Since the age of about four-and-a-half, I’ve wanted to be a writer. To be absolutely accurate, I believe that I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was about four months old, but since the exact meaning of “gaa-gaa-goo-pshoop” could either have been “me writer big heap,” or it could have been “eat baby formula yourself, you ghastly alien feeding monster,” we shall have to defer to the first incident on record. Three decades and many clichés later, my first book was published. My reaction was pretty much what it was at four years (or four months, if you will): gaa-gaa-goo-pshoop. This time though, I can tell you exactly what that means – Frigging hell, this isn’t what I signed up for.
There are, I’ve realised, two-point-five kinds of writers. First, you have those who know exactly what they are getting into – the “writer-preneurs” who’ve made it through business school and can tell you, on margin, that there is a strategic difference between objective and passion. They have long since realised what I still struggle to reconcile myself to – that a writer’s job is no longer just churning out pages. Today, a writer is her own books’ biggest…wait for it…salesperson.
After all, who else will sell your book?
The logic, on the face of it, seems solid: No one can sell the writer’s work better than the writer herself. This universal truth is also supported by other marketing revelations, including the fact that readers now want to know the person behind the words, they want access and interaction. And successful writers give their audience exactly that in one way or another, be it through social media, literature festivals, or whirlwind book tours.
Then, you have those who are far too successful – either in critical or commercial terms – to care about trivial things such as twitter followers, Facebook likes, or (gasp!) sales numbers. Not unless we are talking in tens of thousands. Sometimes not even then. Such authors are not unlike the philosophical lotus on water. We, the masses, love to diss them and we love to admire them, and neither makes a difference to them in the least.
The final category comprises those who have sort of blundered into this field either out of a love of words, or possibly a lack of options and because law was too lame and academics, too unfulfilling. These half-writers usually deem themselves the conscience-keepers of the industry, railing against its crass commerciality through well-timed, possibly boosted, social media posts. Their biggest complaint usually is that promoting their books hardly leaves them with time to write any – the biggest culprit in question being twitter.
You can’t fight this
I realised the inevitability of Twitter right after I sold the first three copies of my first book (My mother bought two, my husband the third.) Making the fourth sale, however, presented a heart-wrenching dilemma. I could, at least theoretically, make the rounds of family near and far and, after having suffered an unending interrogation as to why I was making books instead of babies, sealed the sale to some random aunt eight degrees removed – though only after a prolonged session of fertility counselling and a promise to behave better in future.
Or, I could get on social media, act nice with a bunch of strangers and ask them (without asking), to buy my book. I remain convinced I made the right choice.
There are other advantages to twitter, with its interesting imposition of a 140-character limit. I must admit that few editors can do what Twitter has done for the community of writers as a whole. Where readers might believe they are getting their money’s worth with a 400-page book, the twitterati want more for less (Why else would it be called a tweet, for heaven’s sake? I mean, really...the only thing worse could have been to call it a “chirp”.)
Consequently, Twitter not only teaches the aspiring writer to: (1/n) grab your audience’s attention, but it also (2/n) makes you write with precision, without (3/n) compromising on clarity and finally, (4/4) it forces you to keep keep your audience engaged.
After all, all it takes is one hashtag #nowtrending to distract the most devoted of followers. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that social media has revolutionised the way authors write in current times, and that the world of literature would not be as we know it without twitter.
Changing the world, one tweet at a time
But the benefits of literary twitter go far beyond the small population of authors and the even-smaller population of interested readers associated with the former. They impact the environment, the economy and the very fabric of human society.
A recent scientific survey that I shall pretend to have conducted shows that if the average writer spent they time she did on twitter every day actually writing, she would be a good three times more prolific. In my case, given that I tweet across multiple devices, often at the same time, I’d write my books four times as faster, or write four times as much as I now do.
Imagine then, all the writers of this world, actually at work on their manuscripts instead of tweeting, retweeting and then retreating. Never mind the effect on readers, it would be an unmitigated environmental disaster, simply in terms of the amount of paper and printer ink consumed.
A twitter-less society would also pretty much destroy the global economy as we know it. The twin forces of supply and suckered govern every industry, including that of books. There is supply, and when people inevitably get suckered into buying whatever is in profuse supply, it creates a balance that the economists Adam and Eve defined as demand, or “what readers want.”
Twitter, therefore, serves the all-important purpose of making readers believe that they want to read the books writers such as myself cough up, by creating a web of impeccable Russellian deductive logic: If it is on twitter, it must be popular, and if it is popular, it must be important. (Note: This axiom is not to be confused with the similar-sounding postulate of “if it is on Twitter, it must be true” – which remains the basis of many a claim of bestseller status.)
Twitter also serves to satisfy the nascent political urge that dwells within every writer. There is something so immensely satisfying about being read, a Mark Anthony-esque sense of oratory that often makes writers believe that they have things of consequence to say. In the long run, it may even make them seek political office, particularly since authors tend to find their own arguments rather persuasive.
For such individuals, twitter serves as platform enough for pontification, sparing the general populace from a terrifying future wherein politicians may talk even more and get even less done than what we are currently used to. (If you don’t quite believe that’s a possibility, then re-read the previous sentence.)
Finally, twitter holds civilisation as we know it in place by protecting the sacred social institution of marriage. You see, tweeting spares sorely-tried spouses of writers from having to endure the ignominy of personal conversation with humanoid forms that communicate in monosyllabic grunts to questions of utmost importance, including “Do you want lunch?” Simply tweet the question to them instead.
If the response is a heart, it means “yes.” If your question is retweeted, it’s a “no” and your author-spouse simply wants to document the fact that she writes against a variety of evils and odds, lunch and spouses included. Now you know why they call it “social” media. It is pretty much what keeps society from breaking down under the onslaught of authors.
Twitter is saving the world; of writers, for writers and from writers. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Certainly not in more than 140 characters.
Krishna Udayasankar is the author of The Aryavarta Chronicles trilogy, Objects of Affection, 3, and Immortal. She tweets as @krisudayasankar.
