I'm spending time on Twitter building my social network there (#Writercommunity is a good start). It's a great place for encouragement and commiseration and celebration
But there are dangers. I'm an author who has written five books and
haven't yet gotten an agent or sold one to a publisher, and I refuse to self-publish because the average self-publisher sells 250 books at latest count.
There are people on Twitter who have agents, who have books traditionally published, who have awards, who have 41k followers on Twitter. In other words, people much more successful than I am.
It's hard not feeling inferior. Or bitter. All the ugly emotions that I don't want to bring into the Twitterverse because people are so nice there.
Comparing yourself to others is toxic.
Those negative feelings are the result of comparing myself to others, always the more successful ones. This creates a toxic inner voice that says, "why aren't you as good as them? You should be better. You should try harder."
Or " You might as well give up. You don't have a chance. You should never have been a writer."
Either way, I don't like the person I'm listening to. I want to hide from the Twitterverse, from people, from my cats (who don't care as long as I feed them).
My solution
First, I take a short break from Twitter and have a good talk with that toxic inner voice. Cognitive journaling (Check out this link; )Ragnarson, 2019)) helps with the cognitive distortions I experience. For example, "You don't have a chance" is an example of furtune-telling, and I know I can't predict the future (or I wouldn't be in this mess anyhow).
Then I go back on Twitter and celebrate those who are successful. I know I would like it if people celebrated me. If there's such a thing as good karma, I would like to have a piece of it.
Finally I celebrate myself, because I know I've come a long way.
Reference:
Ragnarson,R. (2019). Cognitivejournaling: A systematic method to overcome negative beliefs. https://medium.com/better-humans/cognitive-journaling-a-systematic-method-to-overcome-negative-beliefs-119be459842c [Available: January 9, 2020)
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