Well, inspired by a tiny rant I did on Facebook, my friend Leila told me I should do a post about this, and since I haven’t posted anything new in a while, I decided, what the heck? I guess I will.
Why should you ditch social media “writers groups?”
Because they will do absolutely nothing to advance your career.
That’s the short answer.
And really, the long answer isn’t all that long. First of all, you’ve all heard the saying “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” right? Well, ask yourself this question. How many authors who make a living writing–books or anything else–do you see spending time in “writer’s groups?” The answer is none. You’ll find hobbyists–and there’s nothing wrong with writing for a hobby! You’ll find novices, which we all were at one time. You’ll find self-appointed experts who rush to tell everyone else what to do, although they’ve never earned a penny as a writer. You will find people advertising their books because they don’t have money to run ads.
I can break this down very quickly.
Advertising books to other authors, especially independent authors, is essentially the worst advertising you could ever do. Authors, particularly those who are self published, are the worst offenders when it comes to supporting other authors. If you’re self published, ask yourself how many times you’ve bought, read, and reviewed another self published author’s novel. I rest my case.
So, when someone does a “writers lift,” (which is really designed to get traffic to THEIR thread and trick the algorithms) and you rush to post the link to your books, the only people who are going to see it are other authors. They’re not going to buy your book. I promise.
Let’s move on to novices. People who make a living writing, including the person flapping her gums right now, were all novices at one time. But when we were, we didn’t run around asking advice from other novices. They didn’t know any more than we did. Put that time into reading and researching information written by veterans in the industry. Or better yet, put that energy into taking creative writing courses and taking steps to hone your skills. Chit chatting to other amateurs or to hobbyists who are just writing for fun will do absolutely nothing to help you achieve success. It’s just a way to waste a significant amount of time.
If you’ve never had any formal training as a writer, drop social media altogether for a while, and spend your spare time at a local college, correspondence school, or at the very least, enrolling in a creative writing course. The first step in pursuing anything successfully is getting the proper education in that field. And no, you can’t teach yourself to write a novel. All the talent in the world will not result in a professionally written book without the proper education.
If you have a formal education and know what you’re doing, but just aren’t published yet, do some research and decide if you want to be self published or traditionally published, ( and be very very realistic about the latter.) Then, STILL stay out of “writers groups” and spend your time on query letters or working to save up money to advertise your self published book. (It won’t sell if you don’t pay to advertise it. Period.)
This all came about when I did a plea on Facebook asking people to PLEASE stop tagging me into these groups because I simply don’t have time for them. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody’s feelings, but sometimes you just get tired of not being able to tell the truth because the truth might hurt somebody’s feelings. I apologize if I’ve done that. But whether you love me or hate me, the aforementioned advice can only help you in the long run.