One of the things I've been doing to establish a web presence is to be consistent with Twitter and try to build a following there (speaking of which, if you're not following me yet, click here to follow me!). I've got Twitter open in one of the tabs of my browser, and when new tweets come in, it puts up the number of new tweets in parentheses so I can see it no matter which tab I'm in. If I don't stay on top of looking at the new tweets, it can get overwhelming. For example, I've just sat down at my computer for the first time today (it's 4:30pm), and the scary number on my Twitter tab says (263)!! So there are 263 new tweets for me to look through since the last time I looked. Now, do I *have* to look at these tweets? No. Will anything bad happen to me or my loved ones if I don't look through them? No. However, one of my strategies with Twitter is to follow people who post interesting quotes or information, and then re-tweet that stuff out to my followers. So looking through those 263 new tweets (now 264) gives me valuable resources! I would like to figure out a way to manage this more effectively so that I can still get what I want out of Twitter, but not be a slave to looking at it all the time.
I've also been checking out some writing resources/blogs as well as social media marketing resources/blogs, and it's very easy to get sucked into following link after link on these sites. It's a seemingly never-ending process! Yes, I'm getting some useful information out of it, for sure. And it's also keeping me from doing other things that I want to do. For example, I'm in this writing teleseminar, and one of our assignments is to write something five days a week. For me, sitting down to write a blog post here is relatively easy (as long as I can think of a topic). Somewhat more challenging is writing a blog post for my coaching website (perfectionist much?). And even more challenging than that (as in, I haven't done it yet at all!) is doing some sort of fiction writing, which I *definitely* want to try my hand at. Just yesterday, on at least two separate occasions as I was getting sucked down the rabbit hole, I thought, "I should stop and try to do some sort of fiction writing experiment." Did I? Nope.
I've found that structure usually works pretty well for me with stuff like this, so it may be a matter of setting limits to how much time I spend on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., or it may be to set aside a certain amount of time for experimenting with fiction writing. Truth be told, I have sort of an overwhelm about the fiction writing. Mostly I have no idea what to write about. So if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!! :)
(Sidenote: now at 269...)
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3 comments:
Hey there Iris.. I know the feeling of wnating.. needing to work on something and it just doesn't happen. Certainly your suggestionfor limiting the stuff that you're engaged in can help minimize your distraction and setting aside time for your fiction.
Something that works for me is when I set aside time for something, just start writing... get the "other stuff" out of the way so that your fiction comes through. It will happen eventually. Some of my best writing started out with a grocery list and other unrelated topics. ;-)
- Tamarra
Yep, set the twitter timer! Or create a list of people you REALLY want to follow (I call mine twitter favorites - it's a private list so nobody's feelings get hurt :), keep it to 50 or less and check that list once a day. I set up seasonal lists too - for topics I want to follow or with the She Speaks gals in weeks leading up to the conference. Or.... just enjoy networking for an hour a day :). I did at first and it brought a lot of benefit later on.
I'm inspired by what you ARE doing!! One blog site that I was playing on for a while until, well, you know (insert excuse here) is Http://bekindrewrite.com Every Monday she posts several fiction prompts and you can write about one - then she shares and you get to read other people's work. It is called Inspiration Monday...
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