Social Media Platform vs. Writing Time

It's been about two months since I started trying to build my social media platform, as advised by an article in the 2019 Children's Writer's & Illustrators Market.  My feelings are definitely mixed.

On Facebook, I have an "official author's page" which isn't all that different from my personal page, except that all posts go public.  I try to post two or three times a week.  On average, the only people who interact with those posts are my family and friends who "liked" the page to begin with.  Some people might wonder why I bothered with an author's page at all, as I was already active on Facebook before I created it.  The answer is that I prefer to keep my writing/ author posts separate from my personal life posts; I don't particularly need the world to hear my every thought or insecurity that I share with people I actually know.

On Twitter, I've been working to build up the number of followers I have, but doing it in a very methodical and cautious way.  I don't want just ANY followers; I want people who, ideally, have read my books and like me.  Barring that, I'd prefer they be fellow writers or agents in the children's book field - people I can network with.  I'm on Twitter pretty much every day, just as I am with Facebook, and I try to retweet or tweet at least one thing each day.  On the whole, I don't care for Twitter as much as I do Facebook; it feels very much like a zillion voices shouting into a void, and while I have been making an effort to become part of the #WritingCommunity there, my own posts don't get much notice at this point.

The thing with social media, though, is this: it's addictive.  I come home from work, shed my work clothes, and flop down into my favorite chair with my iPad to check the platform and see what's new.  On many days, it's a bit of a chore to think of something to post - as I said, I don't want to post just anything, and there's only so much I can say about my writing.  And yet, I find myself glued to the screen for hours at a go, reading other people's words, and telling myself that I'm doing all this to better my own writing self.

Only I'm not writing.

Writing and holding down a full-time job like teaching is difficult to begin with; on many afternoons, I'm just not at a good place in my head to try to write.  I'm tired, both physically and emotionally, and doing the social media thing is a lot less exerting than actually sitting down and trying to think of something to write about.  That's a dangerous place for a writer to be, though.  Social media is a time-consumer, something that FEELS like you're being productive... only you aren't, because every minute spent on social media is a minute you're not spending actually writing.  Too much of that, and you wind up becoming one of those people who's a writer only in their own mind - talking the talk, but producing little to nothing in the way of proof.

I'm really going to need to assess my use of social media.  It may get my name out there, yes... but it won't, at least as far as I can tell, help get me published.  Neither will this blog, of course, but at least when I'm updating this blog, I'm forcing myself to do some real writing.  Social media can be a wonderful thing, I think, when used correctly... but it's also a La Brea Tar Pit of self indulgence.  Put more than an exploratory toe in, and you risk getting mired and sucked down.