I came across this article recently, on Five Ways Social Media Can Destroy Your Writing:
1) You drive yourself to distraction. This is perhaps the most obvious pitfall of social media. It’s damn distracting. There’s plenty of time to talk about writing, to meet new writers, to see and read and absorb everyone else’s processes and approaches and learn about the business and agents and publishing and… and… Wait, when was the last time you actually sat down and wrote something? And finished it? And submitted it? Yeah, I thought so.
There’s more than just the obvious, but I especially liked the quote from Jeff VanderMeer:
If you’re not willing to put in the time and effort, if you don’t like hard work, don’t be a writer. Don’t be a writer if you don’t like to read. The world doesn’t need another punk-ass pretender.
Also, Mr Kristoff has written a very entertaining post on Twitter etiquette. Or rather, ways to piss him off. (Contains the, uh, odd rude word.)
You tweet about your [insert shtick here] constantly. If I’m following you, you’re probably someone who DOES something. You write books, or music, you make films. And honestly, I really am interested in your novel/album/record-breaking gangbang attempt, but I already know the release date. Wanna know how? Because you told me twenty seven times in the last three days. Fffffffuck you.
He’s right on the money. I must admit, I’ve become a little disappointed in Twitter recently. The last few months have seen a massive skew towards people wanting to broadcast information, but I watch the timelines and have noticed much less interaction with others (it’s not far off becoming anti-social media). It won’t be long until it becomes a glorified RSS feed that has absorbed all blog comments, but hopefully I’ll be wrong.
