This cracked me up. Particularly the story about the INTERN's writer-friend who deleted ALL her online promotional efforts (did her agent die of shock?) and it made precisely NO difference to her book sales.
Not that I consider all this blogging and stuff promotional. It's mostly just fun to write about whatever comes to mind, and I review my books anyway to keep track of what I've read (I wish I had done this all my life. Imagine being able to go back and see what you were reading when you were 10!) so posting the reviews here as well is not an effort. My blog is for myself as much as for y'all**--I really do get it printed out in book form every year to preserve a record I can laugh at in 20 years' time, if I'm spared.
One of my recent posts mentioned how my interests run in cycles. I have come to the realization that the social-medially gregarious phase I've been in for about the last three months*** has ENDED. I feel a desperate need to cocoon myself in a soft, fluffy but strangely cavelike world of writing, reading, gazing at the natural world, and crafting. To spurn the outside world in favor of some navel-gazing, with a side of getting my *(&^%_**&! books published.
Which doesn't mean I'm going to stop blogging, but I might blog a little less frequently or regularly. Or my posts might be fluffier and less businesslike. It will almost certainly mean that my blog reader gets culled again, de-emphasizing certain topics I have been eagerly following for a while, but adding in fresh material to stimulate the gray matter.
And then there's Twitter. In the last five months I've been quite active, and today I got my 3,000th follower. Now I feel like I should consolidate my activities somehow, prioritizing engagement over numbers and returning to the calmer growth of my last slowdown.
I'm going to go all cautious on other sites, too. First and foremost, Pinterest, which is an incredibly useful place to store visual information but has its worrying side. tumblr is stranger and therefore more suited to my current mood, but I am only sporadically active there. I may ignore Klout altogether, because it hates me. Seriously.
As long as I have a computer and an internet connection, I'm always going to have the buzz of the world in one ear. Only, for a while, I intend to turn it down to a soft murmur.
Do you ever do this?
* I wish it looked like this cave.
** I frequently experience the urge to use the "y'all" of the South (where I have never been) rather than the "yougize" of the Midwest when addressing you in the plural. Today, I gave in to that urge.
***Or possibly six. Time flies.
Photo credit: treyvoni on Stock.Xchng.
