Bitchpants Code = Snug

I'm an aspiring writer. And I'm getting really tired of all the extranneous stuff I'm being told I "have" to do to get published or sell books. It doesn't help that I'm a contrarian. The minute someone tells me I "have" to do anything, my back goes up.

I'm tired of my writer's email loops being filled with self-promoting "I'm guestblogging at X today, come on over!" emails. It's an incestuous echo chamber. There's nothing on craft.

It seems more and more of the writing life has very little to do with ...um, actual writing. We're told we have to develop a website, a MySpace page, have a Facebook presence, spend time blogging. Enter or judge contests, depending on where you are in your career. When do these authors find time to write?

Heresy time: IMO, time invested developing book trailers (hate 'em), in-character interviews (self-indulgent in the extreme), and message boards where fans come to squee regardless of the quality of the book (ego need massaging?) is time not spent writing. And WRITERS WRITE. Don't they?

I used to think so.