Not too long ago I decided to take a break from Twitter. It wasn't a long hiatus and, granted, the big dent punched into my mobile data was a significant motivation toward that decision, but all that aside--I needed to remove the distraction. And coming back, I wish I would have taken a longer walk away from it all.
Sometimes I forget that Twitter and other forms of social media are not solely mediums to mingle with other writers, to promote your work, or to stalk the agents who have your MS.
It can drive you nuts.
And soon you find you're doing more "Tweet gazing" than working on your work in progress or plotting or revising or editing. (What's the difference between those last two again?)
It's not just the interwebs either. You can be surrounded, if not completely pummeled, by family and work obligations. Sometimes it's like you can't breathe with all the noise noise NOISE!
That's why I advocate going hermit every so often.
You read correctly. We are all familiar with the image of the loner, bohemian writer, locked away in solitude, drinking absinthe and struggling over every last consonant and punctuation.
You don't have to go that far.
There are many writing retreats you can pay for or, even better, you can get with local writing buddies and sock away an entire weekend with no phones, no internet, just writing and companionship. And sleep for God's sake.
Rent a hotel room. Go to the library to write. At minimum, hit that disconnect from WiFi button on your laptop and dive into the world you are creating.
It's easy to get sucked up in the world of publishing and who's pitching what and what one idiot said online about the genre you love to read.
So easy, in fact, that you can neglect the one thing that makes a writer a writer.
Writing.
Sean
Word. It's one of the reasons I own a "dumb" phone - without the hand-held computer, it's pretty tough to access the socialverse.
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