And then she went 'Kaboom'...

Tonight marks exactly a month since I dove in the deep end of Twitter (and several other social media sites).

As a new / 'indie' / self-pub author you are bombarded with advice from all angles about blogging, guest-blogging, tweeting, book trailers, conferences, live tweet-chats, writing contest, flash fiction, tweet fiction, Facebook, Klout, Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr and any other cute new site that ends with 'r' (and should REALLY have an 'e' because really...they're spelling it wrong). And published or unpublished you must push push PUSH your social media 'platform' so that you have a network or an audience or a 'sphere of influence'...

And you follow. You follow lots of other writers and join the 'community' and retweet and repin and reblog. And you allow yourself to be bombarded by the tweets and retweets and blogs and ads and #hash tags and @mentions and more blogs and more websites until your eyelid develops a nasty twitch and you read and you read and you READ.

Steve King says to 'shut the door' when you write. Shut the door? How can I shut the door when I've just woken up to the reality that I am no longer in a room that HAS a door? And there is no door because I'm sitting in the middle of a airplane-hangar size waiting room full of other people all shouting at the top of their lungs to be noticed and there IS NO DOOR.

And then you kind of go... kaboom.

In a small, quiet moment, your mind finally says...'Enough.' And it implodes. Slowly, gently.

And you remember something.

You used to write, once. Once upon a time...a month ago. You used to write. You used to sit, quietly with your laptop, and create characters and scenes and think about exactly which word to use to describe the light when the leaves move and you're with someone who's talking but you're only half listening because you can't stop watching the light as the leaves move...flickering back, and forth....back and forth.


So here's the lesson I teach myself today. The airplane-hangar will always be there. But sometimes...you have to shut the door.


Image credit: United States Department of Energy via Wiki Commons, 1952. Alterations by me.