Jeremiad* (bet you’re wondering…)

Published October 20, 2016 by helenlaycock

I read a brilliant quote recently on Facebook:

 

‘Supporting another’s success won’t ever dampen yours’

 

Yet, many writers don’t do it. They seem to be able to regularly blow their own trumpets with decibellic gusto, but when it comes to giving a shout out to another writer, they can’t even ting a triangle. I don’t know. Maybe percussion’s not their thing…

 

I do my best to share the good news of others. Timewise, it takes a second. Technologically, it’s really not difficult: retweet books/blogs/articles (and product info) on Twitter, share posts on FB and congratulate in all sincerity when there is good news! I do this willingly just because a) I know (of) them, and b) as a way of saying thank you to complete strangers if they have brought attention to what I do.

 

There are the odd few who always reciprocate – and it is really appreciated when they do, but I could count them on one hand, maybe one and a half. Then there are those who as a means of showing appreciation for my efforts make a gesture… and retweet a retweet. Um, thanks, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to scroll back and find an original tweet (fair enough if they can’t find one). That would be so much more helpful. *sighs* At least they tried, so thank you. However, there are so many who don’t acknowledge anything in terms of action on social media, not even a thank you, let alone a ‘Share’. It can make a writer bitter. Of course, I’m not (very) bitter…

*breathes loudly through nostrils for a full minute*

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but helping each other is not going to result in anyone having their thunder stolen, nor will take away any chance of their own success. If anything, it will gain them more followers, even if it’s for selfish reasons.

 

Anyone who’s got a product, be it book or otherwise, is struggling to be seen and heard. There are a few absolute stars ‘out there’ who are very generous in their capacity to use social media platforms to promote others, and to them I would like to say a big THANK YOU. I just don’t understand why others are so reluctant to help. All it takes it one click.

 

Thank you for listening. I shall now step down from my soapbox.

 

*Jeremiad (noun) – a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint.

(See, my blogs are nothing if not educational)

Advertisements

6 comments on “Jeremiad* (bet you’re wondering…)

  • I do try to congratulate people on their good news and agree with you that their success doesn’t diminish anyone else’s.

    Although I use (or maybe abuse) twitter there are lots of things I don’t fully understand. How is retweeting a retweet less helpful than retweeting the initial tweet? (I’m not sure if I do this or not – as I wasn’t aware it made a difference so wouldn’t have paid much attention)

  • Hi Patsy,
    Well, if my last tweet was a retweet from, say, a rug seller with a picture of a beautiful rug and that is what is then retweeted by another tweeter who believes that they are helping me out, the rug seller gets the promotion rather than me. The tweet before that may have been by me about my writing, and so that is the one that I would have preferred to have retweeted… if you see what I mean!

    Thanks for RTing this, anyway, which shows that you don’t need any lessons at all!

  • Ah. Yes, I see that if I retweeted your rug seller’s tweet then I’d be spreading their message. I misunderstood and thought you meant that if a mutual friend retweeted you and I then retweeted that retweet it didn’t help you.

    These rugs … does the seller have any which would match my living room walls?

  • Leave a Reply

    Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

    WordPress.com Logo

    You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

    Twitter picture

    You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

    Facebook photo

    You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

    Google+ photo

    You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

    Connecting to %s

    ShortStops

    Getting excited about short stories in the UK & Ireland - in print, online & live!!

    Herbie Cax

    On walking the dogs and story-telling.

    Three Drops from a Cauldron

    poetry and fiction ~ myths, folklore, legends and fairytales

    Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis

    It's OK, you're allowed to be funny

    Writing about Writing for Children

    Her Dark Materials: notes from the world of children's books

    Nothing Any Good

    Source for indie authors to write, publish, and market their books

    Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

    INDIE AUTHORS, RESOURCES, BOOK PROMOS, SERVICES, PLUS MORE

    WritePhoto

    Keeping you up to date with my writing and photographic projects

    absurd

    Always entertaining

    Emblazon

    Writing Stories on the Hearts of Children

    Children's Book Chat

    An insight into Children's Publishing from the next generation

    Lou Treleaven

    Children's author and playwright

    Words under one roof

    Writing, editing, novelling and enjoying life

    KURT★BRINDLEY

    WRITER★EDITER★PRODUCER★CONSULTANT

    %d bloggers like this:
https://catchingcottonclouds.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/jeremiad-bet-youre-wondering/
catchingcottonclouds.wordpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-17
76393
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:OWHPYMJWUCSQXF6OGWZKQUFRNS3EPBBO
<urn:uuid:8529115d-28a8-4b23-a802-8b3f70dae140>
2017-04-28T19:46:05Z
192.0.78.13
sha1:NXHMZSHSZN2DG4TFVRIB46GDXTI2LHAY
<urn:uuid:07c211d3-6578-41d9-9219-6a6533dd26a5>
https://catchingcottonclouds.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/jeremiad-bet-youre-wondering/
length
response
<urn:uuid:1f6de3eb-87c4-4927-a3f8-417107ec3e4a>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-17
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf