My son's visit to Santa. Our bright pink Christmas tree, topped with a Barbie who looks like she hit the Baileys a little too hard. A frankly biblical stomach bug that will go down in family lore. Our big, smelly dog cozied under our duvet, just his brown nose sticking out. You won’t have seen any of these things on my X (formerly Twitter), Instagram or Facebook this month.

For some, this might not be a big deal but I have been a chronic social media user for 13 years and sharing my life has become as automatic as blinking for me. When I signed my first publishing deal, a few months before my 30th birthday, my agent suggested I join Twitter, assuring me that all the new writers were doing it. As a working class woman who knew no one in the industry it seemed wise to take her advice and it turned out, back then, it really was a friendly, supportive and, most importantly, fairly accessible and democratic community.

My debut novel actually became a small breakout success even though it hadn’t even been published in hardback so unconvinced was my publisher about its profitability. But it was shortlisted for seven awards and won Scottish First Book of the Year and I managed to secure a second book deal, Arts Council Grant to write it and, eventually to leave my day job on the back of those. Much of this was possible because I was able to be very visible on Twitter. People knew that I was up for........

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