If writing fiction is like playing the lottery, then as far as I can tell there are three ways to increase your chances of a payoff.
- Sleep with the lottery commisioner
- Mooch winnings from previous winners
- Or buy more tickets
Nowhere in this equation is there room for what so many writerly pontiffs have called platform building. What? Am I supposed to continue to believe that adding facebook friends and fans will somehow improve the odds one of my tickets will transform magically into a winner? I’m sorry, I just can’t do it anymore.
Recently I’ve landed on the truth. You know what platform building really is?A whole lot of #2 (referring to the list above rather than the bowel movement). I’m supposed to network my flabby, white cheeks off until somewhere along the line my bum bumps into a winner (or about-to-be winner) who’s willing to share the wealth.
I know, I know. I can hear the legions of marketing-savvy digital warriors correcting my flawed interpretation even as I type. Build genuine relationships. Care for people. Develop social capital the good ole fashioned way–one retweet at a time.
I’m done. I could waste a thousand more hours over the next year across a half-dozen social media platforms, and for what? a few hundred sales? The whole song and dance is death to me.
Instead I’m taking those thousand hours and using them to write a couple thousand pages worth of brilliant fiction.
I’m too moral and too ugly to make #1 work for me. And #2 has gotten too ugly for me to stomach. For the next 12 months I’m simply going to write. Sure, playing the lottery is still playing the lottery. Nothing guarantees writing 5 novels this next year will get me any further than writing one.
But at least when it’s all said and done, I will have written five magnificent novels. I’ll start work next fall at Home Depot knowing I spent my time creating something concrete and beneficial, rather than a platform to nowhere.