Social media for writing health

We hear a lot of negatives about social media every day, but over the last few weeks I've been struck by how supportive it can be to writers.

First off, there's the ease with which you can arrange events and get your fellow writers together.  This is proving very useful for me at present.  I am doing part of the organising for writers to perform their stories at the Subaquatic Steampunk Weekend in Gosport. Putting an event up on Facebook is the easy way to organise getting a group of far-flung writers together.

I'm a member of Portsmouth Writers' Hub, and we're currently reconvening the group after the loss of our co-ordinator.  And we're using Facebook events to let people know what's happening.  I've also recently joined a spoken word group called T'articulation.  This too organises its events via Facebook.  It's a chance to write and perform flash fiction, and going to the meetings has allowed me to make some new writer friends.

So that's how social media is helping me to organise my writing connections in real life.  But turn to Twitter, and I'm plugged into a network of writers, editors, agents and SF fans from around the world. In the last year Twitter has been fantastically helpful.  I've seen writers talking openly about the Imposter Syndrome.  And when writers like Neil Gaiman admit to suffering from it constantly, it helps to put your own fears into context.

And then there's the hashtag #ShareYourRejections, started by blogger and writer Aidan Moher.  He decided that, as he wasn't at this year's Worldcon, he'd propose an alternative, on-line panel, where readers could share the truth about their rejections.  And many well published writers shared that they'd taken decades to get published, and submitted several books before the one that got taken.  I added my stats to this, and found that between 2001 - 2018 I've had 195 novel rejections, for 11 different novels.

That contact more than any other told me that I wasn't alone in this struggle - and that my rejection record wasn't unusual.  You'd think that would depress me, but it didn't.  It told me that writers who are bestsellers, who have won awards, have had the same struggle as me to get published.  It told me that I was in good company.  And that, after all, is the purpose of social media.