relationships – Susan Koefod

Full size cover On the eve of NAMING THE STAR’s book birthday – appropriately on Labor Day – here are the top 10 ways I plan to survive NAMING THE STARS launch tomorrow.

10) Exhale: the long process of publishing a book — everything that happened after signing the publishing contract, and the months of getting it all ready– is over.

9) Pat myself on the back, not just for sitting my butt down in the chair and writing hundreds of pages, but for all the years and years of starting and stopping projects, listening to others’ feedback, the disappointments, the self-loathing for not getting anything done. Also a pat on the back for members of the family who put up with all of the drama that comes with living with a writer.

8) Begone any remaining inner critical thoughts. It’s out there now, in the hands of readers. That is a very different place from where it was when it lived in my mind, then on my computer screen.

7) Take a hike any worries about how the world is going to react to the work. I have no control over readers’ minds and hearts. I plan on reading their reactions without reacting (as best as I can). “That’s interesting,” is as much as I plan on saying, even if a reviewer says – “THIS BOOK SUCKS”.

6) Take the next step. I did my darnedest to put my creative vision into words. But like any creative work, it’s just another step on my artistic journey. I want to take what I learned from this exercise, and then decide what my next experiment is.

5) Make no comparisons to what’s happening with any other writer’s book sales, rankings, and reviews. That’s their journey, not mine. Best of luck to everyone.

4) Say thanks to my editor and publisher and everyone at Curiosity Quills Press. Thank you for finding my book a home and living with me and my questions.

3) Say thanks wonderful world of the Twin Cities writing community – the multitude of venues for witnessing creativity and learning from it. There are so many of you who invited me to attend or read or publish me here. Hamline University’s MFA program. The Loft. The Saint Paul Almanac. Writers Reading at the University Club. You continue to nurture me.

2) Say thanks especially to the Loft-McKnight Fellowship Program. I have never stopped feeling like I’m on cloud 9, writing wise. You gave me such a boost and though the fellowship, I was encourage to experiment, take risks, and write the book that will be born tomorrow.

1) Celebrate! I’ve earned at least one five-star review, so I gave myself one on Goodreads. “That’s interesting,” wouldn’t you say?

The causalities are piling up: Facebook exits by several friends, some just as the New Year began (resolutions?), others over the past several months.

One was driven away on his significant other’s insistence, another out of some unexplained need to take a break for the year. Yet another left, claiming she was being stalked and her departure was at the insistence of legal authorities for her own protection.

Another friend comes and goes all the time, claiming the need to purge from the negativity showing up in her stream.

I joined Facebook as a writing career move, prodded by an agent to establish my social platform. Naturally, many of my online friends are other writers, doing the same. Now I’m having doubts too, and I know that others have long had the same. What I have to say here is nothing new, but I’ll say it anyway.

I do what all my writer friends are doing – posting links to my blog, reading updates, publishing updates, – you know – marketing myself. This is the dark side of being creative. The very antithesis of it. But part of being artist is performing your work (i.e., getting published, presenting readings), and marketing yourself is an entree to both of those ends.

Yet the creative urge is fed by lots of time alone with the work. And not all the time you spend talking about your work.

The flipside is that I am on the receiving end of all of my writer friends’ marketing efforts, and along with my happiness for them when they succeed there always comes a stab in my belly that I’m not keeping up, that I should be doing more, that I’m not getting published enough, that I’m not winning enough awards, getting the important reviews, etc, etc, etc.

And that’s just the thing.

Affirmation (in the form of a Facebook like or number of views) creates the need for more – it’s a vicious cycle –there is not enough affirmation (Facebook liking) in the world, for anyone to ever feel validated. Loved.

You can’t get true affirmation from an impersonal system masquerading as a community that is really trying to pitch ads at you and make money for a Faceless corporation.

I wish I could be one of those people who just posts and moves on, invested with a power ego that doesn’t care if people like or hate what they say. To be honest, that was my goal when I naively joined up. That I could be the real person that I am, express my real opinions, and be better for it.

But I’m neither being real, honest, or feeling better for it.

Writer Sherry Turkle says, Facebook is the place “where you show your best self. It’s a place for good news, not the place where you talk about your most vulnerable self.”

And it’s true: Susan – the public persona as seen on Facebook is nowhere close to the real person that I am. The Facebook Susan is a curated façade, intended to help market me as a writer and, I admit, to share my other personal successes for your stamp of approval.

Again, this is not a new thought, just a realization of how artificial this community can be.

As much as I love to see my friends and family’s adorable baby and pet photos, as much as I do cherish new friends I’ve made only because of striking up a Facebook friendship, as much as I love to keep in touch with friends, old and new, I’m finding it harder and harder to give a thumbs up to the Facebook experience these days.

And I know I’m not alone. So there’s community in that, right?