It's Not FB; It's Me

One small step for rabbitdom.

I’m about to leap into social media sacrilege.   I’m breaking up with Facebook.  There’s no ideological, political basis behind this decision.  It’s not even because the ads drive me crazy or I have to scroll through miles of ‘suggested posts’ for updates from my nearest and dearest.  It’s to counteract becoming invisible.

OMG! you say.  And does she put tin foil on the windows to stop the CIA hearing her thoughts?

Pipe down, you.  There is no psychosis here.  But I’m happy to explain if you stop interrupting me.

(Interrupting her?  I haven’t said a word.)

 You know, people can have a raucous laugh, swear like a pirate, dress like a clown, dance in public, knit outrageous socks, and still be hiding in plain sight.  You see this a lot with introverts and middle children, not to mention former therapists.  Oh, that’s me three times over, isn’t it?  I wrote about my own problem with invisibility nearly two years ago here. Haven’t made any progress, it would seem.

Invisibility doesn’t always come with lack of attention.  Humans have a great capacity to gaily interact with, but never see you.  For example . . .

When the Butler and I moved north several years ago, we thought entertaining was the way to make new friends.  It took us a while to realise that people were happy to eat his cooking, drink our grog, sleep in our beds if the need arose, but were  slow to reciprocate, if they reciprocated at all.  A few brazen souls asked us to give respite hospitality, as if we were a B&B.  An offer we readily declined. 

Those type of spongers can be quickly kicked to the curb.  Or kerb, if you live in the UK.  But if you do invisibility well enough, your close friends may believe that what they see (or don’t see) is real.  I once started a friendship during a time of relative smooth sailing in my life, not so much so in the other person’s life.  I did what good friends do, not considering what was or wasn’t reciprocated in my direction.  Then one day, I gave into a wee moan about something or the other.  No beating of breast or gnashing of teeth.  Just a wee moan.  This person made it clear that having a rough time wasn’t in my job description. 

Oh my!

Friendship implies more than one person at work.  If someone keeps their needs below the surface, that isn’t an invitation to pillage the friendship.  Yet with some people, if you don’t establish early on that you have normal human needs, then you’ve missed the opportunity to ever do that. 

So what’s this got to do with Facebook?

I used to have great friends, 3D friends, flesh and blood people who existed in the real world.  People with ethics and morals, some who even went to church, for fecksake.  Maybe having me around, put a splash of devilry in their lives. 

Something’s changed for me the last few years, though.  People who used to meet me for coffee, who cared about what happened in my life, now live only in Facebook photos, too busy for even the most decadent dessert.  Far away friends who once wrote often, now answer emails with, I follow you on Facebook!  as if we’re not supposed to have any conversation more intimate than what we’d post in a public status update.

It’s not that I blame Facebook – virtual reality destroying normal social interactions – any more than an alcoholic should blame an off-license for their own addiction.  But it’s so easy to be invisible on social media.  Facebook’s a constant exercise in Show & Tell.  I post an update.  You hit like.  I share a link.  You hit like.  I post a photo, you hit like.  I’ve noticed other people actually have conversations following their posts, but on my page, that rarely happens.  It’s Like Like Like, unless I post something real about what I’m feeling.  Then everyone ignores that little crossing of the faux pas threshold.  Even when I announced I was leaving Facebook, the most commonly used word was, vicarious.  My life, someone else’s entertainment; my invisibility complete.

And I don’t blame my Facebook friends for that.  I don’t blame anyone.  It’s very much like when the Butler started making our bread – the stuff in the shops tasted insipid after a while.  

As an ex-pat, I’ve had hundreds of moments in life when I needed someone who wasn’t family to step up to the plate and do something out of friendship, not duty.  Parties, funerals, pub crawls, covering my ass, birthdays, illness, bare faced truths, lies to the boss, dips in the ocean, scrambles up mountains, listening to dreams and fears and hopes.  These are the real things in any life.  These are the things I remember and miss.

So 2015 is the year I’m going to look for what’s real, both for me and from the people who would be my friends.  The swearing like a pirate, dancing in Tesco aisles, creating outlandish knitwear – none of that’s going to stop.  As to the rest of me, the invisible me, we’ll see what shows up at the door, won’t we?

Ditch the Snake Oil

In order to be accepted as the creative genius that we are, we have to prove ourselves a top notch snake oil salesperson first.  Marketing, on the other hand, silences the writing demons.  It’s counter-intuitive to the work, yet, if a writer has a problem with using all her fingers and toes to create, network, market and have a personal life, there’s something wrong with her.  

For fecksake, of course there’s something wrong with me.  I spend nine hours a day writing to an invisible ‘friend’.  Disparagement isn’t much of a deterrent to me pointing out that the emperor is in the buff and his butt cheeks sag. 

Ever go to one of those Meet the Agent gigs?  A group of us were taken to London but before we went, our sponsor gave us a type of Writer’s Deportment Class.  I dutifully learned the Elevator Pitch, kept my doubts to myself.

We go to London, are crushed into an historic but down-in-the-heel pub with unlimited drinks and no food.  I stood helplessly by while one of my colleagues marched up to an agent, introduced herself and gave her pitch.  The agent’s smile took on a bit of rigor mortis, eyes rolled back in her head.  As soon as my colleague paused for breath, the agent turned to me.  I hadn’t a clue what to say but I certainly wasn’t going to give my pitch.  The agent wandered off to join a clutch of other agents with their backs to the writers in the room.

The evening progressed with agents in retreat, writers getting drunk.  When I did manage to talk with an agent, I went into therapist mode, asked how they got into their field, what it was like, what they were looking for in a book.  If they mentioned a genre that one of my colleagues wrote in, I introduced them.  I ended the evening with ten queries and never once had to expose a bit of my dramatic arc.

I suppose my problem with this system is that I used to have a normal job.  I went to uni, got several degrees, passed the licensing exam, did my CPD’s, developed a specialty, took home a pay cheque.  Nobody waited until I had an internet following before they took a chance with me.  When I was still green, they threw me into the deep end.  Sink or swim, off you go, the psyches of the traumatised in my care.  If I screwed up, a client’s suicide could be a very real consequence.

If a writer screws up, it’s bad reviews, poor audience turn out, low book sales.  Pft!  As if that were on a par with a client’s death.  But as a writer, I have to prove myself a hundred times more than I did as a trauma therapist because we’ve put the money people in charge of the creativity. 

When I worked in mental health, my boss was someone with a degree in mental health.  The finance people were kept in an office with a bar across the outside of the door.  They didn’t make the big decisions.  They balanced the books and moaned a lot.

However, until our creative people take charge of the money or our society values the creative arts as much as we do paying the expenses of our politicians, this is the system we operate in.  So, here’s my advice:

•           Do what we do best.  Communicate with honesty.  Someone once asked what I wrote and I said, in the Nobody-Wants-To-Publish-It genre.  I was the eighth person in the group to be asked that question; my publishing credits wouldn’t have been remembered.  My honesty was.
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•            Be a huckster with people skills.  Not manipulation.  People skills.  You’ve been observing people all your life.  Writing about them, creating them, putting them in tight spots, getting them out.  You know how people want to be treated.  Treat them that way. 
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•           Expect to be treated with respect yourself.  Evaluate your rejections.  Don’t interact with people who don’t respect you.  I once had a  session with an agent whom I found so rude, I wondered why he’d been allowed to live.  At the end of our meeting, he asked me to submit something.  When I did, he wrote the most scathing rejection of my thirty year writing experience. 
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•           Surround yourself with writers who support you.  Writers, mentors, tutors who read your work only so you’ll read theirs (or worse, never read yours), tell you that what you write is too mad to be in print, are intimidated by your work, steal your ideas, who have no sense of humour, are not going to help you no matter how much prestige they have in your literary community.  Dump their sorry asses.

When I was a trauma therapist, my most important tool was myself.  The writer’s most important tool is the same.  You’re not selling snake oil.  You’re a creative genius with an honest core.  Hold it as precious.