{"id":8368,"date":"2019-07-20T20:15:15","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T20:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=8368"},"modified":"2019-07-20T20:28:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T20:28:14","slug":"the-post-social-media-novelist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/the-post-social-media-novelist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Post-Social Media Novelist"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s only been a week since I \u201cdeac\u00adti\u00advat\u00aded\u201d my per\u00adson\u00adal Face\u00adbook account and already I feel like a great weight has been lift\u00aded off my shoul\u00adders.<\/p>\n

This \u201cdeac\u00adti\u00adva\u00adtion\u201d was a long time com\u00ading. Since 2015, I\u2019d been using Face\u00adbook less and less\u2014from spend\u00ading hours on there per day to about 10 min\u00adutes per month. Regard\u00ading oth\u00ader social media services\u2014most notably Twitter\u2014I stopped using those back in late 2017. Still, I couldn\u2019t bring myself to quit social media entire\u00adly.<\/p>\n

A while back, I read a great book titled Deep Work: Rules for Suc\u00adcess in a Dis\u00adtract\u00aded World<\/em>, writ\u00adten by Cal New\u00adport, a com\u00adput\u00ader sci\u00aden\u00adtist who has always eschewed social media.<\/p>\n

In the book, he gives read\u00aders a plan for detox\u00ading from social media. Part of the plan is for the per\u00adson who is on the fence about quit\u00adting social media to stay away from it for 30 days, and then, at the end of that peri\u00adod, to ask him\u00adself a ques\u00adtion: \u201cWould my life have been sig\u00adnif\u00adi\u00adcant\u00adly bet\u00adter or more enjoy\u00adable with social media?\u201d Put anoth\u00ader way, \u201cHas my life been sig\u00adnif\u00adi\u00adcant\u00adly worse or less enjoy\u00adable with\u00adout social media?\u201d<\/p>\n

Last Sat\u00adur\u00adday, I answered those ques\u00adtions for myself and made my deci\u00adsion. After dis\u00adcussing the idea with my busi\u00adness man\u00adag\u00ader (my wife), we decid\u00aded to keep my Face\u00adbook author page with its 9,000+ fol\u00adlow\u00aders, and I sim\u00adply trans\u00adferred own\u00ader\u00adship of it to her before deac\u00adti\u00advat\u00ading my per\u00adson\u00adal account. Even\u00adtu\u00adal\u00adly we plan to hire a social media whiz kid to man\u00adage the author page.<\/p>\n

The bot\u00adtom line for this nov\u00adel\u00adist is\u2026I\u2019m OUT, bitch\u00ades!<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to turn this entry into a polemic about the evils of social media and why I final\u00adly had to get the hell away from it. I\u2019m not going to wax maudlin about all of the time and emo\u00adtion\u00adal ener\u00adgy I wast\u00aded on social media. And while I feel some regret about not mak\u00ading this deci\u00adsion years ago, I\u2019m also not going to wal\u00adlow in regrets. From now on, it\u2019s all about for\u00adward motion\u2014how this nov\u00adel\u00adist plans to live and work post-social media.<\/p>\n

As I see it, with\u00adout social media in my life, I can get back to the essence of what it means to be a novelist\u2014thinking deeply about sto\u00adry and focus\u00ading on the words. Words of sub\u00adstance, mind you\u2014not dis\u00adpos\u00adable \u201cposts\u201d on social media, remarks about some new dig\u00adi\u00adtal dis\u00adtrac\u00adtion, or dia\u00adtribes about the pub\u00adlic out\u00adrage du jour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

With\u00adout the tin\u00adni\u00adtus of social media\u2014the \u201clook at me, look at me\u201d non\u00adsense, and the con\u00adstant sense of unease attached to whether or not your \u201cfriends\u201d are going to \u201clike\u201d your post\u2014I can reg\u00adu\u00adlar\u00adly achieve true, deep qui\u00adet, still\u00adness and expan\u00adsive\u00adness again. Qui\u00adet, still\u00adness and expan\u00adsive\u00adness are to a nov\u00adel\u00adist what soil, sun and rain are to a farmer.<\/p>\n

For over 12 years, I worked with\u00adin the \u201cinter\u00adnet age\u201d writer\u2013reader par\u00ada\u00addigm, a par\u00ada\u00addigm based on the idea that writ\u00aders (nov\u00adel\u00adists in par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar) need to inter\u00adact with their read\u00aders, build rela\u00adtion\u00adships with them, and there\u00adby grow their read\u00ader\u00adship.<\/p>\n

After more than a decade of work\u00ading this way, I can say, with author\u00adi\u00adty, that unless a nov\u00adel\u00adist is will\u00ading to put more than half of her time into social media, it is nev\u00ader going to grow her read\u00ader\u00adship the way the social media \u201cexperts\u201d claim.<\/p>\n

This \u201cinter\u00adnet age\u201d par\u00ada\u00addigm is high\u00adly undig\u00adni\u00adfied for the nov\u00adel\u00adist, requir\u00ading him to be a mer\u00adry andrew for a min\u00adi\u00admum of sev\u00ader\u00adal hours per week. And mean\u00adwhile, the spout\u00ading forth of social media blather\u2014half-baked ideas, pho\u00adtos, wit\u00adty obser\u00adva\u00adtions and bons mots<\/em>\u2014debas\u00ades the hard and seri\u00adous work that he does in writ\u00ading a nov\u00adel. (It also, accord\u00ading to Time<\/em> mag\u00ada\u00adzine, is mak\u00ading peo\u00adple stu\u00adpid<\/a>.) The whole endeav\u00ador expends writ\u00ading ener\u00adgy, becom\u00ading a super\u00adfi\u00adcial sub\u00adsti\u00adtute for the real work: writ\u00ading the nov\u00adel.<\/p>\n

With\u00adout social media in my life, I can return to the old par\u00ada\u00addigm of the writer\u2013reader rela\u00adtion\u00adship: let\u00adting read\u00aders find my books and con\u00adtact me (by email or at events) of their own accord. When I was in col\u00adlege and want\u00aded to con\u00adtact con\u00adtem\u00adpo\u00adrary authors whose books meant some\u00adthing to me, I had to send them let\u00adters through their agents. I wrote let\u00adters to John Irv\u00ading, Gar\u00adri\u00adson Keil\u00adlor, Stephen King, and T.C. Boyle.<\/p>\n

With\u00adout social media in my life, I no longer will feel that I need to include read\u00aders in my process and my life away from the writ\u00ading desk. Frankly, as much as I love my read\u00aders and enjoy writ\u00ading to them when they con\u00adtact me, read\u00aders aren\u2019t enti\u00adtled to any of this. Readers\u2014specifically read\u00aders who buy novels\u2014are enti\u00adtled to one thing: well-writ\u00adten, metic\u00adu\u00adlous\u00adly craft\u00aded, enter\u00adtain\u00ading, illu\u00admi\u00adnat\u00ading, inspir\u00ading nov\u00adels. That\u2019s it. That, as I see it, is the novelist\u2019s sacred duty, the one oblig\u00ada\u00adtion she has to her read\u00aders. This is the writer\u2013reader par\u00ada\u00addigm I\u2019m liv\u00ading under from now on\u2014the way it used to be, before social media.<\/p>\n

Final\u00adly, with\u00adout social media in my life, I can focus on the part of this enter\u00adprise that con\u00adsis\u00adtent\u00adly gives me joy: mak\u00ading my nov\u00adels the very best they can be. For the first time in more than a decade I can wake up, brew my cup of cof\u00adfee in the Keurig machine, sit down in front of one of my four type\u00adwrit\u00aders, and sim\u00adply write\u2014without a moment\u2019s con\u00adcern about what might be going on (and what I might be miss\u00ading) down the rab\u00adbit hole of social media, a world where \u201cdown is up, and up is down,\u201d where super\u00adfi\u00adcial\u00adi\u00adty trumps sub\u00adstance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s only been a week since I \u201cdeac\u00adti\u00advat\u00aded\u201d my per\u00adson\u00adal Face\u00adbook account and already I feel like a great weight has been lift\u00aded off my\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,3,4,19,337,7,76,8,208,209,10,26,1,13,14,233,15],"tags":[94,523,211,379,520,96,519,155,522,210,521,212,381,221],"class_list":["post-8368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computersandsoftware","category-craft","category-favebooks","category-fiction","category-novel-writing","category-personal","category-process","category-publishingandthemarket","category-social-media","category-social-media-technologyandinternet","category-technologyandinternet","category-typewriters","category-uncategorized","category-writers","category-writingexperiences","category-writing-life","category-writingtools","tag-chris-orcutt","tag-deactivating-facebook-account","tag-facebook","tag-garrison-keillor","tag-john-irving","tag-novelist","tag-novelists","tag-orcutt","tag-post-social-media","tag-social-media","tag-t-c-boyle","tag-twitter","tag-typewriters","tag-writers-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8368"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8380,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8368\/revisions\/8380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}