"Community" Support

As a writer with a Twitter account, who spends quite a bit of time on Twitter, and who follows and is followed by a number of other writers, I can never really escape the never-ending discourse on topics that seem to matter most to writers on Twitter.

“Is listening to an audiobook the same as reading?” (Of course, it isn’t. But be careful saying that on Twitter.)

“If I don’t write every day, can I still call myself a writer?” (Yes, of course you can. Fran Lebowitz hasn’t written in years.)

“If I haven’t published anything, can I still call myself a writer?” (Duh. Yes. A writer is, quite literally, “one who writes.” You never have to publish a single word, but as long as you write, you are a writer.)

“Leave a review! It’s the only way to help authors!” (This is a myth. There are multiple ways to help authors, but what they mean is they want you to review their books.)

The list is long, but the subjects are not wide-ranging. Most are just slightly different versions of themselves. “Can a woman write gay romance?” Many do and it isn’t always a good thing. “Can women find success writing horror?” Many have. “Does my Supernatural fanfiction count as writing?” It does, and fanfiction is a great place for a kid to start writing and learn the craft—just don’t publish and charge for it.

Thirty years ago, the internet was a lot different than it is today. If you wanted to discuss writing, you signed into whatever internet service provider you had and pointed your browser toward chat rooms created for the sole purpose of discussing writing. Many were populated with professional writers—think journalists and ad writers—and those people didn’t want to hear you bemoan the state of your writer’s block. Others were reserved for beginners, and still others were meant for you to go in and discuss your Vampire Chronicles fan fiction. It was glorious. (And, full disclosure: I never wrote Anne Rice fan fiction, though I knew a girl who did. No, I cut my teeth on Stephen King and David Lynch fanfiction because I, like 99.99% of the teenage population of the world, was a non-conformist.)

But those chat rooms were awesome because they instantly put you in contact with people who had the same interests as you, who wrote about many of the same (or similar) things, and had many of the same goals in mind. I actually miss those chat rooms. And the good thing about them was how insulated they were from one another. Yeah, there were people who crossed over, but the entire premise of chat rooms was that if you were a Star Trek fanfic writer, you didn’t have to wade through Star Wars fanfic writers, lesbian Sasquatch foot fetish erotica writers, and NYT contributors to get to other Trek fanfic writers. You literally (or maybe only “virtually”) just beamed right in and started typing.

Chat rooms have gone the way of the dodo and now we have social media platforms where writers assemble in greater numbers, which is a great thing, but now you have to wade through all the stuff you don’t want and all the people you have nothing in common with to find maybe a handful of writers you have something in common with, all while being told you are an integral part of this community. That no matter what you write, it matters to every other member of this vast community—even the people you will never cross paths with or interact with. It doesn’t matter. You write and that’s all that matters and everyone supports you in all of your endeavors.

“I support ALL writers!” is a popular line in bios for many writers on Twitter. These people call daily for “writer lifts,” wherein they will tag a number of other writers, who will then see that they were tagged, reply thanking that person for their support, then tag more writers, who in turn thank that person for their support, and so on, until the person in Australia wakes up and has hundreds of notifications and follows from people they weren’t even aware of when they went to bed the night before.

The term support is debatable, though. And it is rarely discussed the way audiobooks, writer’s block, and impostor syndrome are. Those topics are threadbare at this point, but “What exactly is supporting writers on this platform? What does it require? What does it result in?” I have yet to happen across this heated discourse as I randomly scroll Twitter in the morning to wake myself or at night before I conk out. I have never encountered this discourse and here is why: when writers on Twitter declare their support for one another, they mean “encourage.” They do not mean “support.”

In my opinion, support is an active verb.

If you’ve ever watched a single episode of any of those home improvement shows on HGTV, you know that a support beam or column is bearing the weight of something—usually the floor above it, or a wall. Take the beam or column away and you may not like the results.

Parents support their minor children until the children can support themselves. This is primarily a financial arrangement, though I’m sure parents love their children, and it’s that love that makes them willing to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on education and a starter automobile, an iPhone or three, maybe their first year’s rent on an apartment (just to get them out of the fucking house), and clothes. If the child is artistic, maybe the parents foot the bill for the supplies, or the musical equipment, or the typewriter (remember those?).

But support in those cases has a definable meaning. You can point to it and say “That is support. This is how I support you.” Maybe not so much in the case of the support beam or column, but someone else can point to it and identify it as supporting something else.

Among the writers on Twitter, support becomes a murky thing, relegated to a hashtag most times. They support all writers the same way they support Ukraine in the Russian invasion—that is to say, as they recline on their sofa with their cats and watch reality TV or superhero movies. They support all writers the way they support a woman’s right to choose, but they never have to produce evidence of either, other than the tweet that got retweeted 50 times and liked 1,134 times.

I joined Twitter as a writer in 2017, in the days leading up to the publication of my first book, which was a collection of short stories I’d written and had rejected over the span of fifteen years, then reworked and gathered into a book. I thought I’d find other writers (I did) who were getting their own books ready for publication (they were) and we’d have a lot to talk about (we did, kind of). I met a lot of sci-fi authors and fantasy authors, horror authors, romance writers. Lots of poets. I met a lot—and I do mean a lot—of people who wrote about vampires: modern-day vampires, Victorian-era vampires, Elizabethan vampires, futuristic vampires in space, vampire elves, time traveling vampires. It was overwhelming.

Another surprise was the number of authors of time-travel romances in the style of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I knew there was a series, but I had no idea it was such a cultural juggernaut. The Stephen King and Neil Gaiman worship was less of a surprise, since I’d started on my own writing path by mimicking King’s subject matter and style.

But vampires. Goddamn.

“I am supported here,” I reminded myself as I edited and formatted my own short stories. None were about vampires. None were about men in kilts. None concerned time travel. All were set on Earth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, all were populated by normal human beings dealing with normal human problems. But I knew my collection would stand. And again—I was supported. My stories mattered, which was another oft-repeated expression among the community: “You matter. Your story matters. Never give up. The world is waiting for your story.”

Unless you have a couple million dollars’ worth of marketing and public relations behind you, when you self-publish a book (especially using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform) you learn very quickly just how much you and your story matter. No, your local newspaper won’t run a story on its publication—unless it’s a really, really small town newspaper with literally nothing else to print until high school football season starts up again. No, your friend at CNN won’t run a digital piece on it or you. No, those indie bookstores who consistently remind potential customers to “Shop local!” and “Shop small!” don’t have room on their shelves for even a single copy. No, they aren’t interested in reading it before making that decision.

But on Twitter, in the writing community there, everyone cares that you just published your book. It matters to them. You matter to them. And to prove it, they’re going to retweet your tweet about your book. They’re going to tag you in the next writer lift so that other people can find you, because—and I quote—”Someone somewhere needs your story!” Apparently not them, and apparently not there, but… someone, somewhere.

Those first few days of having an actual book that people could purchase and read were wild. I’d joke that I wanted to sell at least a million copies… and people thought I was serious and would advise me to set my expectations a little lower so I wasn’t disappointed. So I wouldn’t give up. Because, remember: never give up. Someone, somewhere needs that book. And in all seriousness, my first book had paid for itself within six months, and that was doing several giveaways.

And let’s talk about giveaways real quick, then I’ll wrap this up.

The writing community on Twitter loves—and I do mean loves—a book giveaway. Don’t just do it for a day, no. Stretch that fucker out as long as you can. Do one every time Amazon allows it. Why? Because not everyone can afford to buy books. And, as one caring person let me know via direct message, I was charging entirely too much for my books, because no one who reads gay fiction would pay more than $1.99 for a collection of short stories. So if I wanted readers, and if I wanted reviews, I needed to drop the price of my book, or do the giveaways every time I was able.

And while I did move a lot of ebooks during those free promotions (see, they call it a “promotion” on Amazon and Twitter because they want you to think giving away your work for nothing is a sound business decision, that it will, at the very least, result in glowing reviews.) Let me assure you of this one thing: it does not. It results in Amazon labeling your book a bestseller (even though you haven’t actually sold anything), and it generated a lot of retweets of the “OMG, you guys! A FREE BOOK!” kind, but as of today, over five years after the publication and over four years after the last free “promotion” I did for that book, I am sitting at a grand total of forty-three reviews and sixteen ratings on Amazon. Also, I was told, giving away my first book would generate interest in my next book. Guess what? It didn’t.

So, my point with all this—and I do have one—is that there is an entire culture of disingenuity calling itself a community, and there are a lot of writers who fall for it. I certainly did. But now I know better. And look, it’s okay if all you read is time-travel sci-fi romance. It’s okay if you read horror exclusively. What is not okay is leading people into believing that you are even remotely interested in the books they’ve written or are writing when you aren’t, and calling that entire performance “support” and “community.” It results in nothing—not for the person being led on nor for yourself. Because the insult of having people tell me they’d bought my book when they really only downloaded it free and were “adding it to their to-be-read list” (translation: they’d more than likely never read it) was probably the most disrespected I’ve ever felt in my life and I work in hospitality.

There are certain kinds of books I simply don’t read, and I don’t read them because I’m not interested in them. But I don’t tell the authors that I will. I don’t buy a book and swear to the author that I’ll leave a review. Because what if I don’t like it? What if I don’t finish it? What if it takes me five years to read it?

Just be honest. If you say you support someone, then support them. Otherwise tell them you encourage them. “I believe in you” or whatever. You pick. But for the love of fuck, stop the insanity.