Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Blogging, Twittering and the like

O.K. I love technology. Well, maybe not as much as a lot of people do out there but I love the stuff. There is a big problem with all of this technology though when it comes to the life of the writer. It takes away the time you spend on your craft.

I talk to writers all of the time that Blog and in some cases have multiple blogs, they Twitter, they are on Facebook, Myspace and any other place they can be, they subscribe to multiple chat groups with their own genres, and on top of all that, are members of every organization they can think of.

Their rationale - "I want web presence."

Sure this is great, but the time you are taking to do all of these activities is really using the wrong muscles in your brain to create the stories that really sell. The time you are taking is also very repetitive. I don't know how many times I have seen someone with the identical posts on each of their blogs. What is the point?

I know what they will say though... I have people who follow me from different loops and they use different modes of technolgy. Sure, that is true, but if you are really good at what you do, you can filter all of the writers through one site.

Pick one and stick to it. Make that good and build that web presence through that site. Pick and choose the memberships you have. It's kind of like cleaning house. If you haven't used it for 3 months, the odds are you won't again - get rid of it.

4 comments:

  1. Scott,

    Thanks for bringing this up. I think Blogging, and even blog following can get to the point of obssession at times. I know I've been guilty of it, and I found that it took way too much energy and time away from what I really wanted to do, which was to write and fine tune my novels. I see many of the same people following Agent boards (and some range in the hundreds on the popular agent sites) and on other sites with almost the same questions, and I wonder if it's the community that's the lure, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I've since trimmed my blog lurking. I don't enter blog agent contests anymore, because once again, that also takes up time, and if you're a competitive person you spend more time checking to see if you've at least placed than perfecting your novel(s). Maybe someone else can twitter and write pages and update their blog and write queries to perfection, but I've reached my limit. Perhaps it's all multi-tasking envy on my part, so those that can do this, it's admirable, please don't take offense at my thoughts.

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  2. What is a blog Agent Contest? I must be missing something here.
    Meanwhile, asking why the Diane Lane character in "Under a Tuscan Sun" was so appealing to me, while the generic "small even white teeth," "oval face," and "little upturned nose," stuff leaves me bad bored, has been most useful.
    Apart from the fact that Lane is such an effective actress, who like Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe, makes every movie they are in, that much better, I was also rooting for her from the start, because she is so clearly a good person, trying to live a decent life, and struggle through a crushing blow from her rat of a husband. And she didn't ditch her old friend for her new love, AND she was in my favorite smoker, "Unfaithful." (!) Who IS that French studmuffin, and where might I find him? Film can teach us all so much about creating an engaging character in a book. I won't go on and on. Fortunately this is my only blog most of the time. It's one of the best I've found-no time wasted tearing apart other writers or their work. What's the point?How does this help the writer or the reader?

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  3. Anon 4:29,

    A Blog agent contest can take many forms. Sometimes it's a first page critique contest, or a query contest, or a pitch contest hosted by an agent who then picks the winner(s). On the whole it can be good for sharpening your writing skills, but you have to be careful not to alter your writing voice just to fit the agent's tastes in order to win or place in the contest. If you subscribe to several of the popular agent blogs, it can be time consuming, following them not only on their blogs, but on Facebook and Twitter.

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  4. Thank you. That does sound like fun, and about as difficult to stop as eating salted nuts. Best not to begin, in my case. "I know myself for who I am," as the man said, a person who for better or worse was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by adults who loved books and word games. Double-edged sword, there.
    Must remain On Task, On Task, French studmuffins be damned. Lord, but he was a taking man! It's good to be Diane Lane.

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