JoyDark wrote:Straight No Chaser - The 12 Days of Christmas (original from 1998) - YouTube
ah man this song gets me into the chrismin’ spirit
if you haven’t heard of Straight No Chaser check ‘em out
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I'm glad we have YWS for a very specific reason this morning: YWS teaches young writers how to build community in a healthy, constructive way.
When you go to the wider world of social media, you sometimes find writers trying to "build community" by purposefully stirring up controversy* and dogpiling people who said something they don't like. Think of it like Mean Girls, Regina George forming closer bonds with her besties by writing a Burn Book about the other girls in school.
Is this a quick and easy way to build a social media following? Unfortunately, yes.
Is it a good way to build a social media following? No.
Is it a good way to build community? Absolutely the heck not lol.
If someone tries to "build community" by attacking people, I always wonder: how long until they turn on their friends? how long until their friends turn on them? When your only connection to other writers is mutual bashing of a third party, it seems like it's only a matter of time until that turns inward and you start bashing each other.
*Side noteSpoiler! :
Why am I mentioning this today?
Because a 2024 debut author** created several fake GoodReads accounts so they could (a) 1-star their fellow debuts' books while (b) upvoting their own book on several GoodReads lists.
Why would you do that?
**Side note:Spoiler! :
First of all, publishing, as an industry, is heavily reliant on relationships. Subtweeting is annoying, BUT that's why subtweeting was always so common in the Twitter writing community: it allowed people to vent frustrations without naming names or destroying relationships. This debut author is destroying relationships with other authors (plus the agents and editors of those authors) by 1-starring their books.
Second of all, I cannot overstate how helpful your debut group is! I'm part of the 2023 Debuts group because my first published novel came out this year. We have a Slack server. We've spent the entire year celebrating with each other, commiserating with each other, swapping information and opportunities, upvoting each other's books, reporting bigoted reviews, liking 5-star reviews, and more. For the authors of adult books, we even have a monthly Zoom get-together where we chat about how things have been going—and we're planning to continue our get-togethers just for fun, even though our debut year is ending.
This 2024 author is not only cutting themself off from all that support, but they're probably making it hard for their entire debut group to trust each other now! That's unfair to everyone.
Third of all, this stunt is literally not helping this person at all. 1-starring other books does not increase positive reviews on your book. Creating fake accounts to upvote your own book can get you in trouble with GoodReads and is time and energy that would be better spent on writing and marketing. Faking identities to trash other books is not helping you build relationships in an industry that heavily relies on them. And your agent or editor, if they see this behavior and realize it's you, may decide they don't want to work with you anymore.
To me, this kind of behavior is the logical conclusion of the sort of mean-girl behavior I mentioned at the start of this post. When writers "build community" by tearing others down, eventually they start thinking it's okay to trash fellow writers in more material ways, like mass 1-starring their books. Ultimately, they're hurting themselves the most by getting themselves blacklisted in the publishing industry. No one wants to work with a Mean Girl.
tl;dr: When you go from YWS to larger social media platforms, I hope you'll all remember what you learned here about supporting other writers and building community constructively, and I hope you'll pass those lessons on <3 You may not be able to single-handedly prevent other writers from being Mean Girls, but at least you can form your own healthy, supportive community all over the Internet.
IcyFlame I'm so intrigued by the concept of having a debut group - did you find this yourself or was this something that came about a different way?
100% agree with the rest of this post though - YWS fosters friendship & community and we always do better lifting each other up than putting each other down!
Dec 7, 2023
BluesClues @IcyFlame I'm not sure how it got started, but it's been going for a long while now! Basically, anyone trad-pubbed (no matter the size of the press) can join their debut group via either a Google form or an invite.
(I was invited by a friend, but there's also a "request to join" button on our debut year's website. Self-pub authors aren't part of it primarily because different challenges face trad-pub than self-pub authors, and the focus is more on the challenges of trad pub. Self-pub authors tend to form strong community amongst themselves, though, so they're not left in the lurch - they're just not part of this, specifically.)
The debut group generally has a Slack server in which they can discuss issues, ask questions, and provide help and support to each other. Additionally, there are shared resources like a Canva Pro account, a debuts website listing all that year's authors and books, and more. There are usually 1-2 debuts who are "in charge" in terms of organizing fundraising for the Canva Pro account and other paid items and/or keeping track of shared logins and stuff like that.
Additionally, I've found it helpful in terms of sheer knowledge. Sometimes you see that everyone has the same struggles, while other times you're amazed at the variety of experiences people have had! It really helps put things in perspective and lets you know what else you might expect the next time you have a book coming out, since it could be very different than this time. Like really just learning about everyone's experiences has been invaluable.
Dec 7, 2023
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party in the pad!RazorSharpPencil wrote:here; https://ailahevelynmae.writerfeedpad.com/15
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AilahEvelynMae so glad you could join!
Dec 6, 2023
BluesClues <333
Dec 6, 2023
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alliyah wrote:The Worst Gift Ever Exchange Thread (2023 Edition) is out and ready for you to sign up! I love seeing what people come up with for this - it's a lot of fun. The deadline for sign-up is Dec. 15, so don't miss out!
More activities in the Holiday Thread .
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BluesClues okay I guess I won't be in here today bc it keeps crashing
Dec 3, 2023
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alliyah wrote:RandomTalks wrote:IcyFlame wrote:One of my all time favourite YWS holiday traditions is back again for 2023.
Use this thread to sign up to Secret Santa 2023 .
All information is in the thread 🎄🎄🎄🎅🎅🎅
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oh wow! party in the pad!teatiime wrote:https://ailahevelynmae.writerfeedpad.com/15
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join us!AilahEvelynMae wrote:PARTYINGGGGGG while writing my book!
https://ailahevelynmae.writerfeedpad.com/15
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hmmm Draft 2 really seems to be going worse than Draft 1, which. sure is. something.
Snoink YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
Nov 29, 2023
BluesClues this is SO TERRIBLE, I have rewritten a single chapter several times TODAY ALONE
Nov 29, 2023
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2 hours ago
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