How Social Networking Kills the Creative Spirit
Are Writers Hurting Themselves Online?
You want to hear some hard truth? Do you promise not to get mad at me? Promise?
Okay then. Here it is. Your social networking habit? It’s hurting you.
Yes, I know it’s fun. But every minute you spend on Facebook and Twitter (I’m not even going to try and list the gajillion other social networking sites available) is another minute you aren’t writing, or reading. Nurturing your creative spirit.
The Muse is a delicate flower, a fickle Goddess. She must be treated with respect and dignity. She must be nurtured, given the proper nutrients: water, sunlight, fertilizer, a touch of love. If properly taken care of, she will reward you with great things: a bountiful garden of words, a cornucopia of ideas. But if you neglect her, she will forsake you.
And none of us want to be forsaken.
I read an essay recently that broke my heart. It was one writer’s honest, true assessment of her Twitter addiction. She openly admitted compromising her family time so she could spend hours a night talking to strangers on Twitter. Her online world became more important than her real one. And I get it. I see how easily that happens. Especially when you’re a new writer, and networking is so vital to your future success. (I am so thankful Facebook and Twitter came along after I was already published.) A little encouragement—that tweet getting retweeted, the blog entry that starts people talking, that link you sent that helps someone else—it’s heady stuff. A classic, undeniable ego stroke, and for a lot of us, that’s just plain intoxicating. (Yes, some of us not so new writers fall into the Twitter trap too…)
But when does it become a problem?
I can’t answer that question for you. You may want to ask yourself some hard questions though. Namely, how much time are you really spending online? Can’t answer that offhand? Spend a week keeping a log of all your online activity. Not just Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads and Shelfari. Track your email consumption, your blogging, your blog reading, your Yahoo groups, your aimless surfing and your necessary research. Be honest. Don’t cheat. Add that time up at the end of the week and take a candid, truthful look at the results. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how much time the Internet takes.
Then ask yourself these questions:
Is the Internet as a whole compromising my writing time?
Am I reading less because I’m spending more time online?
Why am I doing this?
Am I reaching out to strangers because I’m not feeling the same sort of support at home?
Am I lonely? Blocked? Frustrated?
Because here’s the heart of the matter. Writers? Our job is to write. And I don’t mean pithy status updates and 140 character gems that astonish the world. I mean create. I mean writing stories. I mean taking all that energy and time you’re spending online playing and refocusing it into your work.
You know why it’s so easy to say that and so hard to back it up with results? Because Twitter and Facebook are FUN! And you’re talking to other writers, so you can sort of kind of tell yourself that this is really just research, background. You’re learning, right? You’re connecting with your fans, with your readers, with your heroes. Very, very cool stuff.
Listen, if you get inspired by social networking, if watching successful authors launch successful campaigns helps spur you on to greatness, fabulous. I have been greatly inspired by some posts, links and attitudes on Twitter. I think it’s so important to try and have a positive experience out there in the world, and I follow people who exude positivity, who are following the path I want to follow.
But lately, negativity permeates Twitter and Facebook. Snark and sarcasm is rewarded. The Gangs of New York has nothing on the Gangs of Twitter. Writers are afraid of saying the wrong thing, because if someone disagrees with you, the outcry becomes overwhelming.
Meanwhile, your Muse sits idly by, waiting patiently to be seduced again, while you’re trying to gain retweets.
Forsaking your Muse is taking the easy way out. Do a bit of self-examination and decide if your online time is really worth it. I am “friends” with people who are online every single time I open my computer and go to the sites. And I can’t help but wonder — when are they working? When are they feeding the Muse?
There’s a single truth in all this — an editor is going to be impressed with your finished manuscript, submitted on time. The jury is still out on whether they’re impressed that you can tweet and tumble effectively or that you’ve rekindled that friendship with the cheerleader who always dissed you in high school.
The thing about social networking is a little goes a long way. I love Twitter. It’s a great news source. I follow interesting people, I’ve made new friends, and more importantly, I’ve gained new readers. It’s a tremendous tool. And Facebook, well, we all know it’s a wonderful, glorious time suck.
When I realized I was losing writing time to both of these networks, I had to find a way to walk away and rejoin my Muse. So I did an experiement. I gave up social networking for Lent. I spent six weeks only checking on Tuesdays and Fridays. The first two weeks were hell. I was missing out! Everyone was on there having fun except me!
And then it got better. At the end of the six weeks, I added things up. I wrote 60,000 words during my enforced social media vacation. That was enough of an indicator to me that it was taking time away from my job, which is to write.
Now, every year I take six weeks off social media during Lent. All the way off, no checking, no cheating. This creates the quiet space I need to find myself and my work. It allows me to focus, to feed my Muse.
When I read Steven Pressfield’s THE WAR OF ART, I was so struck by his thesis, that artists fight resistance every moment of every day, and the ones who are published (or sell their work, etc.) are the ones who beat back this resistance. Twitter, Facebook, the Internet in general, that’s resistance. (And to clarify, resistance and procrastination aren’t one and the same. Read the book. It’s brilliant.)
For professional writers, the social networks are a necessary evil, and as such, they must be managed, just like every other distraction in our lives. I still have my days when I find myself aimlessly surfing Twitter and Facebook, looking at what people are doing. Getting into conversations, playing. But I am much, much better at stepping away to work. I allot time in my day to look at my social networks, but I allot much more time in my day to read. And most importantly, I have a daily, sacred four hour stretch—1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., five days a week—that is dedicated to nothing but putting words on paper.
So how do you turn it off? How do you discipline yourself, walk away from the fun?
Ask yourself a simple question. What’s more important? Writing the very best book you can possibly write, or taking a quiz about which Goddess you are? Reading the top book on your teetering To Be Read stack, or reading what other people think about said book?
For writers, you have to set your priority, and every time your fingers touch the keyboard, that priority really should be writing. The rest will fall into place. Even though the Internet is taking a chunk of reading time, most readers still read a great deal. Which means we need to keep up the machine to feed them, right?
And if your own self-discipline isn’t enough, there are a bunch of great tools out there to help you refocus your creative life. Here’s a list of the websites and blogs that I’ve used over the past few years to help me refocus mine.
Websites:
MinimalMac
43 Folders
Zen Habits
The Art of Non-ConformityBooks:
The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
The Creative Habit — Twyla Tharp
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life — Winifred Gallagher
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Artist’s Way — Julia Cameron
Take fifteen minutes a day off your social networking and read one of these. I promise it will help you reprioritize your life.
Because really, what’s the point in being a writer if you don’t write?
