Do you feel a need to divorce your personal life from your writing career on social media, etc. or are they too difficult to separate?
"I tend to keep the most controversial topics to myself, though I'll mention them occasionally--things like religion and politics have a tendency to start arguments, and I have no interest in that online, so I try (sometimes unsuccessfully) to avoid it. The rest of my life is pretty much an open book, because that's what makes social media interesting. When an author's twitter feed is pure business, with nothing but launch dates and book signings and retweets of reviews, I lose interest very quickly; when an author shows a bit of who they are, all the fun extras that make them cool and interesting, that's what makes social media cool." - Dan Wells, author of Fragments.
"More and more, I want to keep my personal life to myself. It was a lot easier to share when there were less people looking, you know? The internet gives this false sense of knowing someone, when you really can’t see anything but what they put out there. So it can cause a lot of assumptions and possible misunderstandings. Right now, I would rather not have people conjuring a picture of my personal life that isn’t true." - Natalie Whipple, author of Transparent.
"Using a pen name this time around has made separating personal stuff from writing stuff very easy." - Page Morgan, author of The Beautiful and the Cursed.
"I might be thrown out of the kidlit community for admitting this, so please realize this comes with some risk to my personal safety: I have never read the Harry Potter books… or seen the movies, or have any burning desire to do so. I feel bad mostly because all the references to the series—and wow, are there many—go straight over my head. Sometimes I smile and nod though, and I guess now you’ll know I’m faking it." - Nova Ren Suma, author of 17 & Gone.
"I try to keep my personal life separate as much as possible. It’s not always easy, especially as so much of my life is taken up with things to do with writing. Social media has many benefits, but we should be careful. Some people appear to live their entire lives in public these days – I certainly wouldn’t want to do that." - Dave Cousins, author of 15 Days Without a Head.
"I'm fine with the blending of the two. My students love to hear about my writing life, and my writing friends like to hear about my students. Maybe in the future there will be need to separate them, but for now it's cool." - Suzanne Young, author of The Program.
"Yes, I struggle with that. I'm not much for self-promotion--actually, I sort of hate it--so I dislike trumpeting about my books online. At the same time, I don't know just how much readers really want to know about the fact that I changed eight poopy diapers that day." - Emma Carlson Berne, author of Never You Let Go.
"I was marked early on by a bad experience with an overzealous reader on a fanfiction site; I’m very cautious, now. I don’t use my real name online, though I’ve got family members who are linked to me." - Josin McQuein, author of Arclight.
"Absolutely. They are terrible distractions, especially when I’m struggling and am subconsciously looking for an excuse to step away from the work." - Scott Blagden, author of Dear Life, You Suck.
"I like having spaces online that are about me as a person and not me as a writer, so for example I have an author facebook page and a personal facebook page. That being said, I'm friends on facebook with lots of writers, and talk about writing on my personal page, so it's not like the different parts of my life can't bleed into each other." - Lindsey Leavitt, author of Going Vintage.
"My personal life have always been totally separate from my writing life, partly because friends and family don't know what to do with someone who's obsessed with research and writing, especially if that someone is an introvert who's doing something totally public, i.e., putting books out there for anyone to read. What's been happening lately, now that my children are grown, is that my writing life tends to noodle its way into my real life more than I'm comfortable with and probably more than my husband would prefer." - Lois Ruby, author of Rebel Spirits.
Stop by next week to learn the weirdest way someone has
recapped each author's book.
recapped each author's book.
No comments:
Post a Comment