Every morning when I wake up, my brain is spinning with eager ideas and thoughts, and I want to sit down and write, but … first, I have to get the exercise out of the way so I don’t turn into a desk potato with vanishing muscle mass and blooming flab. Next I turn to my author social media platform: answering e-mails, reading posts on Blogs that I follow and maybe leaving comments, getting my Twitter obligations out of the way, etc.

I know for a fact that if I start writing on my next book project or work on a Blog post, I’m not going to keep up with my social media platform.

By the time I’m done, hours often slip and that idea generating eagerness I woke up with seems to have fled into hiding.

For instance, today, I was up at 7:00 AM and started with Twitter, as usual. During my Twitter visit, I retweeted eighty-five tweets for others and fifteen of my own.  That might sound simple, but I also spent time reading Blog posts on someone else’s Blog that I then support by sharing that post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.  I think I must have read about 10 – 15 posts this morning, and I am having a longer conversation with the host of one of those blog posts.

That’s why—as I leave the Social Media interaction behind and start writing this post—the clock struck noon after I had been on Twitter (etc.) for FIVE hours. I have two screens, and when I’m in Social Media mode, one has Twitter on it and the other usually has a Blog post I’m reading on someone else’s blog.

I haven’t written one sentence for my next book project since last Wednesday. In fact, I start a lot of post ideas when an idea blooms, but never finish them because I allow myself to be sidetracked back to that Social Media platform.  After all, someone might have left me a comment.

What about you—do you find your writing goals hijacked by the magnet of Social Media?

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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