Author and Writer, Persona and Person

I've been thinking again about social media platforms for writers, remembering that woman who said you have to have 250,000 followers before an agent will take you seriously and want to represent you. Last week, I watched a video at Manuscript Academy, all about practical suggestions for increasing your visibility. They included running an event at your local library and starting a book club.

Okay, the library thing might get—let’s be optimistic—fifty attenders.  But attenders are not followers, and fifty is not 250,000. And book clubs…she mentioned someone she knew who started a book club that’s now franchised in three states. So, see? It’s not hard; you can do it.

The f---?

A book club is a group of friends getting together to share book recommendations and to talk about books they are reading together. How in #%&@ do you franchise that? I mean, okay, Oprah Winfrey did it. But if I were Oprah, I wouldn’t need an agent. I’d buy the whole damn literary agency.

And then I’d hire a ghostwriter, because who has time to write when your public persona is your full-time job?

I found myself last night wondering for the first time if I really want to be an author. Maybe, instead, I should go back to being a writer. One advantage of that is I’d be free to self-publish, and not worry about the damage it will do to my career if I sell less than 8,000 copies in the first year. Put Waterlily up on Amazon. Market it, but do it sanely. Buy some ads. Try different things and see what works. Sign every blog post and book review “Peter Cooper Hay, author of Waterlily (available on Amazon).”

Cause right now, thinking about social media, it’s like I’m standing at the foot of a brick wall, paralyzed because I think I have to leap it in a single bound or not at all.

And…should I admit these doubts in my author blog? Send them out to my newsletter mailing list?

I look at the popular video clips on Facebook, or my favorite YouTube personalities (people like V-Sauce Michael or Martina from NerdForge) and what they all have in common is a cool temperament and a detached and ironic style. They’re clever. They have mad skills. But also,

1) They do it full time, and

2) They tell us nothing real about themselves.

Yeah, screw that. I’m a writer, and writers are here to speak truth. We use fiction and fantasy to cast a different light on reality, but if there isn’t truth at the heart of it, it’s worthless. Even comic writers (perhaps especially comic writers, the ones that are any good, the ones that are worth your time) are truth-tellers.

So, this feeling of doubt is my truth, today at least. If I didn’t share it because it’s inexpedient and impolitic, then I might as well just pack it in.

I will be real.

Photo credits:

Author with Brick Wall by the author.

Author with Masks by Cat Chapin-Bishop, using a cutout of “Tragedy and Comedy” by Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51864375