I spent yesterday speaking to a college creative writing class about the realities of the writing business. I tried to be realistic without being too negative.

But the thing is, I seem to have shed a lot of the negativity this week by admitting it. It just is what it is, and it’s freeing to stop fretting about it. For a long time I’d pushed myself so hard, thinking that maybe if I did something more or did something different, I could change things. I came up with all kinds of schedules and policies to make myself write faster. I angsted over the fact that I can’t seem to get much traction in social media. Maybe if I posted more to Instagram or was active on YouTube, maybe if I went to all the conventions, maybe, maybe … and when I didn’t live up to these expectations, I felt like I was at fault for not becoming any kind of hit, not catching on.

And the truth is that few of these activities move the needle in a meaningful way.

I guess if I wrote more or faster I might make more money by getting more books out there, but from what I’ve heard, the Amazon algorithm is set to require you to publish something every 60 days to maintain any kind of visibility, and even if I wrote more or faster, I still couldn’t hit that and sustain it, not with the kinds of things I like to write that are longer and require a lot of research.

I don’t think I’ve sold enough books because of someone discovering me on social media for it to make that big a difference. Really breaking out in something like that requires something to go viral, which you can’t plan for or control, and it seldom actually affects book sales. Only something about the book itself going viral would do anything to book sales, and that’s not something I could post. Maybe if a celebrity posted about it, it would help, but if I go a few days without tweeting anything, it’s not going to make a difference in my book sales. Ditto with any other social media.

I think I got some boost from going to conventions early in my career, but once I became familiar at those cons, I don’t think it had much benefit. I never saw a corresponding rise in sales after going to a WorldCon. I spent a year in which I went to every event that invited me, and it didn’t change anything.

You can either look at that as depressing or see it as liberating. Realizing I can’t control things means that I’m not really to blame for not doing all of these things, and I can stop beating myself up over it. I can get back to the work, the part I like, and if I come up with something that I want to publish, I can, but I don’t expect anything I do to have a big payoff, and I don’t blame myself if it doesn’t.

Purging my twitter feed of the people I felt I should follow has already made me a lot happier. I was trying to be a good networker and followed people I met at cons or was on panels with, and I tried interacting with them. It turns out that few of them followed me back, and they didn’t engage when I tried interacting, and when I met them at later cons they acted like they’d never met me. I didn’t need a constant reminder of how great their careers were going. So, if they didn’t post things that I found interesting or that made me happy, if they didn’t follow me, and if they never interacted with me, I unfollowed or muted them.

I’ve realized that I’ve had fewer nightmares this week. I’ll have to check my blood pressure and see how that’s doing. I may give myself a mental health day today, then next week look at how I want to use my time. I do want to write, I know that now. I’m just not going to worry about what I’m going to do with it.