and all that stuff,

but it's so isn't that with you. And also if it's just broadcasting, you know, completely all about yourself. Because I think the importance of social media really is to build a community or find a community. And what I love about Instagram, for example, is that we're all promoting each other's work. That's how I feel. I genuinely feel like there's cross-promotion going on. and it's like you want to grow your platform but you actually want to grow other people's

and it's all, you don't have to do that much self-promotion if you have a community of people where you're all fighting or going towards the same goal. Yeah, that's so true. Have you had issues with jealousy, people being jealous of how you've presented yourself on social media? Have you felt jealous as well of other people?

I have, but I've always been able to reframe it and I don't want to come across with some like optimistic DuraSel bunny but I get inspired by people a lot and there's a very fine line between jealousy and inspiration so you could look at someone and be like oh my God I'm so jealous I want to do that

but then sometimes I just tweak that thought and be like wow I'm so jealous I really want to do that oh I think I'm going to go and do that or thanks for bringing that to my attention because I do believe jealousy is one of the most useful emotions in the whole world you know I've written extensively at the moment about knowing that I don't really want children And it's really interesting because I scroll through Instagram

and I see someone like announcing their pregnancy bump to lots of women that can bring huge jealousy because they may be trying to get pregnant, for example. It's a really sensitive issue. But I don't feel any jealousy towards certain things like that and that just is useful. And then if I stop and scroll and see something that I'm jealous of, like maybe someone's written a play

because I quite want to do that one day. I'll be like, oh, I'm jealous. and so actually it's just a bit of an arrow to like what you want. Telling you that you want that a lot and you can maybe use that as fuel. I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Because you can get jealous and

I guess I felt that actually when you came to our house. Me and Steve used to live together listeners. It was a glorious time. And you came to our house when we just moved in and I was like homeless basically. I just got this flat, but I had no job.

We were drinking wine. I remember you having this conversation about your jobs and what you were doing and I remember just feeling like so overwhelmed. with jealousy like they are doing so much in london in the big city and they're both so cool and they like they have someone to talk to about it and have each other's backs and i remember just sitting on the on the arm of the sofa from you guys finish the conversation i was like i'm really jealous and emma you

said you don't need to be and you always think that this was a rude thing to say and it was actually a really helpful thing i always remember is that you you you said you said you don't need to be jealous and upset about this i'm not worried about you as in you're gonna go and do stuff i know you will And I remember that huge jealousy And then like when you said, I'm not worried about you, it was like, oh yeah, like I could use this to try and do something with myself then. When you went on to do everything you've done, I felt like I should be more surprised.

But I was like, oh, no, that's just Gina, like doing what she was going to do. Like, do you know what I mean, though? It was like, I'm not that we all knew, but it's no surprise that you've gone on. Like, I think it was quite obvious that you were going to do something amazing. Yeah, it was. Very much was. I was going to say that the type of things as well effect,

your jealousy. So for example, yes, career-wise, I've really gone out of my way to try not to see people having like written a book or got a sitcom or just the things that I'd quite like to do. But then with non-career things, that's when it becomes difficult because things like, you know, like I joke about how whenever I see somebody, I will immediately Google their age. And then I'm like, they're 21. Oh, my. Social media does throw up these things that you actually can't change or use for good. Sometimes it's just, why is that person so pretty? And why is, and they live in a big house and they're really rich and I want to be rich. Like, and you can't kind of... And on a bad day, that can affect you in a way that it, on a good day, you could just maybe cast it aside, but on a bad day,

like, you'll, that will, it's like, it eclipses everything and you're like, why, I haven't got these things, these things, I haven't done this enough, why I haven't. And that's what social media, like, our brains are very good at dealing with that because we haven't been served up this many successes by other people quickly all the time. But I, I don't know why we've always equated success and happiness with like these on paper things like I've met yeah some very depressed people who live in mansions I've met really unhappy people who have like five books out what how come we've squashed our imagination down that far to think oh sitcom they're happy forever you know yeah and they're not yeah absolutely doesn't and it's weird because you know they're not but

your brain is still programmed to be like it's basically capitalism isn't it's like success and money and validation and then if I don't have that I'm shit you're like no You've got your on Instagram, but you've also, like many people who are on Instagram, have a personal Instagram just so for you to, like, put up pictures of your butt and stuff, I guess. But like, was there a point that made you decide, yes, I'd like one just for me and, like, very close friends now? And what was that point? Oh, yeah. I started that personal account the week that the multi-hyphen method came out,

because I just knew I was going to turn into, like, Mrs. Promotional Lady. And because I really wanted to sell the book. I really, the thing is, is I don't want this to sound really cheesy or worthy, but like, I really care about the stuff I'm making and I really want people to consume it, like beyond my own financial, like, kind of incentives.

You know what I mean? Like, I actually genuinely have a message that I want people to read. And so I was like, well, I'm going to go to town, really, on, like, spreading this message about how you could carve your own path and start your own career. And so I did the personal one.

And what I found really interesting is the, you know, the dopamine rush you get from likes. I get more of a dopamine rush from like five of my best friends liking a picture of like me as a kid holding a rabbit than I do of like a thousand people liking a quote I put up. Do you know what I mean? And I really realise that. I know this sounds bad, but I'm a person who hates social media. So I'm allowed to say this. It shows the falsity of social media the fact is by very definition that one will need a personal account to show what they're actually like.

and a forward-facing account because it is a promotional publishing tool. Yeah, because it's no longer what it was at the beginning. We still think of it as, oh, social media is posting pictures of your life, but that's the thing it isn't anymore. Like, it used to be that. For a lot of people it is, but if you're freelancing, if you have a business, like the platform has changed and grown now.

So it's like you're taking it back to that original usage with that account that's personal, which is quite nice. It is weird, though, that like you say, Stevie, that we have to split it out because it's more, into something bigger than ourselves. But I think as well, this is maybe just a personal thing. And by the way, I think it is a personal choice. I know so many people that wouldn't need a personal account

and a professional account. It's just the same. But also, it's like my best friends don't have to engage with my work. Yes. I wanted a place where I could just like be myself and like post pictures of pool and everything because I do have a bit of a barrier up of like some stuff like that. It's just a reminder, I think, that like if you're on Instagram,

if you're on Instagram and it's your business, you shouldn't expect, like, your friends and family to, like, follow your work that closely. Like, we don't, I don't follow a lot of my friends' work. Do you know what I mean? See, I find this really hard. I've been, I literally have been struggling with this. This is so interesting to say this today

because the past three days I've been posting about this and thinking about it. I really struggle with this because my work is human rights stuff. So I, just a couple of my friends have said, oh, yeah, when I go on your Instagram, like, I don't actually look at the stuff that you're writing about, you know, gender, or like, how you feel about whatever,

or the article you tell me to read. And that really upset me because I was like, if I was still working advertising, I'd be like, well, yeah, of course. You don't need to go and read this piece on this amazing copy ad that I did. But now because my work is about, like, things I think everyone should know about,

I find it so hard to separate that. And I don't think I'd realize that. But if your job isn't based on your identity or anything, if your job is something else, that is so true that you don't have to engage with someone else's work and to carve out that space where you can look back at that account that you've created, that personal one, and it's like a memories fan. Okay, so Emma, we have three of your posts, and the first one is your first post, which was 19th of March 2012.

And it says, I mean, it's not, not pure. It says, first tweet from my new blog Twitter page, Howdy, everyone? That's really cute. First question is, do you still use the word howdy? Maybe. Very, very cute. Did you go on Twitter to promote your blog? Thank you for this.

I have to own up to what my old blog was called. And I still get male with it on. Do you? I'm a 31-year-old woman, and I still get male saying, to girl lost in the city. Oh my God, I forgot about that. So cute.

Yeah, so that's the account I made at Girl Lost in the City. And so I actually joined Twitter, probably 2008, 2009. Yeah, so I started this new account, and I was saying, how do everyone? See, that in itself is ahead of the curb Because like, in 2012 everyone was just like Twitter, hello, I guess it's me now And you were already like, well, it'd be good to have a social account

That's connected to the blog And it would be just have a personal, like, You've always been fed like ahead of the curve With all that stuff. Yeah, and then I hounded Bruce Daisley Who's now a really good friend of mine Who worked at Twitter to get myself verified. I was on, I was on that path of like, get me verified

That's amazing. For my crappy blog. Why did you then? change what was your thinking behind that changing to emigannon yeah and i'm going from being a blogger to being an into like you you stopped being a blogger at one point didn't you really basically yeah i think it was just following what was trendy at the time i mean it's like growing up as well i felt like girl lost in the city was great when blogs were a thing i felt like i really tapped into that kind of blogging uh industry but then and then i wanted to maybe rebrand myself a little bit more as well and just feel like

I was growing up. I felt like it was exactly the same as when you have a hot mail address that's like fluffy chicken 29 and then you're like, no, I should probably be Emma Gannon at Gmail now. Like it was just that. Yeah. But you, when you do a rebrand, Emma, and I know it makes you sound like some sort of heartless corporation, but you're not. You're doing it for, well, you're doing it for heartless corporation reasons, but it's good because it's like it helps and it supports your, your career, which is what you're using social media for. What are the things? that you do like do you like the picture on your Twitter the bio like do you look at everything and do you have like do you treat it like a business decision yeah definitely and I

think it's similar to what Gina was saying I think maybe on a last episode or recent interview where if you work in advertising and you work in marketing like I used to work for dove and like some really really big brands where you would be in meetings with like 50 people all discussing what profile picture you're going to pick and it's like it's no different really to what they do but you're doing it for yourself and obviously you are probably trying to be a bit more human with it obviously and that you know you're not being as like limited in what you're putting out there but really it was do I want to line the pockets of a brand or do I want to like line my own in the sense of like that

sounds really heartless but it's not meant to it's just meant to be a freeing decision that means I can just grow my own platform and spread my own message and not have to go through a corporation. Yeah, and there's something so liberating about that. I mean, I guess that's what all of us who are freelancer trying to do. That's why you take the decision to be freelancers, because you want to have ownership over your career way more than you, than you did when you worked in office, and whether that's like Stevie, not having to work at 8am and doing your work around your clock, or it's like creating your brand and it makes you feel seen and in control and excited about what you're putting out there. It's just having

that control must be so liberating. It's like with what Jamina Jamil's been doing with I Way, you know, she's got a team of people now. and it's like a website, newsletter and podcast, and it's like that's no different from like when we worked at the debrief. It's just that it's coming from a human. And I do think we're in a new era now, I suppose it's been coming for a while where we don't want a faceless logo telling us what to do anymore.

And people can probably find many problematic reasons why human beings shouldn't be brands either. But I think I'd rather it the way around it is now where I can sign up to someone's newsletter or podcasts and like know that it's them making the decisions and not like some man in a suit. Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. So second post is your worst post.

Emma, you tweeted on the 8th of October 2012. So actually, quite early still, day one of my post-holiday detox. One vanilla cupcake and one banana bread and one brownie. Hashtag fuck. You chose that as your worst post. Why? This one just stood out to me as something that really, really jars with like 2020 me, which is I would never go on to social media and broadcast how guilty I was feeling about something I ate.

I think I'm much more aware now of A, how triggering that could be to someone else. But also it's just so alien to how I live my life now. I would never think about detoxing. If I got any email from any brand telling me to detox, I would take. tell them to like do one. And so maybe I just picked it for that reason of like, it felt a bit icky. I found a tweet that was on my account that was almost to the letter of that your tweet,

Emma. It was literally the same. It was like, why when I tell myself I'm going to have a healthy week of eating, have I just consumed listing food? I've really fucked up or something like that. And it's just like, I think in my head I thought if I put it out there,

it's like, I'm holding myself accountable. But I was holding myself accountable. It's like a really damaging shit problematic idea. And therefore other people were then reading. it but I think we've all done that because that period of time was very bad for how we thought about it. But it's still happening now. You can still, if you search different, like, we know when you go in that explore feature on Instagram. I don't know why, but all of mine

are either seals or really strident fitness people being like, these snacks are good, these snacks are bad. And you're like, I thought, I thought we'd progressed beyond that because I have in my brain. But people are still struggling with it. So it's just, it's not, I think what's good, Emma, is it obviously like you, the fact that you wouldn't tweet that now, shows that we're all kind of, there's a movement towards being a bit kind and a bit more thoughtful about how your tweets will be seen by other people. That era of Twitter was like, you just tweeted any old thing that came into your head. And now I think I'm much more considered and I genuinely ask myself, like, does anyone need to know this before I tweet?

And your best post, that you have proffered. For a thing, I'm looking to speak to a range of women who have zero desire to have kids in brackets by choice who might talk to me. Please reply or slide into one's DMs. Thank you. I think we like this one because it goes on something so much bigger as well, doesn't it?

Yes, I like it. So why did you pick this one? Yeah, this was a hard one when you said, pick your best tweet because I didn't know how to like quantify what best meant really, but some of my best tweets I would say are like tweets that I put out there on a whim because I may be researching for an article

or maybe a blog post or a podcast or something and then it kind of takes on a life of its own and I know that in the past like CV you've said about comedy and how you don't want to give away your best jokes but you also feel like maybe you can kind of get a bit of a test or like a crowdsource feeling of did this joke land or is this interesting

and so I do that for my writing sometimes where I think if something is interesting you can tell with the engagement that it gets And yeah, with this tweet asking for child-free women to get in touch with me, I got 200 replies in like a few hours, and then I got another 200 DMs, and then I got like loads of emails in my inbox. And I just realized that this wasn't an article,

this should be a book, and then I thought this should be a novel. And so that's turned into my debut novel, Olive. And I would just say it's my best tweet, because I could not land on an idea for the novel. And so this tweet helped. But yeah, I followed up with 50 women. I didn't pick them for any other reasons than they were just like the first 50.

And then I interviewed them on email and I sent them all a free copy of Olive. Oh, that's lovely. Because I'm just obsessed with them all and they opened their heart to me for no reason other than they wanted to. And yeah, it's weird. I feel like I've made like a little crew of new friends from interviewing them. And the fact that a book can come from a tweet is so great. I've seen a friend of mine did a very funny thread about Yergen Klopp, the Liverpool manager about how much she fancies in.

She got a book deal off the back of it and is writing the book now. Oh my God. And that blows my mind. So like tweets and things for creative people now, even if you don't have like shit loads of followers. But even the 100 people, someone once said to me and like changed my mindset, they said, you know, I get asked all the time, oh, I don't have a big following, so how do I do stuff?

Or people don't see what I care about. And it's like, if you had a room and 100 people were in it, standing there in science waiting to hear what you had to say, that would feel huge. So like you can take like even if it was 100 people, there'd be people in that 100 that wanted to share their stories with you like they did with you, Emma, and like look what that can do. Yeah, exactly.

And that's why, you know, retweeting is incredible. It's literally like those 100 people telling a friend. Yeah. Not even that. Telling 10 friends, telling 100 friends. So it's like ideas can spread very easily. And I guess the point of this as well for me is that I don't really believe that you should be protective over your ideas.

Like I just think put it out there, see what happens. obviously don't like go into detail if you're planning to do something specific, but put it out there a little bit and test the water. And I've got quite a few magazine commissions recently off a tweet, you know, someone, like an editor of a magazine being like, oh, I saw that tweet, do you want to write about it? Yeah. So I think it's worth putting a bit out there if you can.

Totally agree. Very helpful. At the end of the podcast, we play a game called Follow Unfollow Block. And we thought we did. follow and follow back with you with three different things but with your three books so you have to decide if you want to follow unfollow or block them so control or delete the multi hyphen method and olive which one would you follow and which one would you block oh my god this is literally like making me pick my favorite child yes if you have children i would also do that i would probably

block control alt delete seven all i love that book but it is a book i'll never ever read again It's about your life. It's about your, so anyone listening, it's about Emma's life growing up online in an online world. And it's like autobiographical, but it's also very, very, very, very relatable. Anyone who's been on MSN. Oh my God.

And had an MSN boyfriend, we'll be able to relate. Yeah, and it's about, you know, ex-boyfriends and the highs and the lows of, like, my teenage life online. So I'm happy to, like, block it. It happened. And leave it in the past. Okay. It happened.

And it led to my podcast. So I'll always be grateful for that book, but I'm happy to block it. I would probably unfollow the multi-hyphen method because, again, it really served a period of my life, but I don't really need to, like, remind myself of what's in that book anymore. Like, I'm just living it. And also, you know, I'm in a bit of a career pivot. Like, I really want to write novels and, yeah, like, explore new ways of being creative and telling stories and telling fictional stories. I am the multi-hyphen method

like it's within me so I don't need to follow it and I would follow Olive Of course Imagine you've blocked your current novel That'd be insane You're on your third novel

Absolutely spitting with jealousy Talking of jealousy before TV's popping mad I mean good luck to anyone who wants to get New ideas right now Oh my god yeah Look do a tweet and then do a book Guys come on I do I really I really recommend

and using Twitter to get ideas. Yeah, that's some good advice, genuinely. I've honestly have not thought about that. Well, Stevie, you can do a book on bread with your viral bread tweet. Thank you so much, Emma, for coming in. Not coming in. We're doing this in lockdown. Thank you so much for looking at your computer screen.

It's been lovely to have you. Thank you so much for having me. I love this podcast. It's so fun. And, yeah, all the other episodes have been so fun to listen to. So I'm honoured. Well, I'm honoured. do you think that please go and listen to emma's podcast control alt delete where she has every single

person you could imagine on the planet interviewing um and that's such great interviews just like it's but it's so varied as well which is brilliant it's always something in there um you can follow emma on twitter at emma ganon and instagram at emma gonon uk um this is a little difference and uh yeah i mean she's basically like your big your business big sister and uh her novel olive is out now go and get it it's brilliant do follow us at Might Delete Later Pod on Instagram and Might DeletePod on Twitter and email us any guests that you'd like to see on the podcast at Might Delete LaterPod at gmail.com

And look, just subscribe, give us a nice review if you enjoyed it. That'd be nice, isn't it? That'd be so nice. And also, just remember, social media can be an amazing tool for your business or for self-promotion. Or self-promotion and living online may make you break out in a cold sweat. That's fine too.

That's totally fine. However you feel about it, If it starts making you feel bad, you can always take a break. Or you can control, alt delete later. See what I did there? Very good. Bye!