Social networking, otherwise known as the great time-suck

I love to socialise on Facebook and Twitter. Nothing pleases me more than interacting with readers, or posting updates about books and my work, or talking about my latest reviews or tour stops. The trouble is, social networking is a huge time-suck. Every author can tell you this... actually, every person in the world who uses these networks can tell you this. It's all too easy to procrastinate on Facebook and before you know it, two hours have passed and you haven't done much.

I've been thinking a lot lately about streamlining my social networking to maximise my writing time. I'm going to focus more on just updating with news about my books, links to book tour posts, competitions, etc. I know this takes away a large amount of my daily pleasure because I honestly do love chatting it up on Facebook or Twitter, but it gives to me too. I find that when I avoid spending much time at these two social networks in particular, that I feel more positive about my writing, my books, and being an author. I have a brighter outlook because I'm not looking at what other authors are doing, or how many people mention their new release, latest blog post, how fab they are. You get it. Facebook and Twitter are just another popularity contest, and if you're like me and don't garner much word of mouth (I have a theory it's because people think I don't need the help for some reason... either that or my books suck) but see others getting praised, you get a bit disheartened. I hate the questions that follow a daily trip to my Facebook home feed. Why don't people talk about my books? What makes that author so popular? What am I doing wrong? Personally, I can live without the drain on my positive energy and I'm willing to sacrifice the pleasure I gain from socialising in order to avoid the pain of the popularity contest.

It's wrong of authors to compare themselves to others, measure our success against someone else's, or just pose the questions I did above, but we're human. Just like you might wonder why person X in your office gets praise from your boss when you don't and you both seem to be making the same amount of effort, a lot of authors wonder why another author gets popular and we're left standing in the mud.

Streamlining my social networking isn't just about avoiding heartache though. It will give me more time to write and is a step towards looking more professional. Yes, I know this post may go against the "looking professional" part of what I just wrote, but I wanted to talk about my reasons with everyone rather than just disappear and leaving you all wondering where I had gone.

I will still be using Facebook and Twitter to tell everyone about book updates, tour news, giveaways, and other stuff. I will just be keeping the personal posting to a minimum.

I plan to use some of the time I used to spend procrastinating on the networks to blog more too, talking about my books, my writing process, characters, and future stories I have been working on. The bonus is, if you're reading this and don't really surf the networks, you'll probably be seeing more than me, not less.

Plus, you could just end up getting more books out of me!

So, there it is. My grand master plan to avoid the great time-suck / positivity-suck and get some serious work done in the process. I'll still be around, just not as much, and will still respond to all comments left for me at Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Don't panic! I just have too many books to write and too little time, and want to keep my spirits up and pretend the popularity contest doesn't exist.