Some of you may remember that I nuked all of my social media channels a few years ago. I then came back to Facebook and more recently re-joined Twitter.  The results were not good. I won’t bore you all with the minutiae, but suffice to say that being active on Facebook and Twitter is not good for my mental well-being. It also dramatically affects my ability to write, hence my extremely low output over the last few years.

I faced a conundrum: there are some benefits to networking with fellow authors on social media as well as engaging with readers. I was concerned about losing those benefits. But, this is essentially a manifestation of FOMO: Fear of Missing Out—one of the psychological levers the media companies use to manipulate us and hijack our attention.

For me, attention is everything. I cannot write good work when I’m clicking from one site to another, in search of dopamine from notifications and messages. We are not Pavlov’s dogs. It does not facilitate long, unbroken spans of time with a deep thought process that good writing requires. I’m not in the business of writing any old thing just for the sake of publishing and stoaking the algorithms.

The decision, therefore, was made. I have deactivated Twitter and have reduced who I friend/follow on Facebook. I won’t be posting at all on my personal account. The only reason for its existence is so that I can administer an author page as a place to update and engage with readers and fans.

I’ll spend more time there, in chunks, between writing, and will endeavor to maintain a connection between us. I’ll also post more here, too, and send more newsletters. I feel these forms of expression are much more valuable than throwaway posts on social media whose only reason for being is as an attempt to stay relevant or visible.

Ultimately, I’m sure you’d prefer more books from me than Twitter or Facebook posts. As for all the others, I’ve never done been into Instagram, Snapchat, or the billion of other networks. I’ll still hang around and review books on Goodreads, however. 

And to anyone who may feel upset that I’ve unfriended them or unfollowed them, please know that it’s really nothing personal at all and if you ever wish to get in touch, I’m always at the end of an email or my contact page.

That said, I hope everyone has a great holiday season. I’m looking forward to the new year where I can finally share some new books with you all.