28
Jul

Why Are You Reading This?

   Posted by: Faith   in Rye Thoughts

Anyone else happen to catch this post by J.A. Konrath last week?

Are You Writing?

…ouch. writing-color

I’m not telling you to stop blogging, or Tweeting, or reading posts from other people… but he makes an excellent point. When our social media time & learning efforts outweigh our actual writing time, what are we actually gaining?

Time spent on those things is time not spent writing.

We won’t get anywhere if we’re not gluing our hands to the keyboard and writing.

We are all going to fail if we continue to not write.

I don’t know about you, but that post was a pretty darn effective guilt trip… and I’ve been on a blog break! I’m going have to actively make sure I don’t allow blogging and social media to fill up all my time now that I’m back “on the scene”. (LOL)

How much online time is too much for you? Are you writing?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Rye Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 comments so far

christine fonseca
 1 

Man, I so get this. In fact, I was having this convo with myself recently. It is so important to remember that in order to be a writer – we need to write. And live. blogging and social networking has to come third to that…it really does. IMHO

July 28th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Crystal
 2 

One of my writing friends told me she sets a timer on her social media/networking. There’s a brain child eh?

This is one reason I blog only once a week. Heck, if I didn’t have kids, or a house to maintain, or a hundred other demanding projects I could spend all day at the keyboard. But this is reality. Time is the greatest resource in the world, and the most limited. Have to use it wisely eh?

July 28th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Barbara Ann Wright
 3 

I’m getting back to writing soon and trying to limit my blogging/tweeting/facebook time down to an hour.

July 28th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Susan B
 4 

Okay, I admit it. I do spend too much time looking at e-mail and Facebook. I like the idea of setting a timer on it, so I’m going to try that. I hadn’t planned on doing much writing over the summer, since my kids are out of school, and I was hoping to spend quite a bit of time decluttering. That hasn’t happened yet, since we got a new puppy who is taking up quite a bit of my time (housebreaking, cleaning up after, etc.). But my son is going to “day camp” (for lack of a better description) for the next three weeks, so I’m hoping my daughter and I will work together (or tag-team) on the dog and decluttering. I do have some writing to do that has deadlines, so I’ll get that done somehow this month. Otherwise, my plan is to get back to it when school resumes.

Yeah, it was a good article. I’m guilted.

August 6th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Eileen Astels Watson
 5 

I have a friend who spends 15 min / day on twitter and facebook, more on blogging. I aspire to be so disciplined.

August 6th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Leif G.S. Notae
 6 

Timer is such a great idea, having a log on how many times you hit your goal is a great for feedback. I can get a lot of writing done in twenty-five minutes, take a timed five minute break and then hop back on it.

But then there is nothing wrong with being distracted or learning more. Remember, you don’t HAVE to labor over something, you have to be at ease with it and let it flow like water. Distractions are ok, just don’t let them dam your creative river. The same applies to rigidity.

August 14th, 2011 at 6:02 am
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