"I wanna be where the readers are.
I want to see them reading.
Carrying around those -what do you call them? Oh. Right. - BOOKS.
Out in the sun. Or in the shade.
On the beach or in a cafe.
Read in a bar.
Wish I could be a Tik Tok star."
My apologies to The Little Mermaid.
Social media is hailed as The Way to sell books. You need to know Facebook ads, Amazon ads, Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, the rotting corpse that was once Twitter. . . It gets overwhelming fast. Publishers push authors to do all the things! Yet experienced indie author Kristine Kathryn Rusch likes to remind authors that the best advertisement for your current book is your next book. Cal Newport argues that your best, most creative work comes from flow state and that flow is achieved best in deep work - those times and places where the external world goes away and you descend into deep brainwave activity wherein you lose track of time and are absorbed in your material. This state is predicated on not being interrupted, not having your attention fractured by anyone or anything. He argues that readers shouldn't necessarily have access to you. You have a job. Writing.
I suppose if you compartmentalize extremely well, you could make an argument for engaging in deep work for a few hours each day and then indulging in a little social media promotion. Fair enough. I'm having to think a little harder about that because I don't compartmentalize well. Maybe not at all. It doesn't help that earlier this week, I heard someone mention that cell phones are black mirrors. This rocked me.
If you aren't familiar, black mirrors are scrying mirrors used in ritual and divination. They are powerful tools and most of us familiar with them keep them carefully wrapped and hidden away from casual glances. This is because a part of you travels when you scry. Part of you goes bye-bye. It's one thing to do that intentionally and for a purpose and then to shut down the mirror after and to reclaim every part of you that went traveling.
Black mirrors drain energy. It's not malicious. It's just part of the work done with them. They don't have intent, but their utility is the emptiness that draws practitioners out of their human shell to journey for answers to a question or for a vision of something. Used consciously and safeguarded appropriately, they're harmless and helpful.
If cell phones are black mirrors, they are black mirrors that are used utterly unconsciously. They aren't warded or guarded. We stare into them without regard for where we go when we do. Just try to get the attention of someone absorbed in their phone. Where do we go when we stare in that black mirror? Where does our energy go? I'm not saying that cell phone are traps devised by the Fae. I am saying that if the Fae wanted to build irresistible traps for mortals to fall into, they could have done worse than to have invented cell phones.
Social media, cell phones not withstanding, isn't evil. There are plenty of benefits: engaging with people you enjoy but maybe have never met in real life, finding new-to-you info and books and music, in a world still constrained by pathogens, social media can be a glimpse into a larger, more diverse world. We should absolutely enjoy and contribute to those things. But if we're going to social media *just* to sell books rather than build relationships we enjoy, we'll do more harm than good.
So before you stare into that black mirror in your hand, think long and hard about what you want to get out of it so you know exactly what and how much to put into it.
