Lower Expectations

Introduction

(2 Min Read)

When I first signed a publishing contract, I suspected there would be a requirement for some kind of social media platform. How formal that requirement would be, I wasn’t sure. Would it be written into the contract that I create social media accounts and post every day? Or would it be more of a requirement I felt within me, like having to be nice to your friend’s new boyfriend even though he is, objectively, terrible because he carries a hunting knife everywhere for some reason? After signing the contract, I learned that it would be the latter: a crushing, internal pressure to market myself, turn followers into book sales so that I could continue to write and be published again.

That’s really what it comes down to, is numbers. How often you post, how much engagement it gets, your follower count, your book sales. I created multiple social media accounts and found the rest of the world, authors and non-authors alike, shouting into the void. People would share their work, share their processes, share parts of their day and, the most dystopian part, the accounts that were dedicated to showing you how how to get noticed and how to market yourself online. It took less than a week for me to realise I didn’t really want to be ‘noticed online’. I didn’t want to endlessly shout ‘look at me’ into an increasingly dead internet.

But that didn’t change the basic equation: Social media flowed into book sales and more book sales meant I could publish more books. So what’s the most authentic way to do that? What is the way that still feels like me, is still something I enjoy and that, if it doesn’t result in book sales, doesn’t make me feel like a failure and want to die? The answer is a blog.

My blog, Lower Expectations, is an exercise in life writing. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. It’s notes and journal entries and stories from my life that I want to share whether that makes people want to buy my books or not. It’s a step back to a different internet. It’s not social media, it’s not substack, it’s a website that I own, where I can post what I want. It’s a reminder that traditional publishing isn’t the only way to ‘write’. Here, my hope is that writing doesn’t come down to numbers, but to words: which is how it should be.

That’s also why the blog is free. Perhaps it would be a better idea to monetise my embarrassing and sometimes painful experiences, but then it just comes back to numbers and the cycle starts over.

So if you like what I post, maybe you’ll want to read my book. And if not, I hope you liked my embarrassing stories anyway.

Important note: There will be no AI used in the writing of this blog (or any of my writing. Ever) and only I will be posting here.