The Little Author Who Cried, “Woe Was Me!”
It seems to be becoming a trend. Authors taking to social media to decry their lot in life, spill all their problems for the world to see, and (basically) beg for attention.
Every time I see one of these posts on some outlet or another, this is what I envision:
Honestly, it’s more than just authors who do this. But, as I write about being an author, I’ll focus on my fellow authors.
So, I will start by saying, I get it. Life is hard. Things happen. Sometimes those things hurt, and hurt really, really, really, really bad. Other times things happen that really piss you off. And, honestly, there isn’t anything wrong with discussing the bad things that are happening to you or what is making you angry.
Because SOME things that are problems do deserve to be aired in public. But not most. Nope. Sorry.
Social media is really not the place to do so for the vast majority of issues flooding my notifications these days. Just by looking at my Wattpad, Twitter, and Facebook feeds, I can see that most people seem to think it is a good idea to blast their problems for all to see. And, what is worse, their behavior smacks of simply attention seeking in an attempt to get people to look at them. If even for a moment.
What I see some of my fellow authors doing daily is akin to walking out of their house, going down to the street corner, and yelling at random people as they go by about whatever is ailing them. Like it or not, that is a bad look. A horrible look, really.
Especially if said author has any sort of professional aspirations in life.
And doubly so if they are one of those sorts who tends to wander into the realm of being a drama queen/king.
Let me give you some examples of things I have seen lately to help you understand.
A few months back, an author I knew, loosely, mind you, but knew, took to their feed and openly talked about how they were “depressed” and contemplated taking their own life. Now, this drew a slew of comments from people trying to be encouraging and urging her not to do it. I, on the other hand, knowing the author’s hometown, contacted the local suicide prevention hotline and gave them her information, including the social media feed where this was taking place. Why? Because I take this sort of talk very seriously and after having had a good friend of mine take his own life in college decades ago.
Within ten minutes there was a social worker and a local police detective at this author’s door because the author had their personal information readily available. Several hours later, she came back onto social media with a post that started out with “LOL”. And then proceeded to talk about how she just spent those past few hours talking to the social worker and the detective about said social media posts.
She said, and I’ll paraphrase here, “Seriously! Did anyone think I was serious! Come on!”
That posting, rather than drawing sympathetic responses, drew ire from her followers. Comments ranged from how her joking about things like that were disgusting (and it was), to people chastising her for “wasting their time” to “make people feel sorry for her.”
And, in the end, that’s really what this was all about. And she admitted such in yet another post. What she “really” wanted was people to recognize that her self-published book on Amazon was available and not doing too well. She admitted that it was all just a ploy for attention and hoping to get people to buy her book.
Having failed at that, and loosing several hundred followers in the ensuing days, she eventually shut down her social media account as the harassment continued. But not before decrying how “mean” people could be.
This was an example of an author who flat out lied to get attention. There are also authors who are telling the God’s honest truth, however, when they post about these things. But sometimes it gets to be too much.
I recently unfollowed one author on Wattpad because he was constantly posting about how no one was reading his stories. He claimed that it was because he was openly gay and railed against bigoted straight people for his ailing career. These rants started out happening every couple of months, at first. But eventually became a daily thing for him. When they did, I and many others unfollowed him. Which led to even more vitriol against those who were unfollowing him.
And to what point? So he could become known as an angry person who would blame others for his failures? So he could get sympathy reads from people who felt sorry that he was being so mistreated by horrible people on the internet?
Look, in the end, crying “woe was me,” is not a good look for anyone. In the short term, yes, it may get you the attention you seek. But in the long term? It will give you the reputation of being someone that is troubling to work with. And in the world of publishing, that is not a reputation you want to obtain. Because you will need others. And those others will want to feel that they can work with you without dealing with the overpowering stench of drama.
So that’s that … now go forth and be a decent person. And please cut out the drama. Peace.
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