Hello. My name is Hillary, and I'm a social media addict.
*crowd murmurs without looking up from iPhones*
This blog, my twitter accounts (yes, two of them), my facebook (dusty, neglected thing that it is), my lists, forum memberships, subscriptions and emails...all of these were supposed to help me become a smarter and better writer.
Instead, like brightly-lit vampires, they have sucked my time away. As well as disrupting my-SQUIRREL!
Where was I? As well as reducing my attention span.
I'm working on a sequel to Don't Bite the Messenger (coming 1.16.12 - yay), and have four outlines that I'm actively fleshing out - may the best one win. And I found that I couldn't write for more than five lines or minutes at a time without needing to check on this thread or jump into that conversation. And when I say "need", I'm talking about a very serious, nearly physical craving. There are just so many interesting people, so much news, and so many good stories out there.
Too much, it turns out. I'm not doing NaNoWriMo because I don't have time. At least, that's the excuse I made. However, I don't have time because I'm unfocused and unproductive. So when the NaNoWriMo words counts started popping up, and I realized that people were writing in a day what I was struggling to produce in a week, I stepped back. I examined my situation, the habits I'd formed, the excuses I was making. I looked at what I was able to write daily a year ago, two years ago. Granted, I write better when I write more slowly, but that wasn't my problem.
I was wasting time.
Luckily, there's an app for that. I downloaded a free trial of Freedom and took it for a test drive. And my word count climbed. And my draft was cleaner than the one before. And I can concentrate for longer periods of time.
So. I hope to see you all out there, though slightly less. And I'll actually probably be blogging more as I swing back toward productivity. So feel free to drop by. When I haven't isolated myself in a dark room with no access to them thar interwebs, I'll be happy to see you.
awesome Hillary! Good luck on your wordcounts, my friend!
ReplyDeleteYou know your Tweets were one of the strongest pulls that drew me back to the Dark Side...
ReplyDeleteThey're great whenever I see them. But you have to take care of you the writer and you the human before you sparkle as you the social media goddess (which you are. When you do it, you do it all WELL.)
Enjoy that app and all that writing time- I know you'll do incredible things with it.
xoxo
bru
Thank you, Bettie!
ReplyDeleteBru, I'm not sure to be happy or sad about that! I'll go with happy, with a side of remorse. :) And, thank you.
I think I need this. Thanks for the tip.
ReplyDeleteSure thing, Marie. It's really helped me with my social media self-control problem. Of course, twitter's stupid reboot has also helped. :/
ReplyDeleteYou mean you go actual increments of time without access to twitter and AW and email? *twitches*
ReplyDeleteWell actually... *looks at to-do list* okay I can see why this might be a helpful app. :D
Tiffany, I also have to be sure to leave my phone in another room. There's no app for that. :P
ReplyDeleteLOL mine is in the living room right now for this very reason. ;)
ReplyDelete