Quoth Livia: I think it’s become mentally and emotionally burdensome to be a writer nowadays, what with the internet sort of shoving the details of everyone else’s writing journey in our faces while we’re struggling to stay true to our own unique pace and milestones as artists. One must always be online and commenting, or risk being seen as an unsupportive and selfish asshole. How do you maintain balance and distance between what seems to be required of us as writers nowadays (promotion! community! etc.) and what writers typically need (silence, space, distance) in order to create and evolve?
Wow, that amazing question hits me hard because I have nothing but mixed feelings about promotion and community.
The lifelong attitude that has all but doomed me to obscurity has been, “If I have to tell you I’m awesome, I’m obviously not awesome enough.” The corollary idea to that, “If I have to convince you to let me into your tribe, I obviously don’t belong there,” hasn’t done me any favors, either.
Both of those are deeply neurotic ideas gifted to me by my scamming bullshit artist of a father. I’d rather not succeed than succeed by fakery…which I’m doing quite well!
I am, in other words, basically a cat: I want you to pet me, but I ain’t coming over there.
However, I do know enough anthropology to realize that all communities require a show of commitment to join and stay inside. I guess our ape-ish ancestors needed to know they could trust us not to bail when things got tough. Back then, that might have required, I don’t know, picking and eating a lot of nits and fleas.
Today’s equivalent is social media, but every time I post, I wrestle with the sincerity of it all: am I posting because I have something to contribute or because I want people to know I’m alive and buy my shit? I really don’t want it to be that, but maybe I’m cleverly fooling myself.
I go through this exhausting test of my soul every time I post.
My compromise is to behave like I do with normal meat-space friends and acquaintances, checking in on them at regular intervals and responding if I have something interesting to say. It means that my “footprint” and “reach” are expanding slowly, but then, why have a bunch of fake friends?
Here is the cascading list of priorities that has been working for me as a creator in the modern world:
- First as a fan and friend, I want you to maintain whatever level of mental health (or neurosis, whatever) you require to produce the weird-ass work that’s important to you. That’s your first job as an artist, to protect and cultivate that by any means necessary. There’s not much point in promotion or networking if you can’t get anything written that matters to you.
The minute that social media threatens the mindset for your work, bail out for as long as it takes not to feel that way. The peanut gallery can wait. - When you DO engage on social media, I suggest engaging selectively by imagining your contacts in tiers:
- Close professional friends, people with whom I have shared a meal while talking about things BEYOND writing, like murders).
- Professional acquaintances, people with whom I talk mostly business and writing but who COULD be friends.
- Assorted randos for whom I hope the best even though I don’t know them well enough for a seamless interaction.
- Set yourself a “social maintenance” schedule, though it doesn’t have to be that formal.
- I check in on close professional friends probably a few times a week and comment on their stuff.
- I check in on professional acquaintances maybe weekly or every other week, commenting if I have something interesting to say.
- I let assorted randos come to me, when I choose the level at which I plan to engage.
- Post your own stuff when you think of something interesting or helpful to say.
- Be okay with your audience growing a little at a time instead of sudden bursts.
The main thing for me at least is not to do anything solely for the purpose of advancing my career. I don’t post vapid compliments unless they are SINCERE vapid compliments, and I don’t contrive things to say so people know I’m still alive.
I know there are agents and publishers now who insist on a social media presence, and I have no idea if I have enough of one to count. All I can do is the same thing I do with my writing: be authentic and win my readers in ones and twos.
It would be exhausting to fake being someone else.