I’m extraordinarily late to the party here. As Zoe Winters seems to be pulling back from the web, I’m suddenly taking appropriate interests in her posts:
In coming back and not wanting the break to end, I’m making some adjustments to how I do things. It’s pointless to take a break like this, then come back and be crazy again. Being crazy sucks. Being stressed and depressed and wanting to quit because you’ve sucked all the fun out of what you’re doing sucks also.
As I said in retweeting this post, almost all relationships require boundaries, and the internet is a relationship. To whatever extent a computer terminal and access to virtual distractions might be a threat to anyone’s productivity, for a writer the seductions can be almost overwhelming.
Zoe’s voice is the voice of a working writer trying to grapple with all of the changes happening in the publishing space. Hers is also a voice devoid of the auto-branded corporate tone that some writers seem to gravitate to with frightening ease.
I don’t know Zoe, but when I read her posts I feel like I do. Enough said.
Update: Zoe seems to have wiped her old WordPress blog/site, which this post originally referred to.
— Mark Barrett
Thanks for the shout out, Mark! 🙂
I just had release week last week for my newest release, “Becoming an Indie Author”. release week I think is the HARDEST time to pull back because you feel like you have to be “out there”. And during that time it’s so easy to stumble onto the latest Internet drama. And it’s always a bunch of noise and a waste of time. Makes me wonder what pointless energy-draining dramas I missed during my three-week sabbatical. All I know is that I was much happier during that sabbatical than I’ve been in a long time. (with regards to stress etc.) I plan on doing a yearly 6 week sabbatical now.
I think pulling back is critical, and not just on the internet. Everyone needs to reassess what they’re doing at some point, if not regularly, if only to see what’s working and what’s not. As I said in the post, the internet is a relationship that requires boundaries, and it’s far too easy for those boundaries to be eroded by shiny objects, drama and adrenaline.
I’ve known for a long time that web discussions are inherently shallow. I like to think of the shallowness as a by-product of the sifting process, but in most cases I think that’s being charitable. For any subject, 99.999999999999999% of the commentary is noise, and usually only that. I had originally thought things might be different in publishing, and particularly among writers (of any stripe), but the number of people who are interested in talking about craft issues pales in comparison with the number who want to vent or bleed all over the place, or just chat or socialize. (Nothing wrong with those last two at all.)
Surprisingly, however, this has given me a portal to freedom, in the sense that it has convinced me — by personal experience — that the real bounty on the internet (for me at least) is being able to present my work to readers. If a blog post gets one reader, I’m thrilled for that one reader. If it gets a thousand, I’m thrilled for each individual who took the time to stop by.
The real benefit of this insight, however, is that it reminds me I can do this same thing — albeit in a less immediate context — by writing stories, novels, and other longer works to be digested at the readers’ leisure. Like you and Mick, I’m really coming to the truth that it’s not so much my ability to stay on the pulse of something moment to moment as it is simply presenting things to an intended audience. And if that’s the case, I might as well invest more time in the stories and issues I care about, and less in the day-to-day grind.
And I honestly don’t think people who are interested in me as a writer have a problem with that.
Good words, Mark!
Oh, and I just got a Google Alert where you tweeted the link to this post and said “sup bitches” LOLOLOLOLOL!
I also had someone subscribe to my newsletter saying: “Subscribe me, bitches!” Ha!
Mark,
I’m late to my own party, and so too is Zoe in some ways. I went through this crisis during the Summer, thinking I was sacrificing to much to inform, against me letting my blog audience go through their insomnia, while I wrote fiction.
I remember Zoe saying she had enough, saying she was going to shut down on Thursday and not return till Mondays. I think she really meant that, but the pull of the tide is hard when there is something you want to speak on or report on, or , in Zoe’s case, speak about the gnawing process of writing itself.
I don’t think anyone has captured the way in which modern authors have to switch between fiction and non-fiction in the way you are expected to. Clearly, I’m not speaking genre, I mean state of mind for an author. I think Zoe captures that brilliantly.
Thanks, Mick! And I DID successfully unplug for 3 whole weeks in October, except for previous commitments which included the occasional tweet or FB mention of something I’d already promised someone I’d do (an interview or guest blog) as well as my indie reader blogs. But I was remarkably radio silent. It was wonderful!
Mick,
The toll you talk about in switching back and forth is ever present in my mind. I’ve known for a long time about myself as a writer — about my own internal author machine — that I don’t switch well. (I describe my process as ‘long wave’ writing, meaning I have to slow everything down until the short-wave noise falls away, and I can get in touch with the long wave that is at the heart of whatever project I’m working on.)
This obviously doesn’t bode well for blogging while writing, but I’m working on it. I’m trying to figure out how to balance things, and the one thing I’ve committed to is making that an internal balance, rather than freaking out about site traffic or blog hits. That way lies the kind of madness that has afflicted both you and Zoe, and has led otherwise intelligent people to put Newsweek and Tina Brown in a particular accelerator in the hope that they will form a new, never-before-seen-or-successful media hybrid.
Unless you live and die to be at the center of your own cyclonic storm, life is simply too short. Giving away whatever passion one has for writing to an audience that may or may not show up in any case seems to be the greatest (and, perhaps, only avoidable) tragedy in any writer’s life.