Blocks and Criticism

How I deal with social media crazy

I don’t know how long this post will be, because I’m suuuper tired from doing a marathon short film competition this weekend for Runway’s Gen:48 (I finished! I loved it!!), BUT.

I wanted to brain dump just a tad about blocks and criticism and being in the public eye.

I’ve gone viral probably 40+ times now? Viral meaning, in my definition, around or over 100K views in any given platform—usually that’s TikTok for me.

Going viral is a RUSH. It’s also suuuch a trip as people’s opinions of all kinds pour in, and it’s seldom the same twice unless your algorithm hits a groove.

It can be stressful in a good way, and stressful in a bad way. I filter all my comments heavily, but things like Tiktok’s image comments tend to slip through. I’ve had threats (though fortunately mild) and -phobias, though honestly none of that quite as bad as the anti AI harassment crowd.

I also absolutely love the multi four figure sales days a viral can bring. Hell yeah.

ALL OF WHICH TO SAY: I’ve found strategies to deal, and I absolutely love the rush, but it can build in your system.

It can build.

I hit the dip of a viral cycle a few weeks ago, and hit the same predictable “oh no” pattern I’ve hit before. You’re high, you’re flying, and then crash. The algorithm can switch off within a week, it’s a little wild. You start to self-judge, you start to draw in, you start to overcorrect. You start to wonder if the algorithm is a value judgement.

So you make less content, you get a bit twitchier and less confident, you vary too much in a content panic instead of iterating and testing, and because of all of those things, too, everything gets a bit gnarlier.

Sometimes the cycle picks up again, but then, now you’re treading more carefully because you don’t want to lose it.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta ride it out, or test and test until you find the next groove.

I’ve ridden out these cycles before, at least five or six times now. I’m hoping to build systems that help me ride them out better, but, one thing I’ve noticed this time:

Just how many blocks I’ve built around criticism, from myself, from the algorithm, from anti-AI people, from well meaning readers who tell me they couldn’t finish one series but loved the other, from bad reviews I happened to see (for a while there, TikTok Shop forced authors to respond to them), from just…an over-accumulation of data that isn’t actually helpful data but my pattern brain tries to treat it as such.

I’ve been mourning the lesser virality of my one series while celebrating the virality of my other. I’ve taken a lot of things to heart that have slowed me down, or made me think, “But should I REALLY be promoting this, because what if people really don’t like it, or it’s really not as good as I think, and I’m in some way causing bad experiences,” etc.

But my god. I’m not Claude. I’m not programmed to always need to give a reader a good experience.

I write for myself.

I market because I’ve got a mission. Also, I like money.

Also, I LIKE validation. But when validation becomes mixed with the signal that algorithm GO = good quality and algorithm STOP = not good quality, that’s faulty data. It’s just faulty data.

This last week, I’ve been posting 4-6 videos a day on TikTok across two accounts, and 3-4 on IG, too. Some of this I can do because I auto-batch AI videos through my app now (9 AI trailer videos = maybe 1/2 hour of work), and I have an assistant making bookflip videos. I wasn’t sure that would work, not making it in TT itself, but two of them took off to semi-viral so far, and one is one of my best ads right now, so! That works.

But I had to do some me-talking videos tonight, and I had to tell myself, again, that there’s no reason why I shouldn’t show up for these. No reason, because the junk my brain has glommed onto, that people don’t want to hear about my books, isn’t true.

There is no market saturation here. Booktok can talk about ACOTAR and Fourth Wing ad nauseam and readers love it. They love it.

And readers love my books, too. I have a mountain of proof for that.

Yes, anti AI folx can get in your head. The many (many) one star reviews saying my books have obviously bad writing because they’re AI (most aren’t, or are otherwise 99% rewritten) got in my head while writing this last one, questioning my choices, making me hesitate. Even if I know that’s crap, even if I know those people have no idea what they’re talking about, that it wouldn’t matter anyhow, and I have all the many, many (many) more positive reviews to back all that up.

But it’s not just that—algorithm changes can get in your head, your own value judgements, all of it.

So I made 4-6 videos and/or slideshows a day this week, and my sales, which slumped during my writing and socials burnout, are starting to go back up again. My ad costs are down by almost half.

And it’s so, SO worth working through those blocks, whatever they are, that are keeping you from showing up.

And when you’re flying high, sometimes you don’t see how much sludge you’re bringing along with you.

You gotta clean the filters. There’s drag on the wings.

And then you’ll reach the next level of dgaf, because that’s the path up.

It’s not that you have to not care—of course you care. Of course you care.

It’s that you have to not take that as your truth. It’s irrelevant data, it’s dust in your filter, just sweep it out.

And that’s what I’m learning. On my next level-up of dgaf. <3

-Novae