I Suck At Social Media
It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I’m not very good at social media. This feels a little weird. We live in an age where Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and WeChat are the absolute backbone of daily life for millions – even billions – of people. Admitting that you’re not good at them and don’t understand them is a bit like admitting that this whole oxygen lark is a bit complicated, and perhaps it would have been best if we never climbed out of the sea in the first place.
Actually, I have a better analogy – a more personal one. I feel like an old basketball player, finally admitting that I am never going to play in the NBA. I am never going to be the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls. I am never going to be the starting anything for the Chicago Bulls. The closest I’m going to get is courtside seats – which, by the way, is something that I actually am going to make happen, because I’m damn good at writing books and fully expect to sell quite a lot of them in my career.
But social media? Actually thriving in a world where attention spans are significantly less than they used to be? That I struggle with. One of the things I discovered about myself over the past few years is that I simply don’t have the energy to produce a constant stream of social media content. I don’t have the brain for it. Plenty of authors – John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, Seanan McGuire – do, and things like Twitter and Facebook have become crucial parts of their careers (here’s Scalzi’s Twitter. It’s one of the best accounts on the planet). They are all really good at it. This isn’t jealousy – well, it’s not only jealousy – it’s a simple statement of fact. These authors have not only the ability to write some killer books, but also the ability to translate their everyday thoughts and experiences into bite-sized bits of engaging wisdom. Good on them. I wish them well. May Internet trolls never eat their soft parts.
(What would you do? No, tweeting the cops won’t work…not out near the Horsehead Nebula. Sorry.)
Curated Content
That’s not an ability I have – social media, not eating the soft parts of famous authors. I’ve tried very hard to cultivate it. I’ve tried to be witty and entertaining online. I’ve tried to engage, and debate people, and get involved in conversations. I’ve had a little bit of success. But translating my everyday experiences, and putting out a constant stream of curated content, is something that defeats me. Here’s what it comes down to: I’m just not that interesting. No, seriously. I’m not. In the morning, I get up, I have some coffee, fight with the smoothie maker, then sit down and write for three hours. Then I do a little admin, then have lunch, and then I handle the day job, which is all about managing the sprawling, wonderful noise that is The Master Switch. Most of my day-to-day life is spent dealing with tricky plot problems that I wouldn’t be discussing with the wider world anyway (I have this thing about not talking about the project until it’s ready) or pondering the difference between tube and solid state headphone amps. With the best will in the world, unless you’re me, it’s just not that interesting.
I don’t mean to suggest that I’m boring person – although, of course, I’m not exactly the best person to judge that. It’s just that I really struggle to communicate my opinions and thoughts on a moment-by-moment basis. Of course I have opinions on the book I’m reading…but I like to actually sit and read it, as opposed to tweeting about it in real time (it’s a reread of Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight, by the way, because I hadn’t had my monthly dose of smut and horrific murder). Ditto for movies and games. Seriously: I can’t even begin to fathom the process of live-tweeting a movie. It’s honestly a weird kind of superpower. If I look down at my phone for more than ten seconds, I’ve lost the plot.
I’m not especially interested in sharing photos of my surroundings on Instagram, or taking selfies, or snapping endless pictures of my bookshelf. I’m more interested in experiencing them. This isn’t to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with people doing this – if that’s how you make sense of your surroundings, and you want to share them with people, more power to you. But it’s not for me. I’ve taken plenty of photos of random things that I think are cool, but I don’t have a parade of these every day. Look mate, I work from home, and the most interesting things that I usually see are all happening in my head. Look how amazing my imagination is today #imagination #insidemyhead #creativity. I’m not trying to mock social media – well, maybe a little. But it’s a real skill. It’s just not one that I was built for, and at this stage, I’m not ever sure I’ll get the hang of it.
Dinosaur in the Social Media Age
And by the way: I hate how I sound writing this. I sound like a dinosaur. I sound like a sixty-something grumbling about what the kids are into these days, an old man yelling at the cloud, Principal Skinner absolutely convinced that it’s the children the wrong, not him. That’s bizarre – I’m 33, not 93. It is very frustrating to feel that way, because I know that the world is rapidly moving on, and I’m struggling to keep up. This is a problem with me, not a problem with society. I may have misgivings about what social media is doing to our brains (and it appears I’m not exactly wrong here) but I fully and freely admit that it is both fun and useful.
It’s not only a great way to pass the time and make friends, but it’s also exceptionally handy in disaster situations, and when politicians need a good punch of the bracket, and a thousand other things. I very badly wish I was good at social media. I very badly wish I was not a dinosaur. But there you are. I still collect CDs and I still prefer paper books – although for the record, Kindles are amazing for travelling, and I love mine to pieces. I still refuse to check email after 6pm. I still have a physical notebook. I still use pens, despite my god-awful handwriting. I have a smartphone, but it hasn’t been replaced in years.
So then there’s the question: how important is this? How good do I need to be at social media for my career? Will I sell any books at all if I’m absolutely rubbish at Twitter? Chuck Wendig – and my dictation software tried to write his name as Truck Winding, which is the kind of thing he’d appreciate – wrote about this on his blog a while back. He says that while it is entirely possible to sell books based on your social media presence, it is almost impossible to become a bestseller based purely on social media.
Much of what causes authors to be bestsellers happens outside of their control. It depends on luck, your publisher, the mood of bookstore employees, Amazon algorithms. At most, you can help things along by writing something knockout-awesome, something which will get spread around by word-of-mouth. His conclusion – and really, the post is worth a read even if you aren’t a professional author, because his posts usually are – is that the best way to succeed at social media is to be a cool human, and talk to other cool humans.
That’s some of the most sound advice I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t change the fact that, for me, anyway, being a cool human online takes a good deal of energy, and being a cool human off-line takes slightly less. I should be clear: I’m not planning on giving up Twitter or Facebook or Instagram just yet. I have no plans on causing heart attacks in my publisher’s marketing and PR departments. I will persist. It’s just that, at this point, I don’t truly expect to ever have a social media strategy, or an online brand, or anything, really, that takes away the energy I need to actually write books.
Anyway. I guess I’d better give out my social media thingies now. Yay?
