Social media, in various forms, has been big since about 2005. Most social media pages have always required some kind of tagline or bio, to go with your profile. In these taglines, I’ve always made copious use of words like ‘aspiring’ ‘amateur’ and ‘wannabe’. While the Spice Girls’ song (yes, I’m a nineties kid) is excellent, these kinds of ‘I’m almost there but not quite’ adjectives no longer sit well with me.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with self-promotion; the idea of saying that I’ve achieved something when I haven’t quite yet, feels like a bit of a lie to me. In fact, ever since beginning to build my author platform, I’ve felt like a fraud. Namely, because I haven’t finished my book yet. Nor have I had it published. And no, I don’t have a book deal, either.
I’m nervous to admit these things– and still not sure it’s the right thing to do in terms of marketing, particularly in the opening blog on my author website. Morally though, I’ve felt compelled to do so in person on many occasions, particularly after making my Facebook author page live. Many people were under the impression that I must have come across a book deal to be labelling myself an author all of a sudden. After all, there was a picture of my shiny new bound manuscript – my first draft of my novel, complete. Congratulations flooded my notifications. My brain was screaming at me to respond en masse, “Hello beautiful, supportive, Facebook friends, just FYI, this bound manuscript is NOT A BOOK DEAL and MAY NEVER GET PUBLISHED IN A THOUSAND LIFETIMES”. But after some coaxing from my partner, I accepted that maybe they were just congratulating me on the achievement of a book draft. It was something I was intensely proud of, and it had taken quite a lot of work. Maybe swallowing my cultural programming to reject compliments and just saying ‘thank you’ would be okay.
But then I’d be at a party, and people whom I hadn’t seen in a while would ask me about the book, and inquire about the book deal they assumed I must have. The ruse was up! “God, no!”, I’d exclaim. “I wish! If I’m really lucky, that might happen about five years from now! I’m not actually an author!” Then I’d laugh hysterically, feeling guilty for deceiving them, and wondering if they were now looking for not so awkward avenues to go and talk to someone else who more accurately reflected their online personas.
When I was younger, I’d looked up the term ‘dancer’, because I wanted to know if it was appropriate to say that I was a dancer in my 160-character Twitter bio. I was a bit obsessive about getting it right, because I was a teenager, and a student, and what else was I meant to obsess over if not my social media accounts? Could I really use ‘dancer’ in my profile, to describe the sort of person I was? No, the definition told me. A dancer is someone who dances professionally. To be a professional, you have to be earning a living from said activity. And so somewhere along the line, I’d convinced myself that to be an author, I needed to be earning a living from writing novels. I’m not. And so, surely, I’m a huge fraud.
Maybe I would feel like more of a professional if I was working on my book in a more legitimate way? It had been four years since I’d finished my Creative Writing degree, and sure, since then I’d been working here and there on my book, entering Nanowrimo, daydreaming in all my spare time about characters and plots and places… but that was still very ‘aspiring author’, and surely not legitimate. So, I enrolled in a six-month, online course with the Australian Writers’ Centre, simply titled ‘Write Your Novel’. Don’t get me wrong, writing a novel has been a lifelong dream of mine, and I have no regrets about making this decision, but I guess I also signed up, in part, because it was another tiny step towards feeling like less of a fraud. But in doing this, I took time off full time work, and so suddenly my colleagues were aware that I was writing a book.
Next minute, it’s the new school year, I’m still teaching part-time, and all of my colleagues are asking, “How’s the book going?” and I just want to crawl under the nearest desk and scrunch my eyes shut and pretend I can’t hear them. Not because the book was regressing (it was going quite well), but because of the pressure of people knowing that I was trying something that would potentially fail. On my aforementioned Facebook page, which states that I’m an author, as per ‘Build Your Author Platform’ instructions (another course I signed up for), people I haven’t seen in years were contacting me to congratulate me and ask about the book. Suddenly, it was all very real. Writing a novel used to be a secret dream of mine, that I shared with close friends. Now everyone I had ever made contact with knew I was trying to write a book. And while I would swallow my fear and say, “It’s going well, thanks!”, inside I was secretly screaming, “It could be really, horrendously crap and will probably never get published and you’ll all know I failed and am a total fraud ohnohelpme!”
This entire obsession with being a fraud, as I spent hours and hours of my time writing a book, was a little bit melodramatic, I guess. Firstly, most authors still have day jobs, even when they can rightly claim to be a professional, published author. And though I’m not published, every piece of professional advice I have sought out, has suggested that it is imperative to start thinking of yourself as an author, in order to become an author. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that. So maybe I was getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty of a word definition, when really, I was just scared of taking the plunge and publicly committing to doing something that I might fail at, or that someone else might do better than me.
But you know what? Everyone feels that way. Everyone who is doing anything worth doing, is a little bit scared that they’re going to fail, and a little bit winging it and making it up on the spot. Everyone who has ever classified themselves as something, has felt like they have something to live up to, or that by labelling themselves a particular way, they will consequently have to live up to that label. And it’s kind of true – that’s part of the reason you should do it. If you start talking about your book, and being an author, you’re a lot more likely to actually think, “Oh, shit, people are expecting something of me. I’d better deliver!”
So next time you tell someone that you’re an aspiring author, or wannabe writer, or amateur acrobat (that last one I’ve used, too… more on that later!), think about whether you’re saying it because you don’t really have a passion for that thing, and do genuinely consider it just something of a hobby that you dabble in from time to time…. or if you’re just saying it because you’re scared of taking the plunge. Because if it’s the latter, I promise it’s not as scary (sometimes) as you might imagine. And moreover, the rewards far outweigh the risks. Since I started calling myself an author, I’ve written two drafts of a novel, started my own Facebook and Instagram pages, built my own website and blog, met some very inspiring people, and been reminded of how excellent and supportive the people I know are – whether it’s because they think I have a book deal or not. Maybe I’ll never get published… but at least I’ll know that I gave it my absolute best, not just through putting words on the page, but through taking a bit of an entrepreneurial plunge, and taking myself seriously.
Samantha Todd 