Is Social Media The Latest Form of Procrastination?

On choices

 To be a successful author, or really any kind of business person, you must get your name out there; build a brand, a soapbox, a stage on which to market your books. But erecting an empire via Social Media avenues takes a great deal of time and energy--time that could be spent writing your next masterpiece or creating that new amazing thing. A number of authors I've spoken with (On social media sites) have complained that they are having trouble writing, are unfocused, or that they don't seem to have enough time in the day to actually write. 

When we don't want to edit, when ideas aren't flowing, what do we do? We check for new followers on Twitter, cruise over to Facebook to see what's happening, wander aimlessly on Pinterest, check all those messages on Goodreads, Linkedin, tumblr, Google+, or Instagram--Oh look! Kittens! The possibilities for procrastination are endless. I liken it to the old days when we flopped onto the couch with a bag of chips and watched something mindless on TV.  How easy it is to get lost by clicking a link to read an interesting blog, following that link to something else, crawling across the spiders' threads. You look up at the clock and realize hours of writing time have fled. But these are things we must do, right? We must become educated in the ways of our craft! "They" told us so! Or at least that's how we justify it to ourselves.

And frankly, it's really quite fun--way more fun than proofreading!! Besides, we humans are social creatures, after all. I look forward to the friendly DMs on Twitter and Facebook (my personal vices). Virtually all my peer and business connections have come via social networking.  I message away with folks in radio and television, marketing gurus, graphics designers, book cover models, photographers, publishers. I chat with people in Scotland, France, China, Australia--isn't that incredible? How else could I ever have met such amazing people? Could I dare ask for more? Well, yes, actually. I'd really like to write my next book. 

While creating my first novel, The Carrot, I wrote a minimum of five hours a day. I resented having to grocery shop, show up for dental appointments, clean my house, etc. I would become furious when the phone dared to ring!  I had no contact with the world of Social Media. I didn't even know a single author. The sum total number of my Facebook friends equaled 45; this number composed exclusively of family members and some college buddies. I didn't know exactly what Twitter was or why one would want to follow a local grocery store's tweets. Some of the other sites either didn't exist yet, or I'd absolutely never heard of them. And the thought of writing a blog…why on earth would I want to do that? 

When it came time to query agents, boy did my world change. "Describe your Social Media platform?" Huh? "Include links to your website." Um, I don't have one of those... So I read blogs, searched sites and found out I was living in the dark ages. Soon I had accounts all over the place, hired a college kid to help set up my website http://www.virginiagraynovels.com/, made new friends, and entered an entirely different universe. Was my former existence ignorance bliss? Yes!!!  And...no.

Upside: I’ve built a social media empire.
Downside: I’ve written little in the last six months.

My suggestion to you is this: Guard your writing time fiercely! Set limits for social media interactions. Consider visiting only at times when you know you couldn't write or effectively work well anyway. Utilize services that tweet or post for you such as Hootsuite: http://t.co/Zmrb0hY23s  roundTeam: https://roundteam.co/ , Communit: http://commun.it/ , etc. Set them up for the day and then walk away. 

Well, I've truly loved this time we've spent together, but I've got to go friend you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, visit you on Goodreads, Pin your latest recipe--oops! I mean, WORK!! 


Yours in social media,

~VG

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