Online Political Behavior for Writers by Julie Butcher

 

Opinions are like behinds. We all have one and most people aren’t interested in seeing ours. With elections coming up I’d like to give two words of advice to aspiring writers.

STOP IT.

Think about it guys. You may be flaming one way and the agent who checks you out online flames the opposite direction. Do you really want your politics to interfere with your business? If you’re already published, roughly half of your buying audience will belong to another political party. Even if you were already a NYT bestseller, I don’t think that being politically vocal is such a good idea. At least until you decide that you really, really, want to be poor.

For example, the majority of us work a day job. What if your boss came to you and said you could trumpet your religious/political/spiritual beliefs if you took a 50% pay cut. You wouldn’t do it, right? In my humble opinion that would be DUMBER THAN DIRT.

You’re not dumb, you’re a writer and writers sell books to all of the people.

If you’re not writing about politics, you don’t need to facebook your political opinion. The same goes for twitter. And believe me I KNOW how hard it is not to answer some of the general tweets. Sometimes I yell at my computer when I see one that is particularly ignorant and stupid.

But I don’t tweet back.

If a facebook friend gets you riled up all of the time—unfriend them. If a twitter follower makes it hard to keep a serene online composure—seriously, do I need to say it? Decide which is more important; having a career in writing or being right on the internets.

Just FYI, if you get crazy I’ll unfollow you quicker than snap.