Walter Greatshell's Blog - Posts Tagged "posting"
Writing vs. posting
How do you people do it? I'm addressing the writers out there--not necessarily the published authors, but anyone who is serious enough about their fiction writing to actually do it every day. If you do that, you're a writer. And my question to you is: how do you find the time and energy to post things to the Web?
I realize it's a bit silly to ask, since I'm clearly doing it right now, but I feel like I'm stealing valuable writing time to do this. Which is not to say I don't like communicating with people--that's actually my favorite thing in life (other than writing itself): meeting people who love books (and movies, and food, etc. etc.) as much as I do. But meeting people and posting on the Web are two very different things. One is actually an act of human contact, the other is just me spewing more unasked-for opinions into the blogosphere. Does anybody actually read these things? Maybe that's the problem: I just don't believe there's anybody on the other side.
I've never been very big on the idea of self-promotion; it seems vaguely sleazy, and I only do it because I feel I have to for the sake of my career, which I love and have devoted the last twenty years of my life to. So I don't want to blow it with any highfalutin' ideas about artistic integrity. It's more a question of time, of which this is a prime example: I've now been sitting here for an hour hashing this stuff out, when I could have written another page of my new book. Does that make any sense?
I realize it's a bit silly to ask, since I'm clearly doing it right now, but I feel like I'm stealing valuable writing time to do this. Which is not to say I don't like communicating with people--that's actually my favorite thing in life (other than writing itself): meeting people who love books (and movies, and food, etc. etc.) as much as I do. But meeting people and posting on the Web are two very different things. One is actually an act of human contact, the other is just me spewing more unasked-for opinions into the blogosphere. Does anybody actually read these things? Maybe that's the problem: I just don't believe there's anybody on the other side.
I've never been very big on the idea of self-promotion; it seems vaguely sleazy, and I only do it because I feel I have to for the sake of my career, which I love and have devoted the last twenty years of my life to. So I don't want to blow it with any highfalutin' ideas about artistic integrity. It's more a question of time, of which this is a prime example: I've now been sitting here for an hour hashing this stuff out, when I could have written another page of my new book. Does that make any sense?
