Social media for the anti-social writer

I am not social. In fact, I generally don’t like people. Except you. You’re my friend, right? I’m comfortable when we’re together, one on one. I love to catch a movie, eat dinner, or listen to a band. But invite eight or nine other people and I’ll retreat into my shell. I won’t tell you the funny story about my husband and his off-label use of capsaicin cream. I won’t confide that I’m worried about my daughter or sluggish because I didn’t make it to the gym this week.

So what do I do instead? I write. I sit at my computer and type, over-think, and occasionally cry. I repeated this process until I somehow produced a completely unintentional novel. Then, simply to challenge myself, I randomly shot out queries to small presses and agents while preparing to self-publish. No one in their right mind would expect a positive response on an unintentional novel that was written in less than three months by an engineer. But one wonderful small press offered a contract for said novel and completely changed my world.

This should end my happy story. But somehow, this is where the hard part begins, because now I have to be social. I am supposed to sell you my book. Never mind that pesky hang-up that I have no physical product to push on you. 

I keep an Excel checklist titled How to be Social. That isn’t neurotic – right? It grows by the day. The other day I joined Book Blogs. I add it to a list including Facebook, Google plus, Goodreads, Pinterest, Twitter, and Stumble Upon. Maintaining all of these sites is a full-time job.

I didn’t produce a book with the intent of fame or fortune or even profit, for that matter. I really just hoped a few nosy friends would be interested and it gave me something to talk about other than my husband and kids. So I find myself in a pickle, because now the product is in the pipeline and I’m more proficient in writing than I am in making friends online, exactly like real life.

How do you correlate your time spent marketing vs its effectiveness? How do you balance marketing vs actual writing? When you accumulate thousands of friends/followers/likes, do you actually become friends with some of those people? Is there a sense of connection or do you just follow each other to boost numbers?

When every semi-amusing thought in my head becomes a 140 character Twitter blurb, it cannibalizes my true writing purpose, which was always selfish, and my time to reflect on my life and explore new ideas diminishes. Jostling to find a place in social media is reminiscent of flagging a bartender on Saturday night. I stand with the money out, no one looking my direction, and wish I was home in my pajamas. Now, even sitting at my computer, I miss my time alone.