Happiness is Slavery

So, I was alerted on Facebook yesterday that crime fiction writer/blogger Bryon Quertermous would be bringing an end to his blog because he felt that it was interfering with his day-to-day writing life too much, so he decided to kill it and focus exclusively on writing books and stories and nothing else. I really don’t blame him for doing this. The internet is a huge distraction and time suck, especially if you’re involved with social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, or the blog communities of Google Blogger or Wordpress. I, of course, know this from personal experience. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve logged onto Facebook before I sit down to write and before I know it two-and-half hours have blown by and I haven’t written a single word other than replying to Facebook comments. Needless to say, when you have a limited time to write per day, this crap can be a serious weight.
For me, I’ve noticed the exact opposite effect on me in my writing life.
I started blogging on Myspace back in May of 2008, and posted over 40 entries. During this period of time was probably the most productive I’ve ever been writing wise. Blogging would jump start the messy mass of gray gooey that is my brain and would get me into the mind set of actually sitting down at the machine and writing, It would unwind me and clear out all the crap that had cumulated through out the course of the day.
But, over the holidays, my time to sit and write became extremely limited, and I stopped blogging so I could concentrate on writing fiction.
The holidays came and went just as suddenly as they came, and I noticed that even though my schedule went more or less back to normal, my productivity level was hitting the wall. Before, when I was blogging, I was putting out 1000-to-1500 words a day and that wasn’t counting my regular blog posts. I compare that to now a full month after the holidays, and I’m maybe clocking 500 words a day.
Huge difference.
So, I’ve come to the decision to become a slave to blogging again. However, instead of continuing on Myspace, I created on of these little blogger pages with Google. I more or less plan on doing it every other day; most of it will be rants, like the Myspace blog, the main difference being I’ll be concentrating on reading and writing a little more.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got today, see you later.