Facebook and Twitter, Wherefore Art Thou?
Over the past several months I’ve spent the focus of my creative energy where it does the most good: on my writing. It didn’t hurt that I had deadlines for both I Saw Zombies Eating Santa Claus and Big Egos, which gave me a reason to be motivated. And during that time, I tended to avoid getting derailed by the time suck of Facebook and Twitter and Goodreads.
Now that I have a little more flexibility in my schedule, I’ve discovered that scaling back on Facebook and Twitter has had a markedly positive effect on my productivity and general frame of mind. While I’m aware that the popular way of thinking is for authors to spend a couple of hours a day on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites in order to be successful, I’ve decided to scale back my engagement on social networking sites so I can focus on other things: like writing and going outside and experiencing life without feeling the need to share every moment.
As I’ve said before, if you’re constantly connected electronically—either by text message, cell phone, status updates, or tweets—then you’re disconnected from your experience and can’t truly appreciate the present moment.
This is not to say that I’m going to vanish from the Facebook and Twitter and Goodreads landscape completely. I’ll still be popping on to say “hey” and share my occasional thoughts or updates and respond to comments or messages or Tweets sent to my attention. So please don’t think I’m not interested in hearing from you. I love my readers. I just need to step away from the distraction a bit. Unplug, you might say.
As my friend John Hornor Jacobs once noted, there’s a big blue sky out there and we’re supposed to spend as much time as possible beneath it. So if you’re looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.
Either there or at my local coffee roastery, working on my next book.
