Diversify My Writing? What Was I Thinking?

Last month, flush with the excitement that a new year brings, I vowed to diversify my writing as the next step in my plan to get published in 2010.  Idiot!

What was I thinking?  Of course, one month later, I’m in full overload trying to write daily for a new blog, not too infrequently for this blog, and failing to write short stories for bi-weekly submission to a fiction group.  Fail!

Meanwhile, I still have to fulfill all kinds of responsibilities in the rest of my world.  Not happening!

You’d think that I would learn from previous mistakes.

Every year, in February, I go through a winter slump where all the new year enthusiasm disappears, and all I want to do is escape from thinking.  This is when I usually end up in a mindless marathon of trashy romance novels or all-engrossing TV on DVD.  One year, I watched all the permutations of Stargate.  Last year, I managed to view the entire Buffy/Angel saga.  I even rationalized that I was learning from these TV retreats, but the real value was that it gave me a chance to still the endless To Do List in my head, and to emerge refreshed and ready to recommit to my endeavors.

I didn’t get as much of a brain-dead junket this year, but after a weekend of romance novels, and a week of recuperation from a pestilence dubbed the vomit comet, I’m ready to get back to business.

First, I’m scrapping some of the diversification plans.  I’m really enjoying writing for Albany Kid, and I don’t want to give up my plans for On Living By Learning.  However, I can’t do the fiction writing as well.  I’m tabling that until next year. 

Second, I’m limiting my time on social media.  While it’s beneficial to my writing career to maintain an online presence, I rather have more time for writing.  Right now, it doesn’t feel like I’m communicating on Twitter, as much as I’m just wielding a megaphone.  But, with other a thousand Twitter friends, I haven’t succeeded in stifling the sheer noise factor.  I’m not abandoning Twitter, but I’m going to have to think about how to use my time wisely in that forum.

I’m also staying on Facebook, but I’ve already scaled back how much time I spend there.  It’s great for keeping up with my scattered real world friends and family, but I have to avoid it during writing time or it becomes a time suck that enables my natural tendency to procrastinate. 

On the other hand, the Facebook pages that I’ve created for my blogs are worth some effort as I envision these as being where I can share material that I don’t yet have time to develop into articles.  Ideally, these will become communities but we’ll see if that’s possible.  Optimistic or unrealistic?  We’ll see.

Finally, the biggest change I’m making right now is to put a time limit on blog posts.  Some days, I spend inordinate gobs of time perfecting an article.  I don’t know why, or how, but I just lose all sense of time.  I don’t think the posts benefit from the time investment, and they may suffer from it.  So, for now, I’m looking at the clock, and letting these babies go.

Ciao!