I love
seeing good news from writers I know personally, those I would like to get
to know, from authors I admire, publishers I respect, from literary
publications I enjoy, and the writing organizations I belong to or follow for the
good work they do. Usually this comes in
the form of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn updates, as well as emails,
newsletters and blog posts.
In a few
minutes (often a few too many minutes!) I get all the up-to-date info on
who just signed with an agent, whose manuscript just sold to which publisher,
what literary award was earned, which grant received. It all scrolls by my eyes, all that great
good news I'm happy to hear – whose essay is now live at what site, which
bookstore is hosting what author, which writer just got hired by what college
to teach which genre, whose book made a coveted list.
When I can,
when I have a minute or it's news I've been hoping for on someone else's behalf, I click Like, or write
a quick Kudos! comment, or just nod and smile and think, that's
great.
And then
there are the other days. The ones when I just don't want to know. I don't. The days when I nearly sneer at the screen and think, sarcastically, yeah terrific. Days when the last thing I want to
hear about is another writer (who is not me) accomplishing something, getting
awarded something, getting published someplace, landing an agent, book deal,
teaching job, residency.
It's not
that I want writers to stop tooting their horns. We all need to, once in a
while. Plus, it's a career imperative, bound up in platform building, book promotion, student recruitment, reader engagement, and editorial relationships.
And of course I do this myself too, and yet even while doing so, I'm aware of
a double edged reality; that there are writers out
there – in many cases who may in fact even like me or wish me good things – who on a given day just don't want to hear about anyone else's good
fortune.
Because maybe that day for them (as it is for me some days), the
manuscript-in-progress is being an uncooperative bitch, or the machinery of
freelancing is slow and cruel and broken, or the email inbox is filling with too much rejection for a single day.
Or maybe none of that happens, but even so, it's still too much to
contemplate all the good things happening everywhere else to everyone else.
On those
kind of days, I avoid social media, open emails carefully if at all, and take
no meandering walks around the internet. Those days, I kind of long for the
days when good news only arrived once a month between magazine covers which you
could then either read in the bathtub or stack on a shelf, or at a monthly networking
meeting when you could blunt the impact with a glass of wine, or in a chatty
phone call which you could field while cooking or painting your nails.
I get over
it quickly, and fairly soon I am back to being happy for everyone, retweeting and sharing their good news. Still, I
think my father was onto something when he used to say, in the days before cell
phones and email and CNN, "No news is good news."
6 comments:
Might I suggest chocolate?
I hear you, Lisa (and I agree).
This is ringing bells for me, Lisa. Thanks for sharing your feelings. I feel a bit less guilty now, knowing I'm not alone in my secret state of snark/envy/self-pity. All this "connection" is fun, until it hits saturation and my tank of kudos is low.
I saw another blogger call this "freudenshade" --the opposite of shadenfreude, or feeling bad about someone else's good fortune (rather than feeling good about someone else's bad fortune). And oh, do I get a bad case of it on a regular basis. Then I remind myself that if I was actually writing (and submitting) more, I might enjoy my own good fortune someday too.
So universally true! And it takes me a few minutes to realize that my negative feelings have everything to do with my fear that I'm not a good enough writer and that the best thing I can do with that notion is disregard it. Easy to say - hard to do.
I totally agree - and on those days for me I try to avoid the whole social media scene all together. That's when I turn to my writing with tea and chocolate in hand. Soon enough I am ready to come back and share everyone's joy!
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