About

Writing is, on the one hand, a solitary pursuit. You spend much of your time hunched over a keyboard, your weary eyes glued to the monitor, struggling to find just the right word or phrase to express what’s tumbling around in your mind, juggling character, scene, and plot in a desperate effort to craft a story that, despite being what is often dismissively called ‘pulp fiction’, will make a meaningful change in at least one person’s life. That’s right, even many pulp fiction writers see themselves as creating something of lasting value, which, I’m convinced, is why we become writers in the first place.

On the other hand, though, if you’re a published writer, you can’t help but be aware that you are not truly alone. The other critical element in a writer’s life is an audience. The readers who give of their time and money to partake of the results of his or her solitary quest. The last thing you want to do is alienate readers.

Thanks to technology, however, the juxtaposition of these two spheres creates an almost unsolvable dilemma for writers. Email, voice mail, social media; all the many ways we stay in touch, often with people we’ve never seen in the flesh, have effectively erased the boundaries to the point that privacy is fast becoming extinct unless you go completely ‘off the grid,’ which would then make it next to impossible for you to get your work in front of a potential audience.

Here’s the conundrum I find myself confronting. As my books reach more people, I’ve noticed that some want to establish contact, which is all too easy to do when you’re as public as I am, unfortunately. I receive emails to the account on my writer’s website from about two to three people a week. Now, that might not sound like much, and about a quarter of them are harmless—at least as far as intruding on my writing time is concerned. I’ll get the occasional query about my latest book, or a note from a reader who was upset at something in one of my books—now and then, even an email with kudos, which is always nice to get. About seventy-five percent of them are emails from people who want to start e-conversations. These are the problems.

Here’s an example. I got an email asking about one of my books, but without specifying the title, so I wrote back to point that out. That was responded to with a request for a link to the book or a question on what motivated me to write it. When I politely try to point out that I’m too busy with my writing schedule, teaching three online graduate courses, managing a think tank research program, and carving out time for exercise and family to engage in ongoing email conversations (at this point I’m getting a ten to fifteen minute lag between my email and a response), so I will not be responding. I try not to sound too abrupt—still not wanting to offend a potential book buyer—but it doesn’t work. So, I’m left with just one way to reestablish personal boundaries: I delete emails received from this particular sender, and after about five or six more, they stop—until I receive the next one.

Each time this happens, and it’s happening with increasing frequency, I fear that I’ve turned off at least one potential book buyer. But what else can I do? If I take the time to engage in ongoing email chats with people who don’t seem to have anything better to do than sit at their keyboard and write long emails to total strangers, I’ll have no time left to write. This is something these folks don’t seem to understand. Nor do they seem to understand or care that they’re intruding on my personal time. Whether this is deliberate rudeness or unintended, the effect is the same. I feel my personal space violated. I refuse, however, to be rude in return, and not just because of my desire to sell books. I was taught to respect the privacy of others.

So, here’s my plea to everyone. Email, the internet, SMS, and all of the tech tools that make it so easy for us to reach out and touch someone should not be misused. When we ignore boundaries, we can find ourselves being shut out, the exact opposite of what we might be seeking. Remembering to exercise moderation is the key.

There, I’ve said my piece, and I hope I’ve managed to do it without unduly offending anyone. If I have, my apologies, but don’t expect me to take the time to put that in an individual email.