I have a Facebook and Twitter accounts that were easy to open and are free. I encourage writers to have them because they keep writers in the "loop" so to speak. A writer can also interface with other writers as well and that is important in finding out what is happening in writing and literature. I am the sort of writer who doesn't always like to face the world. Sometimes all I can do is peep at it through the social networks of Facebook and Twitter. Not every writer is that way. Some are very social creatures and those same social inventions can be a real excuse not to write. Still, with all of those disadvantages, it is more advantageous to keep in touch with writers and others through the media than not.
I know several writers who are published and do not have accounts in Facebook or any other account on the Internet. They tend to be a bit older and are fighting the Internet Revolution. I have encouraged them to re-consider. They also have been fighting having a blog as well. Publishers and agents expect them to have them. I don't think writers should ever do things that others expect them to do; but I think it is a healthy thing for all writers to have a nodding acquaintance with the Internet and all that it can do for writers.
The computer was a terribly clever device that opened the writing world to me when I first got the Apple IIE and the Internet was like having a library of a sort at one's fingertips 24/7. I know a writer who was writing about well known dancers and lacked a small fact at two AM and was able to get it off the Internet. The article was due at 8 am. After he sent it off, he was having coffee with me at Starbacks and we were talking about Ginger Rodgers and got into a discussion of whether her mother was a US Marine and could look it up on his laptop. She was. She lived near Medford, Oregon and I knew this tidbit from childhood.
I had met this writer in the first place through Facebook and we were both surprised to note we lived in the same city. We exchanged names of other writers and now know of other free-lanced writers who live in this area. That would never have happened except through Facebook. There is a Writers Forum here in town and none of us are members. Many of those who attend are not published writers.
The Internet and Facebook, Twitter and such groups may seen daunting to the non-user but if you take it one step at a time it can be learned. Those groups go out of their way to make signing up and using their services as easy as possible after all they make money from the people who sign up. They selling advertising space and other related services.
For those of you who don't use their Facebook very often, I suggest that you use it more and use a trademark or symbol that is the same for other social networking media so people will identify with you and either follow you on Twitter or want to be your friend on Facebook. Every so often you will get someone that is a bad match but de-registering them is a very easy thing to do and people do it all of the time. On my Tweeter account I have 100 followers that change constantly and I change the number of people or organizations I follow as well. For instance, on my Facebook, a"friend" kept putting information that was very fundamental Christian which is not where I am at nor anyone else. I simply removed him as a friend. It was no big deal. He was always putting things on my Facebook that was trying to prove there was a god and no one was interested.
Even if you don't have a huge following on any of your accounts, just keeping up on them and writing on them in a regular fashion is very good for the development of your reading and writing skills. It also helps develop a tougher skin to face the rejection slips we all get from time to time. Maybe something will come up that is very negative about these things, then it will be a different matter and you can change your focus. Nothing is set in stone.
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