Tuesday, February 03, 2009

She Almost Had Me Convinced.

Mitali Perkins' post last month on authors using social networking was very convincing. The numbers of people who showed up at her book parties would be good anywhere, forget about a town where she didn't live. (A few years ago I had lunch with the author of a collection of literary short stories. He told me that he'd had a signing scheduled in the town where he lived. No one showed up, so he went home.)

I was truly considering trying a social network after reading Mitali's post. But when I was talking about it at dinner, a family member who is all too aware of my work habits, asked, "But when will you write?"

He asked the same thing tonight when I brought up the possibility of teaching a writing course.

I think he's quite right about the course, by the way. Given how slowly I do everything, a writing course could take a big bite out of my writing time.

2 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

Yeah... a couple of new literacy blogging groups are beckoning, and I'm realizing I have zero time left for anything but my own work. I'm going to have be brutal about that.

A writing class would be cool, but... is there some way you could make it be more on your own terms?

Gail Gauthier said...

It sounds as if it could be pretty much on my own terms, at least as far as content is concerned. I don't think there's anything anybody could do about the time issue--developing the material, teaching, grading (my contact said the college would want to know how I plan to do that). Right now I'm leaning away from doing this. I have so many projects in mind that I haven't started. It seems foolhardy to keep coming up with more and more things to do that keep me from writing.