The downside of social media

As writers, we're always told we must know our market.  And we must get out there on social media, building our platform so that we can be discovered.  Yes, social media is important for building our presence, and announcing our books to the world.  And it allows us to research what is currently being published easily. 

For the last decade I've abandoned my chosen genre of SF.  I still loved the ideas, the expansion, and the dreaming of the genre, but didn't like the stories that were getting published.  They were either hard science with no recognition of the human cost of introducing this revolutionary new tech, or they were stories devoid of fifty percent of the human race, I.e. women.  And then the resurgence of women being published in SF began, and I thought I was home.

But the downside of social media is reading about a woman author whose violent stories I hate being offered a new two-book contract.  The downside of social media is reading weird stories that don't make sense in so-called SF magazines, and wondering if there will ever be a home for my stories that have a beginning middle and end.  In that order.  And reading a constant stream of tweets from authors and their publishers and agents pushing their new book can get wearing. Not to mention bringing on a touch of 'ol green eyes, the jealous monster.  As writers struggling with rejection, it sometimes seems that social media is adding to our injuries.  Here's this exclusive club.  You can read about it, but you aren't qualified to join it.

And then I turn to my lifeline: www.literaryrejections.com. Bless you, people, for setting up that website.  I go there and remind myself that my struggles aren't anything new or special.  Today's bestsellers had far more rejections than I did before selling anything, sometimes 500 or 600.  I'm only half-way there to that total, I need to try harder.

So one of my goals for next year is to turn that jealousy of others' success into action.  I'm committing to a goal of sending out at least five short stories every month.  My goal is to collect more rejections.  2015 is the year to turn my green eyes back to blue.