Blogger: Mary Keeley
Location: Midwest Office IL
Why do we talk about connecting with people virtually through the Internet in chat rooms and social media places in the same way we talk about face-to-face conversations? How much time do we spend connecting with people we know and don’t know on the Internet compared to in person encounters? A comScore (www.comscore.com) report indicated that in 2010 Americans spent an average of 32 hours each month on the Internet. Ten of those hours were devoted to e-mail, on social networks, and playing games. The rest of the time was spent surfing, purchasing, and watching videos.
If these numbers are accurate—and I hope they are—it means we spend an average of one hour a day in the virtual world. Does that sound about right to you? It’s lower than I thought, and I’m encouraged by this news. We spend a lot more time on our computers writing or at our jobs. (Although for many, processing work-related emails goes into the equation as well.)
What are the implications for authors? First, I think it explains why word-of-mouth marketing continues to be the most effective method to promote your books. Although a lot of thought and emphasis is placed on Facebook and Twitter for your book promotion, and rightly so, they still take second place.
Second, authors write to real people, about real people (or characters who seem real), who have a multitude of emotional responses to complex, real-life situations. Your experience in real life helps you to understand these dynamics and apply them to your writing.
Can you envision a time when the scale tips in the virtual direction? How might that affect your writing? Your character development and plotting?
This is a far-out thought, thankfully, but not impossible as new technologies make the virtual world ever more accessible. Let’s celebrate real life today and hope and pray that our children and grandchildren will always feel this way too.
How do you think your writing would change if the virtual world were the majority of the way we experienced life?
How do the stats on time spent “socializing” online match your experience?
Cheryl Malandrinos
I work from home, so I spend 8 – 10 hours a day online performing a variety of tasks. Before the economy took a nose dive, it was said virtual offices were going to become more of a regular thing. It doesn’t appear to have happened any more than us becoming a paperless society.
I believe God designed us to be social beings. He realized it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, so He created Eve. While writers can tend to be more introverted, we still need to get out in the real world and interact with people. I can’t believe we will ever feel so comfortable within the four walls of our house that we spend more time interacting online than in person.
I imagine if we were experiencing the world virtually, the depth of characters would be totally lost. Think of how much is lost in the translation of email. Our tone of voice and our facial expressions can’t be communicated. How many times have we been misunderstood soley because an email has been taken out of context?
Creativity could suffer too. If we aren’t observing the world around us, will we have the necessary inspiration to create the stories we are meant to write?
Thanks for such a thought-provoking post.
Larry Carney
Indeed! Amazon may be able to tell you what other people who bought that recent book buy are also reading, but ones’ friends, colleagues, and family are still going to be the people who influence what makes one pick up a book in the first place.
While the movement towards this new digital frontier has some good qualities (the “democratization” of the publishing industry, ease of access) there are some downsides: the rise of many voices makes it hard to hear the well-spoken ones, and ease of access sometimes comes at the cost of expecting instant gratification.
Regarding the craft of writing, it is also a bit troublesome to consider if some day all language will consist of emoticons and slang.
Somehow, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” sounds a bit classier than “Where U @”
pat jeanne davis
Mary, One hour a day in the virtual world did seem on the low side to me, too. I appreciate the contacts made on social media. Many I’ve never met. I value my real world connections, too. Many of whom don’t use social media. The people I talk with face to face have become my strongest supporters in writing. I’m not surprised that FB takes second place in promoting a book. I celebrate real life today with you, Mary.
Mary Keeley
Yes! Excellent points, Cheryl. Thanks for sharing.
Larry, your last sentence pretty well describes the potential difference when taken to the extreme. Very funny!
You bring up a great point, Pat. As we increasing rely on the Internet and social media for research and interaction, we need to be watchful to balance it with our live community.
Joanne Sher
Oh, Mary. If you only KNEW how much I needed to read this. I’m TOTALLY off-balance, and I was just talking to a friend a few hours ago about just this. I’m missing the person-to-person contact, and it’s probably affecting my writing.
Gonna go out and “experience.”
Bill Giovannetti
I think the virtual world is a great interface with the real world. Real relationships form online. Real friendships. Real animosities. Real communication. We who follow the Living Word need to inhabit this virtual space well, for the cause of the gospel.
Some of the themes in my books are suggested by people’s stories/comments on Facebook or blogs. The virtual and the real come together all the time. Real life happens on Facebook (today, our community grieves over a Christian college graduate and young pastor shot dead in his car by a random thug… this grieving has been channelled thru Facebook).
Today, I walked into 3 bookstores, placing copies of my book in 2 of them, and getting set up with the 3rd (Barnes & Noble). In each store, it was REAL relationships that made it easy to sell books. One bookseller asked me to mention her store/location, etc., via Facebook and Twitter posts.
Who knows… maybe tomorrow’s generations will decipher today’s emoticons as some kind of high-level hieroglyphics.
It’s all good. I celebrate it all.
Blessings. Bill
Diana Dart
This is an uber interesting line of thought. Do those stats take into account different age groups? Meaning, are teens using virtual interaction more than seniors and is that difference skewing the overall number?
This likely affects how we write to certain audiences then, right? And how we promote our work to those audiences.
Mary Keeley
Thanks for your comment Joanne. I’m glad the timing worked for you!
Wow, Bill, sounds like you’re making both worlds well. Thanks for offering your experience of a balance blend. I’m guessing, though, that the balance might be different for men and women. Chime in everyone. What do you think?
The reference to this study that I read didn’t supply those breakdowns, Diana. Your speculation is probably correct.
Eva Ulian
Goodness Mary, one hour a day can hardly scratch the surface to what I do on internet. But then being semi-retired I consider this as an extension to my work. At my age, bumping into a virtual world after a life time of proper reality was magical, inspiring, grandiose… I had the whole world at my fingertips and it was/is, like walking on air at the sheer sense of miraculous wonder it gives.
However, when I went to India (I have self-published a history book on Rajasthan)and met all my virtual friends from facebook it was intrinsically absorbing that internet and the whole virtual world seemed but a carbon copy of what I was experience in the real world. Admittedly without the virtual world I would never have had that overwhelming experience in the first place, but the virtual world can never, ever replace reality… Yes Mary, celebration of reality- all in order.
Eva Ulian
ooops: The first sentence of the second paragraph should read:
… it was SO intrinsically absorbing that internet and the whole virtual world seemed but a carbon copy of what I was experiencING in the real world.