I’ve seen lots about the con side of net interaction lately so I thought I’d talk about the pros.
1. Community. You can get to know people via online interaction you might not meet otherwise, or you might bump into them at a conference but not long enough to get a chance to know them. I’ve met so many great people via blogging and groups. Writers and readers. These are people who make me want to go to conferences in order to get a chance to hang with them in person.
2. Opportunity. I was invited into the Sekrit Projekt I mentioned yesterday by people I would never have met outside of the internet. We are having a lot of fun with our project and I have high hopes it will be profitable for all concerned, but because of online interaction, they knew who I was, judged me a good fit, and approached me. I was also on Angela James’ list of people to invite to sub to Samhain before it launched. (I beat her to the punch and emailed Crissy first, heh, but if I’d been more patient I would’ve been invited.) The Wicked Writers, our group Yahoo loop, is another opportunity I was invited into by other authors in my genre; none of us could devote the time to running a group solo, but by banding together we could all benefit. Creative, business and promotional opportunity, all because of online interaction.
3. Education. I just finished taking an online class from Jamie Denton on budget promotion. I learned some valuable things from this class, have some new ideas and tools to apply to my next book release. I have also greatly benefited from Candace Haven’s Fast Draft, or how to write a book in two weeks. And then there’s the ongoing He Wrote/She Wrote Crusie/Mayer workshop with new topics twice a week, and the wealth of information in industry blogs. If you want to know how to write, what publishing terms mean, where and how to submit your writing, it is all online and readily available.
4. Fun. Yes, fun. Movie trailers, TV episode extras, the fun that is You Tube, music, comics, there is a lot of entertainment online. Netflix has watch-it-now for some of their titles, which we love.
Yes, there is a dark side to the internet because there is a dark side to human nature. But I’m enjoying the good too much to want to unplug because of the bad. I think about where I go online, how I spend my online time. It’s up to me to decide what works for me and how to use the powerful tool that is the internet for my benefit. Can it be a huge time waster? Yes. It can also be fun, informative, an excellent resource. It makes my world a bigger place. It’s up to me to make an experience valuable for me, and that’s true online or off.
Posting this in advance because we’re under Flood Watch and you know what that means. Very likely to lose power and/or internet. So if I don’t answer emails or comments, bear with me. (We’re not likely to get flooded out, just the usual annoyances.)
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