As soon as I'd finished, I took to social media to connect with other writers and had a beautiful Twitter conversation with someone about our achievements. She did amazingly, achieving a 75000 word target. (Wow, right?) My 10000 words was was dwarfed in comparison. An unhelpful and irrelevant way to look at it, but that's how I saw it for a moment. Surely anyone with the ability to write so much in a month would look at my minuscule achievement with derision.
Not so.
Inevitably, people tend to be kinder to me than I am to myself. (Not difficult.) I'm way too hard on myself about everything. It's my way of preparing myself for the occasional brush with a particularly unkind person. This was not such an occasion. In fact, our conversation made my day. When we'd spoken about our goals and what we'd been working on and I'd explained the fact that I also have my day job and parenting to do, she said:
"That's amazing!! Congrats on your accomplishments! Love that you're balancing life and making wonderful things happen. You're a rockstar!"
A rockstar. What a beautiful thing to say. These kind words came from Laura Winter, whose Twitter handle is @_winterwriter. Her book, Soul Obscured, is available for pre-order. Please do check her out.
We all know that compliments feel good, even if we're kind of awkward and get all flustered because we don't know how to take them. I think we all have to admit that it's great to receive recognition for hard work and anything else we take pride in. A lot of people, myself included, dish out the compliments to others to make them feel good, but we neglect to give ourselves the same treatment. It's hard for us to dwell on our successes. It's like we think our heads will get too big if we congratulate ourselves on a job well done.
But kind words about our efforts cheer us on. They give us the boost we sometimes need to keep going, particularly at the most difficult times. I don't think, as writers and artists, we can ever have too much support. I don't know about you, but the real support comes from people who are in it too; people who know what it's all about. That's not to say that others aren't supportive. People are just more likely to engage in conversation about pursuits they know about and have an interest in themselves.
That's why we need to do what we can to support other writers and artists. That can mean offering constructive feedback, discussing projects together, spurring people on with encouraging words, offering ideas if asked, and even sharing their work. Only by opening a dialogue with other artists can we help each other out in the ways each individual needs most.
Indie authors can always use connections and a little help with promoting their work. I read a tweet yesterday about the stigma that's still attached to self-publishing and the reaction of pity people receive when they tell someone they've taken that route. We have to get past this assumption that the only reason people self-publish is because their work isn't good enough to be traditionally published. Maybe it's because they don't want to give a 15-20% cut to a literary agent. Maybe they're good enough at marketing to make it more lucrative for them to go it alone. Maybe they just want to be independent, not beholden to anyone else or obligated to use the publisher's ideas of how their work should be presented. Each piece of work should be judged on its own merit by the reader. We need to do away with the snobbish belief that if it's not traditionally published it's no good. Let's support indie authors as much as we can.
A community, even a virtual one, might mean the difference between a person achieving their goal and becoming discouraged. How much more likely are you to push through difficult times with some support behind you? So, whenever we see an opportunity to lift someone, pay them a compliment, help them with their promotion, let's do it. We're stronger together.
V.
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