Share what I’ve accomplished today? No thanks! Picture by Terry Freedman

Like many writers (probably most) I suffer from imposter syndrome sometimes. Because of that, together with my experience that everyone (except writers) seems to think that writing is easy, I prefer to share work in progress or small achievements with other writers.

I’m thinking in particular of the one and only time I clicked on a “Tweet this” button in Scrivener. It produced a tweet reading something like “I’ve written 723 words today!”. The only response I received was “And?”.

Had I shared that with my writer friends, I am fairly sure they would have offered encouragement and congratulation rather than a cheap put down. Yes, from one point of view, “And?” is the right response: my writing 723 words in a day isn’t a great achievement in the total scheme of things. But:

If I’d had several days in which I could not write a thing, that would have been fantastic.
If I was working on an article with a 750 word limit, I’d have virtually completed it in one day.
Most important of all, I actually sat down and wrote something. I had some ideas, and I spent the time doing something with them. Too many people say “One of these days…”, and never do anything with their ideas.

I can see that my tweet may have come across as a boast. It would be a strange thing to consider boast-worthy though! It was simply a small celebration on my part at having written over 700 words. Plus, I wanted to see what sort of reaction I’d get, mainly because I couldn’t really understand why anybody would wish to share such news anyway.

Since then, I have only shared achievements with family and writer friends. As I am quite good at doubting myself, I don’t really need anybody reinforcing that by saying “And?”. If you are similar, I strongly recommend not sharing small personal achievements on social media.