I hate April Fool's Day. However, it's only one day a year, and my roommate reminded me that one day isn't all that bad to put up with people's practical jokes if you don't have to put up with them for the rest of the year. That's one way to look at it at least. But with April 1st now over and done with, it is time for April 3rd and that is the Insecure Writer's Support Group Day. Before I answer the monthly question, here's what it is about for newcomers who find my blog.
What is the purpose of the IWSG?: It is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
When do y'all post?: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group Day. This is when you post your thoughts on your own blog. Other ideas include talking about your doubts and the fears you have conquered or discussing your struggles and triumphs. You may want to offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling and visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer: aim for a dozen new people each time and return the comments. This group is all about connecting. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog. Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.
The motto of the Insecure Writer's Support Group is "Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!"
The X (formerly Twitter) handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.
The awesome co-hosts for the April 3 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, T. Powell Coltrin, Natalie Aguirre, and Pat Garcia!
Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.
April 3 question - How long have you been blogging? (Or on Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram?) What do you like about it and how has it changed?
Oh wow! I think I've been blogging fourteen years, and it's changed a lot in that time. When I first started, it was recommended by many experts for writers to have an online presence. It took some time for me to understand that the reason they wanted you to do this was so that you could sell stuff to other people and not because being "online" meant anything magical. That's all books are at the end of the day. They are a product that you create kinda like sewing mittens or 3D printing a little rabbit for Easter and posting it on Etsy. The whole "blog" thing was a "kind" way for publishers and agents and other people to let you know that you were the best person at marketing your product. And they absolutely are correct. You are the best person, which is actually a huge letdown. That's why people who are already famous can sell a bunch of books. But it was easy to get confused, especially if you were a person on the autism spectrum, that being online was about "other things."
It honestly reminds me of a time in high school when I used to watch the special education students clean all of the lunchroom tables after everyone had finished eating. At the time, I thought it was kind of cruel. These were people that were already struggling, and they were using them as free labor to clean up the lunch tables after all of the other kids made them dirty and then went to class. I'd see all the special ed kids wiping everything down. It was years later when I realized, "oh crap...they are teaching the special ed kids a trade. This is so that they can be useful and get a job as a janitor because that's really all that they are probably going to be able to get." And that is the truth. The schools were teaching the special ed kids a trade.
Publishers and agents putting out the demand from authors to "make an online presence for yourself" is the exact same thing as telling the special ed kids to wipe down tables. It's letting you know that you are solely responsible for any money you make, and that they aren't going to do all that much, and that it is brutal out there and that you need to lower your expectations a lot. It's like the first step of making yourself your own business, but instead of snow shovels and mittens and 3D printed garbage, you are trying to sell your words (and that is a tough sell when words are so plentiful). It really is kind of arrogant if you think about it...that you could just write something down and someone else would give you money for it. And if you aren't a people person or don't have all that many friends and the camera doesn't love you...then you might not be "marketable" and you probably shouldn't quit your day job.
It didn't used to be this way, but it's what happened when all the gates were destroyed and everyone could just buy things online or read whatever they want. And now with a.i. writing tons of things for free and print on demand becoming so good, your ability to market is bar none the most valuable thing that there is. There are days when I miss the gatekeepers. But there really is no use crying over spilt milk. It's done, and every single one of us will have a harder time in the future trying to find something that a real person actually wrote and then every single one of us will have to ask, "Is this actually better than a machine could have written or am I just being nostalgic and loyal to humans? Blech. I wonder if any of it actually matters."
So, what do I like about blogging still even if it isn't for marketing, which was the whole reason to do any of it anyways? I'm certainly not marketing a single thing on my blog these days. Perhaps it is just standing on a soap box and saying things that pop into my head. That's probably it. I've also become friends with several bloggers. There's Liz who knits things, and Patrick who keeps it real, and Alex who plays his guitar and talks about sci-fi movies and tv shows. For the most part blogging is actually dead, I think. I haven't kept up with what publishers are demanding these days, but if I had to guess, it would be demanding that authors are on Tik Tok or doing "ask me anythings" on reddit and certainly writing books that appeal to the greatest number of readers.
For the most part though, I think publishers are just watching with jealousy as people like Brandon Sanderson rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in kickstarter/pledge manager campaigns for books that have already been published and have been just gussied up to look beautiful with all leather bindings and gold foil and crap like that (it's all vanity). They've probably got one eye on that and another eye on you (the disappointing child) wondering why you can't make all that lightning happen just like Sanderson did. And the answer to that is always a combination of 1) luck, 2) writing the correct thing, 3) finding your audience, 4) having the discipline to finish all the projects you start, and 5) being likeable. If people don't like you, you will not get far at all. Religious people in particular understand this last part: if you want your religion to succeed then the people who are your missionaries should be really likeable. It seems so obvious, but it isn't really.
Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate all of you insecure writers. It's fun networking with you once a month on all these deep questions.
That's a depressing though probably accurate way to look at it. Unfortunately a lot of the "gates" have been coming down for a while. A blog entry I wrote 2 years ago was about a book from about 2000 about a struggling author who ghostwrites a famous author's book and then eventually the mayhem that ensues. Part of the problem for the struggling author was that publishers by then allocated most of their marketing resources to their biggest clients so already by then if you were "midlist" or a small fish you were on your own. But back in the late 90s and until 2003 or so you didn't even have "blogs;" you had to make your own site or use message boards. Ugh. https://ptdilloway.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-hook-showed-how-bad-things-were-for.html
ReplyDelete@P.T.: The thing about gates was that if you didn't get through, then it really sucked. But for those who did manage to make it through, there was a reward of sorts in the sense that you had a big company with relatively deep pockets kind of making a celebrity of you. And they had such control over what could actually be put in front of people, that it kind of put everyone on the same page nationally as to what was good and what wasn't good. The destruction of those gates meant that anyone could say anything, and now people get to choose whatever they find interesting. And what that did was reveal that none of us (when given an opportunity) like anything similar to what anyone else likes. And we all learn at different rates, and we all believe different things. So it's kind of like that Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, with no one understanding anyone else and a united country being reduced down to handfuls of individuals who have so little power to move the needle in any direction that nothing seems changeable anymore. If you need a thousand people to accomplish a thing...you're lucky to find ten that believe in that thing and want to change it. So everything is just frozen and intractable and with no ability to change, then as stressors are applied, it just breaks. Vanity publishers are certainly having a moment though. Many are mining old books from the eighties and doing these luxurious hardback printings of books that go on to sell at individual prices of around $400.00. I wonder who has the money to buy these, and it turns out that quite a few do, and it shoots these Kickstarters and these Pledge Managers handling these orders into the stratosphere. I think Brandon Sanderson's latest kickstarter that maybe ended on March 31st took in 30 million or something crazy like that on a leatherbound edition of a book that's been around for fifteen years? I recently received all five of some hardcover David Eddings books that I did a kickstarter for years ago, and I saw them on sale on Ebay for $4,000.00. And these are for stories that have been around since the early 80's. I think that people are just getting weird now, and they are looking a lot to the past to make a huge payday. There just isn't any room for that new "undiscovered" author because the gates were destroyed. So the new "undiscovered" author just needs to essentially start their own Etsy and market print on demand. That's just reality for most people. However, there are still exceptions and lightning can still strike. If you can catch a wave of outrage, you can get people to read your stuff. That's just one example, but one I've seen work for some people at least in the short term. The easiest thing though is just to be good looking, already rich, extremely likeable, and possibly part of a tightly knit community of people that already exists and to which you can sell your stuff to. If you are a more independent thinker and a person who walks their path alone...I'd recommend trying your hand at something other than writing.
DeleteMust be nice to be Sanderson.
ReplyDeleteGood point that those kids were learning a trade. Trade work is the way of the future with AI taking the other jobs.
I'll keep posting for IWSG and talking movies for as long as someone is listening!
@Alex: I live within fifty miles of Brandon Sanderson's house. He is adored here by the population at large and many people who have read only a handful of books choose his books to be the ones that they read. And his followers are extremely fervent, defensive, and protective of him. It honestly resembles "cultish" behavior. He runs a warehouse and can completely staff it with volunteers if he wants to. Read this as people who just want to be in his orbit doing hard work. I don't know if he actually pays anyone real money to help him, but he might. If he does, then this is entirely voluntary on his part. I don't know if being "worshiped" in those kinds of ways would feel comfortable to me. But he obviously enjoys it quite a bit.
DeleteReally enjoyed this post! Another reason publishers used to advise writers to blog is because it's something writers can and usually enjoy doing. And the best kind of marketing is reaching out to people in a way you enjoy and are good at. I wish blogging was still as popular as it was 10 years ago. I really liked the social camaraderie. I really liked my blogging friends and now coming back to it after a long break, I'm sad to see that so many have left.
ReplyDelete@Karen: I've often said, "everything in life is temporary." That definitely applies to social media companies and the strategies that people use to be successful in marketing and business.
DeleteTrue about the special ed kids. At one of the schools I work at, they also deliver the mail to the teachers. And they deliver coffee, too. Yes, very much learning a trade.
ReplyDeleteHi, Michael! I really enjoyed reading your post, even if it was discouraging. I'll keep writing, even if I'm not good-looking, rich, or have a community to sell to. Generally, I'm likable, even if people don't always get me. I'm writing not to be rich or famous, but because I love to write. I also like to blog and will continue to do so, because I like to have a platform to share things and to connect with people. I taught a lot of elementary special ed kids during my teaching career. I always had a soft spot in my heart for them. My first husband was a paralyzed vet. I'll never forget an evening when we had a car accident on a bad cliffside road in an outport during a winter storm in Newfoundland. Newfies took us to their home and shared their meal with us. One of the extended family members came up to my husband who was in a wheelchair. It was obvious that he had a low IQ and struggled to talk. He told my husband that he was different like him. That really stabbed my heart, because I realized how deeply all people can feel and think, even when they're really handicapped. I didn't know at the time I'd become a teacher, but that experience helped me become a much better one. I hope each of that table-washing group went on to have good lives. I hope you've had a good IWSG Day. Take care!
ReplyDelete@Fundy: Thanks for visiting. I didn't mean for my post to be discouraging. I just like to keep it real. I have no illusions, no preconceptions. I value the truth no matter how hard it hits me. Sometimes, people think that I'm a pessimist. I think of myself as a realist. But I'm also a believer that the truth shall set you free. It just won't make you any friends along the way.
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