Aspiring writers like myself are told again and again by established writers that we must have an online presence if we want to be taken seriously. It will improve and showcase our work, market and sell our writing, and link us with the wider writing community. How much time you put into your online platform will, we’re told, affect your sales, and even whether you get published at all.
I believe all this.
I believe it so much that when I counted on my 'Username/Passwords' list a few days ago I had four Wordpress blogs, three Blogger blogs, accounts on Twitter (two), YouTube (two), Facebook (one), Vimeo (one), accounts on five dedicated writing networks or forums, Linked In, three hula-hooping social networks and Posterous. I can’t remember what Posterous is. It doesn’t matter: I barely used most of the accounts and some not at all. I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to achieve; I think I had a vague notion of being some kind of International Blogger of Mystery. Only my primary wordpress blog got any real attention, and I utterly failed to keep to my goals with that. I can only blame the plethora of accounts on extreme suggestibility and optimism (usually late at night), and my failure on a complete lack of focus, plus a rather unfortunate aversion to computer screens.
In the July issue of Writing Magazine, Grumpy Old Bookman wrote that if he had to become best friends with everyone who was going to buy a book, he wasn’t interested. Curmudgeonly though the attitude is, something inside me cheered. While making a connection with everyone who buys my books would be lovely, I don't want to devote the time to that if it means it will dig into my writing time. The best thing about writing is the writing, and if networking is going to interfere with that... Well, I just think that writing and submitting, over and over, has got to be the priority, and time for that is squeezed hard enough as it is, by the hours I have to work, by time shared with family and friends and by the outdoor life that is as necessary to me as the air that I breathe.
However, I've read enough to be aware that there are tools, if I could but put in the effort to learn how to use them, that should be able to get me some time online without me turning into a twitching creature, gibbering and dancing on the shattered remains of the laptop before running off to the woods. Normal, sensible people have used social networks to make friends, get encouragement and advice, and - whether it's the primary aim or not - generate market interest in their writing. Well done them. Could I manage the same?
So here it is: the eighth blog. For an experimental five months, I am going to drag myself, however much I kick and scream, into an exploration of social networks. I’m going to try them out, try to make friends on them, use them. And here’s the challenge: I’m going to do so in a way that doesn’t dig into my writing time, and into my precious off-screen time. I’m going to try to make friends online, real friends. I’m going to manage it in such a way that I’m still out there, walking, cycling, staring at the sea, listening to the swallows, not going mad. I’m going to do it while having time to write stories and articles, my novel and my cycling memoir. I'm going to do it while working a three-day week in all weathers with my partner. I’m going to find out if I can make the networks I join really add something to my life. And I'm going to stay true to myself; if this really isn't me, then at the end of five months this blog will quietly close.
I'm going to post here once a week.
Already I'm feeling sick with nerves.
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