We have had personal stuff going on since last weekend. It is too much to go into in detail. In short, my Mrs was in the hospital for three days, is now home again, and needs to rest for a time, but she is (thankfully) apparently fine.
That’s why I have not posted for a week. So things are now back more or less to (what at least I guess passes for) “normal.” However, I have over this last week been dipping into social media (mostly to take my mind off events) and in particular kept track of some interesting threads – because I thought they might be amusing and/or useful here. And, so, here we go:
I hope readers like what I write.
But I can’t imagine anyone wanting to look at me and also listen to me yammer about whatever for however long.
My wife puts up with that latter because inexplicably she loves me.
Another author on social media who asserts authors are not each other’s “competition.” If only it were truly so simple. Anyone want to break her the bad news?
That is this. You as an author may not see other authors that way, and that’s commendable, and shows a great belief in the goodness of one’s fellow humanity. However, also please do realize there are some authors out there who may well see you as “competition” – and can be quite nasty.
If you want evidence for that, just write something on social media other authors could believe threatens their own sense of “self” as writers and perhaps questions the quality of their own writing. Trust me, it won’t be pretty. Within seconds, those Harpies will start descending on you to try to humiliate and annihilate you.
I do NOT provide free books in exchange for pre-publication reviews. I have NEVER done that. I will NEVER do that.
I consider that sort of thing way too close to a line of “dishonesty” with readers who buy the book – providing it for free in exchange for a review.
Any review of any my books you do see comes from someone who bought it after publication with their own money.
A reader is entitled to hate what I write. They are free to badmouth it all they want on social media. The only line I draw is engaging in defamation.
Different is if anyone abuses me directly. I never acknowledge it and just block the person. I definitely never get involved in private exchanges with trolls.
Authoring is not a craft for the “sensitive” soul. You are not always going to be applauded. If you are not tough as iron, you won’t last.
Again, everyone has different opinions. Everyone approaches a novel their own way. The first thing you must understand is NO book is ever UNIVERSALLY adored, so if you are writing forget that aspiration.
One of my privately proudest moments was when I learned that my first few novels were being read by a women’s reading group in Lebanon – none of whom spoke English as a first language.
This doesn’t apply in every situation to every follower, or even most. Still, some seem to sit back in comfortable places like the U.S. and Western Europe and easily forget or just don’t honestly realize this. Social media has to an extent created a FALSE impression that we all sort of live in “the same place,” when we most certainly do not.
I am always aware I have some followers in places where “governments” are not very tolerant of criticism, to say the least. If such followers publicly “like” the “wrong” sort of social media post, they may well pay a huge personal price, including imprisonment. It is no f-cking joke.
For example, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague, provides news to countries which lack a free press or heavily censors what its citizens may see. It has recently been designated by the Putin dictatorship to be an “undesirable organization” inside of Russia. So any Russian there who so much as even taps their screen and “likes” a RFE/RL Instagram post could well be arrested:
Overall, I never expect anyone to “like” anything I post on Instagram or here. I especially don’t care if they are resident in undemocratic and dangerous places. The latter on Instagram I do see regularly view my “stories” and occasionally message me privately.
Above all, I want them to be safe. I don’t give a s-it about visible “likes” on a silly social media platform. The real world is too often not a place where one is free to express one’s opinions… without being dragged off to a cell.
Living in our comfortable democratic (a form of government which some appear way too much to take for granted) countries, let’s try always to remember that.
Roscoff, Brittany, France.
Easily reached by ferry from Plymouth, England…
…it is a lovely town and environs.
If you can get to that part of France, it is worth visiting.
Good grief, but the last thing I ever wanted was my family reading my books. I deliberately did NOT tell family about them because much in them (especially in my first three novels) has been sourced from my own life and from people – including possibly some of them – I know/knew. So I don’t push my books at family.
They can of course read them if they want to. Some I know have done so. One relation, for example, messaged me that she enjoyed the way I remembered my late grandparents, who were her aunt and uncle, and it brought back to her many fond memories.
They did not learn about them from me, however. They found out about their existences because Facebook “leaked” between my accounts. My pseudonymous Instagram author page turned up as a recommendation to family through my personal real name Facebook account. (To say I was FURIOUS when I discovered that is an understatement. Be VERY careful on Meta sites: Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. If you count on “anonymity” on one, that could well be endangered by their tendency to “cross-pollination” with the others.)
Writing is one of those crafts at which you are likely only to get better as you mature. The reason is simple: With more life experiences, you have more to write about. One has to keep at it and keep at it.
Never forget, writing is a lifetime of effort.
The executors of a literary estate usually have a legal right to do pretty much whatever they want with a deceased author’s writings – published and unpublished. They make the final judgement. It is their call.
Jane Austen’s brother, Henry, saw to the 1818 publications of Persuasion (his title for it, not hers) and Northanger Abbey (also his title, and mostly written long before she died) the year after her death. Various Austen scholars believe there is evidence she was not quite done with either novel in terms of fully preparing them for readers. In particular, the manuscript for what would become Northanger Abbey had been sitting with a publisher since 1803, and after her brother paid to help her reclaim the rights to it in 1816 she had been working again on it that year before she died.
Did Jane tell her brother to publish them as they were at her death? If so, it appears she did not even make it clear to him what she wanted their titles to be. Regardless, I suspect we are pleased Henry Austen did arrange for their publication because Persuasion especially is her most mature novel, and she would likely not be remembered in the same way without it.
Bottom line: If you are an author and are adamant you don’t want anything possibly published posthumously, my suggestion is burn/delete it right now.
Uh, err, Happy International Women’s Day?
Have a good weekend, wherever you are. 🙂
R. J. Nello 