May 2014

I spend far too much time on Twitter, which means I read a lot of tweets from a lot of authors.  Some authors are great at interacting, carving out their little niche and creating a kind of Twitter persona to represent them.  Others, however, are kind of like social media bacterial infections who must do everything they possibly can to sell their own work; they basically turn into walking spam monkeys.  And still others present themselves as bitter, rage-infested monsters fit for the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars.  Neither of these latter two groups are particularly fun to engage, which might explain why the five things I’ve listed here haven’t actually helped many of these individuals develop a steady writing career. Here goes: Constantly Complaining About Your Career There are two kinds of career complaints: Legitimate grievances which occasionally happen and need to be addressed in a public forum (or privately in a different context) Unsubstantiated complaints about why your work isn’t doing as well as you’d like Whether or not it is actually true that there’s a conspiracy to keep you from being successful, constantly harping about such things makes you look less like a victim and more like a bitter failure.  I have seen authors rant and rant about how their careers aren’t going the way they want, but it’s not their fault; someone else is responsible for the fact that their books don’t sell.  It’s certainly possible that you’re being sabotaged by individuals or an -ism, but it is more likely your work isn’t selling for reasons within and beyond your control:  your writing isn’t good enough, you don’t know how to market your work, you are writing X when the market is tired of it, nobody actually knows who you are because you’re published by a nobody, the previous book sold better than the second because it got into more bookstores, many of which are now closed, and so on an so forth. A lot of the times, the first two are the most likely culprits.  Not everyone is a great writer.  Some authors have pushed ahead too soon, expecting that their writing will meet the demands of the market.  There’s no easy way to tell these folks that they need to spend more time developing their writing style and learning the craft.  If you say anything, they’ll go back to the conspiracy theories about how you’re out to ruin their career or whatever.  I’ve yet to see one of these conversations go well on Twitter, which I suppose is to be expected.  Regardless, this perspective on the world of publishing is an annoying one, as the individual who believes it tends to become engrossed in the conspiracy against themselves, turning bitter, angry, and sometimes rude. Inserting Yourself Into Every Vaguely “Relevant” Hashtag Hashtags are a great Twitter tool.  They’re useful for spreading opinions about a topic among a wider range of users.  I’ve started running a hashtag called #monthlyreads, which is designed for a once-a-month sharing of the things you read.  I expect this hashtag to get abused. Most people are pretty good about hashtags.  They understand that they are for having a conversation or sharing information, and so they use it for that single purpose.  But then there is that minority of people who believe every hashtag that is vaguely related to their work is a perfect place to insert said work.  This happens most often in hashtags for sharing works of literature that fit within a category (diversity, for example).  Everyone else shares their favorite books while some random author pops up to suggest their own work. There’s nothing inherently wrong with mentioning your own work on Twitter, but there is something tacky and downright annoying about constantly inserting said work into these hashtag conversations.  Hashtags are not exclusively promotional in attitude, and so it is blatantly obvious that an author is trying to hawk their work when they join these conversations.  Authors who do this are also rarely good writers.  There’s something off about their work, either because it is substandard and has been self-published on the cheap or it is released through questionable means or the author is simply desperate and doesn’t know how to properly advertise. Hashtags are not about you.  They are communal.  Using them incorrectly is, frankly, irritating.  It doesn’t bode well for you as an author if a portion of your potential readers identify you and your work with negative emotions. Constantly Being Angry About Stuff It doesn’t matter what you’re angry about:  local politicians, racism, bad food, the fact that monkeys stole your wallet, sexism, liberals, how much you hate Country X, conservatives, gerbils, people who tweet about their cats…doesn’t matter.  If your Twitter account is a long stream of angry tweets about anything in particular, it gives me the impression that you are an insanely angry person and, therefore, unapproachable.  In my mind, that’s a bad thing.  I’m an aspiring author and a podcaster.  If I have little interest in interviewing you because you seem bitter and angry all the time, then I can assume other podcasters, interviewers, and so on might feel the same way. This isn’t to suggest that you shouldn’t complain about things that bug you.  Twitter is a social network, after all, and that means you should use it to, well, be social.  Anger is part of our social culture.  But it should be clear that you also like things.  Movies, hamburgers, recycling, the smell of new books…whatever.  If the entire world pisses you off all the time, maybe you need to re-evaluate your entire life.  There are good things on this planet, and your social network presence should show more than just the things that drive you up the wall. There’s also a separate issue here:  people who are bitter and angry all the time (or most of the time) are also more likely to fall into the confirmation bias bubble.  This can lead to a kind of