Time is a precious commodity. I’m
really feeling that right about now. The kids are sucking up more and more time
as The Girl starts looking at college options for next year and The Boy
persists in being irresponsible with his home/online schooling schedule. I may
boot that kid back into the system just to save myself some headaches. Except
it won’t save me any headaches, it’ll just create different ones. Grr. (Reaches
for another book on raising teenage boys.)
Since the kids started taking up
more time, and Hubby’s parents are getting older and need us around more, I’m
finding less time for writing. This is a bad thing for many reasons.
Writing is my sanity. Trust me
when I tell you the whole house down to the lizard feels it when I’m not
writing regularly. With that in mind, I need to feed the lizard. I wanted to
finish The Thousand Words Series and
the next book in the Genie In Your Pocket Series (which is also a sequel to Never Ready from the Lexi Frost Series
and the final book from The Thousand Words Series. Timelines are a little nutty
in there but I explain it all.) I’m partway there. I published A Glorious Mess, the third in The
Thousand Words Series, but only as an ebook. The paperback still isn’t
available – totally my fault, sorry. And I did finish the final book in The
Thousand Words Series but I received interesting
feedback on it from my beta readers. I’m debating what to do about that because
changes I make there affects Desperate
Wishes (the next book in the Genie In Your Pocket Series) and I’m about
half done writing that first draft. I intended to have A Thousand Words Book 4
done and published by now (no title, that’s part of the problem) and finishing
up Desperate Wishes by Halloween, but
that’s not happening. So I’m behind. Realistically, I’ll get The Thousand Words
Series finished and on Amazon as an ebook by the end of the year, but Desperate Wishes won’t be published
until next year. Fine, I accept that. Grudgingly.
Aside from less time for writing
(and revising, and editing, and publishing, and marketing) my lack of available
time shows in another way: online. I’m not there as much. Blog posts are
erratic, coming sometimes every two weeks instead of weekly. I’m not spending
much time on social media and actually irritated by the amount of time The Girl
spends on Tumblr simply because I’m jealous. (And she needs to focus on the
upcoming ACT to expand her college options.)
Social media isn’t a problem really. I can just let accounts
sit idle and get to them here and there when I can. In fact, that’s what I’m
doing. Except Facebook picked a bad time to irritate me with their updates and
policy changes. I know they’re like a virus and possibly worse than Google when
it comes to disregard of user privacy, but Google is handier so they sneak by
under my radar. Facebook doesn’t have that luxury. Worse, Facebook is now being
shown to be almost useless to writers for reaching their audiences. Readers may
follow you, in theory to get updates on book releases and promotions, but those
messages get lost in their timelines. When readers can just as easily follow
you on Goodreads – a site made specifically for avid readers – sites like
Facebook and MySpace are superfluous. And they’re not as useful as once promised
for reaching new readers. As an author, I have to take a step back and say “What’s
the point then?”
For a long time, authors have
been told to have a presence online, it’s necessary for reaching readers. Now
the value of many social media sites is under review and not holding up to the
potential. Especially if you’re short on time to devote to marketing
specifically to those sites. In general, it’s no big deal. You can update or
promote occasionally and let it otherwise float along and I’m willing to do
that, except with Facebook. I’m tired of policy updates and hearing about their
privacy violations from news sites. Now it’s come up how many ‘dead’ accounts
there are and how difficult it is for people to get social media accounts
deleted after a relative dies. And people with pages and an audience who don’t
have their account deleted are targeted to have their pages hacked and updated ‘from
beyond the grave’ by bored tech-savvy youths. I can only imagine what might
show up on mine so I now have a technology amendment on my will.
Personally, I don’t play games
and the updates and invitations are so annoying I have to force myself to even
log in. Some of the pages I personally followed have disappeared, my daughter
threw in the towel and deleted her account a year ago as did one of my cousins.
People who genuinely know me have other ways to reach me. In fact, friends and
family never reach out to me on Facebook. Readers can send me a note from my
website. There’s little to no value in Facebook for me anymore, so it’s going
to have to go. (And I should add I’m very proud of myself for not making that a
slam-dunk New Year’s resolution and just taking care of it now.)
So goodbye, Facebook! It was a
fun ride there for a while, but it’s time to go our separate ways.
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