I saw a quote once that said something along the lines of this: “Most people who practice brutal honesty are more interested in the brutality than the honesty.” I don’t like harsh truths/realities or brutal honesty, and I especially don’t like it when it’s directed at me. Call me an optimist (ironic, I know,) but I believe that in any situation, constructive criticism and truth-in-love is the way to go. For this reason, I don’t particularly enjoy the advice that I see a lot of people giving writers about how to become successful. They’ll say that they’re unveiling the harsh realities of being an author, and use it as an excuse to tell us how impossible it is to make it. They’ll give numbers and statistics, and say things like,

• You must have over 10,000 followers to even be considered for a publishing deal
• You must post at least once a day to get people to engage with your content
• You must be up to date on hashtags, viral sounds, and platforms
• You must regularly interact with other accounts

Now, before I get into this, I’ll say a few things for the record… I enjoy talking about my book and my progress on social media. I enjoy making mood boards for my characters. I enjoy interacting with readers and other writers.

What I don’t like about the type of advice that I’ve listed above is that it all boils down to one single flawed idea: You must spend more time on social media promoting your writing than doing the writing itself. I realize that being an author is hard, hard work, but putting out statements with these requirements may keep some of the best writers from pursuing their dreams.

I think the root of my opposition to social media is the fact that I didn’t grow up with a smartphone. I didn’t spend a ton of time on social media as a kid, or even in my teen years. I don’t know how to take selfies flattering selfies or quickly put together content. I’m thankful that I didn’t grow up glued to a phone. The problem is that I am now able to recognize how incredibly annoying social media truly is. This is a difficult characteristic for an aspiring author to have. Sometimes I go to make a simple post, then realize that I spent a half an hour making it. Sometimes the app will crash in the middle of a post and I’ll have to start all over again. Sometimes I spend an hour on a perfectly composed post only to get ten views on it. Sometimes I’ll say something completely normal and the internet will somehow find it controversial.

I know that a lot of artists enjoy the influencer/persona side of being an author, but some of us aren’t very good at it. I am okay with the fact that I will have much more engagement with my account once I get a publishing deal and have official releases, cover art, and other announcements to post about. Currently I battle with the balance between being accessible but not self-indulgent. I struggle with what I care about vs what the internet cares about. Honestly, If I can just be known as the author of those amazing books who also has good taste in music, I’ll be happy with that.

As I said before, I am not a fan of harsh truths. But I am a fan of simple truths, and at the end of the day, we writers have to recognize this simple truth: we may not be It Girls of the internet, but that’s not why we became writers. We may not get as many likes as other pages, but that’s not why we became writers. We may not keep up with the latest trends, but that’s not why we became writers. We became writers because we wanted to create worlds, not an aesthetically pleasing profile. And when someone sees your book on the shelf at a bookstore, they aren’t going to look at how many followers you have. They’re going to open it up and read the first page, and what they see there is much more important than any video you can post on TikTok. Someone will see a post, like it, and scroll on. If you do it right, someone will read your words and remember them forever.