All right, I’m going to tell you all a secret about this pro-writer gig.
You don’t HAVE to do the Social Media thing.
You can, and does it help? Err… maybe? I mean, I don’t know. Like, I get some traction from posting on Google Plus, but I think that’s because very few pro-writers are using Google Plus. (I mean, heck, I got noted for it in this article here, and I’m pretty sure I was the Google Plus example because I was the only one available.)
But, yeah, you don’t have to do it. If you don’t LIKE doing it, then don’t.
I mean, I’ll occasionally go on Twitter, but it feels like me trying WAY to hard to be pithy and insightful in little bon mots and I have better things to do with my brainpower.
Now, one thing though, and I’m going to be a bit mean.
If you are writing, and you are good at Twitter (or Facebook or Google Plus or whatever the social media of the future will be), great. Go for it. Use that and cultivate your audience.
BUT–
I’ve seen a phrase tossed around lately, and it really gets a raised eyebrow from me.
“Curating a Twitter Feed”
CURATING.
Yeah, I’m sorry, but no. Not to be all back-in-my-day-get-off-my-lawn, but I remember when we called doing that sort of thing “wasting time instead of writing”. And I know what that is, because I still probably do too damn much of it. Look, if you’re good at crafting the pithy bon mots and finding other pithy bon mots to retweet and you get tons of followers, awesome. But if you’re a pro-writer, that’s not your job. So don’t act like doing that — especially in lieu of writing stories– is somehow doing your job. And don’t act like doing that is some sort of higher calling that NEEDS to be doing, because the people must have their finely researched and well crafted retweets, for the art.
Do the social media thing to the degree you’re comfortable. But try not make doing that become the main thing you do.