5. Myth Busted: "It's the worst time in history to break into publishing as a new author."
Reflections on 2020 - 2023 & Pandemic-related chaos
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I’m beyond sick of all the people on various social media channels trying to convince me that “it’s too late to make it” in traditional publishing…especially because these three book titles in the banner were my favorite books that released:
IN 2020
WITHOUT real book tours (due to quarantines)
& THEY WERE ALL DEBUT AUTHORS
& ALL THESE BECAME NYT BESTSELLERS
… WHO’VE WRITTEN MORE BESTSELLERS SINCE THEN.
This is the post I had to write because of all the mountains of negativity that built up during the pandemic. It’s extremely easy to buy into this myth that “publishing is dead.” I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times phrased in different ways.
These were in fact, the years in which I personally witnessed the most people give up on writing their books and querying. Of course, sometimes you have to try something before you discover it’s not for you, or maybe the timing isn’t write to pursue a project as big as writing a book when you’ve got other pressing bills to pay and families who need support, and that’s completely understandable.
However, it’s another thing entirely to fall into the spin cycle of doomscrolling on social media and give up on a dream of writing your book when you actually have the time and means to do so. And maybe even a really great idea that people would’ve loved, if they’d ever had a chance to see it before you burned it in the backyard.
⭐️Disclaimer:
I do believe that sometimes protests are necessary, and I understand that social media has, at times, been helpful for getting support for a cause. I do donate to charities that are actively working all the time to balance out many inequalities in this world.
At the same time, we all need to be able to draw the line between what are healthy forms of protest and what are toxic habits degrading our mental health and stability over the long run. I don’t support protesting just for the sake of protesting or to look trendy.
Lockdown pressurized us all, so what should we do with that energy?
I have a theory:
If you went to the most active accounts on “doomsday” Redditors,
(You know, the ones constantly proclaiming the end of the world and obsessing over all the millions of ways that we’re all going to suffer before we eventually die, AND whose fault it is that all this is happening…)
…and copied all the text they wrote on those forums during the pandemic to calculate their total word count, then some of them probably wrote more words than all of Brandon Sanderson’s published works combined. There was no writer’s block there!
You have a certain amount of energy that you bring with you into this world, and you can either throw it away into social media to create a hole of fear, hate, and despair that sucks everyone down with you (which isn’t so fun, I promise)…
OR if you’re a writer, you can even use that energy to turn your pain and agony into some beautiful art that can move people, change lives, touch hearts, and more.
Thus, during the pandemic,
I boycotted social media and chose to make a shitload of art.
Because I learned a very important and timeless rule about publishing as I researched through the lives of famous writers…