TFFG 16: About those likes.

Three years ago I got back from my first serious writing retreat in Montana and let’s just say, I was firing on all creative cylinders with no clue what to do about it.

My first big plan was to start a “professional” Instagram account because everyone was saying that an author has to have a social platform to get an agent, book published, movie deal, Netflix series, Reese Witherspoon’s approval. No matter that I hadn’t actually written the book yet – I’d have that done in six months (riiiiiiiight) – better to get my platform going now.

I came up with this idea to create posts using these word magnets that had been gathering dust in a drawer. I arranged the first chosen few on what I thought was a really textural and cool background (see visual above), posted it and then proceeded to check on it every 10 minutes. No joke. All day. I even got up four times in the night to see if it had suddenly catapulted me into the social stratosphere. 

It got 12 likes. 

Convinced that maybe I just hadn’t been creative enough, I went on to spend hours sifting through the magnets, willing something smart, clever, witty, funny to surface, even while emails from paying clients piled up in my inbox. I wasn’t working. I wasn’t writing my book. I was staring at the floor.

Some days there was a little magic, but for the most part the harder I tried, the less fun I had. I was frozen by fear of failure – that I’d never be good enough, that I had nothing to offer, that I was just a wannabe writer with no real talent. That sheer creative joy I’d had in the beginning had been replaced by this powerful need for validation by a world of strangers. 

It took me a minute to realize what I was doing to myself and it took me another lonnnng minute to flip the switch in my brain – to let go, to loosen my grip, to stop trying to force and control it.

The same flawed mindset has resurfaced as I try to navigate this shitshow of a situation we’re all in. The more I try to force answers, the less show up. The more I try to figure out what’s going to happen in August, September, October, all of 2021, the less I can actually breathe.

A friend told me recently that she can only think about 3 days: yesterday, today and tomorrow. Brilliant. I can try that, too.