Why I Left Facebook (Again)

At some point in the last two months, I made the decision to get back on Facebook. Partly, I was following the advice of a YouTuber who also writes novels and self-publishes. 

The YouTuber talked about how authors today need put themselves out there, engage with people in order to bring attention to themselves and their writing, and how social media is a sort of necessary evil. He’s integrated managing his socials into his workday, and now enjoys engaging with his fans and people interested in reading and writing in general.

I have no doubt that I will eventually need to get back on social media. When my novel is done, depending on the route I take to publishing, I will have to market it, and “network”, and schmooze the socials. It’s something I’ve always hated and it feels dirty, but I recognize the necessity of self-promotion (I’m not going full Cormac McCarthy here).

That being said, I don’t need that now. 

I write because if I don’t my brain will crack open like an egg and spill its yolk out somewhere anyway. I’d rather have it on a page than on my face … and maybe it ends up there eventually anyway, but whatever.

Metaphor over.

I have committed myself to this poetry project and to completing my novel. The Dionysian Blunderbuss blog gives me a little more incentive to stick with it, because of course I love the idea of people reading my stuff, and maybe even being meaningfully affected by it in some way. 

I like that a poem can be a shot of whiskey, throwing your perspective into a bit of a tilt, and changing you somehow. Really good poems should have you tripping ovaries/balls … and I have tripped off of poems and other good literature before. I want that for my readers.

But readers will read, or they won’t. They will share the link to a poem on their socials, or they won’t. I leave that up to them/you.

Having a page on Facebook didn’t meaningfully change the level of readership I receive. Granted, I got daily pings instead of weekly ones, but I can’t dwell on those numbers when the point is to test my linguistic mettle a little every day. And as I said, I write because I need to write.

Thanks for reading. Be good to each other.

MS