The Dark Side of Addiction

I've been a member of a few different writing workshop websites over the past several years. At first agog at the idea of online communities I related to, I soon melded with the stated site missions, committing to group activities and trading critiques with other members. The lure of near-constant attention paid to my writing was irresistable. I bought in. Have bought in.

Even though I can see the danger of giving myself up to the power of semi-anonymous acceptance (and sometimes admiration) based on my writing and site contributions, the instant audience for my stories and tremendously alluring feedback loop, reality is hazy by comparison. Flat. Gray. How I imagine the world looks to someone considering dropping their sexaholic lifestyle.

Reality: these sites are only tools, by themselves not the path to development as a writer. Feedback from a variety of readers is valuable at a certain stage in the work's progress, but allowing myself to assign emotional importance to what others say about my work leads me astray--my work is no longer completely mine if I give others veto power over it.

I've stagnated as a storyteller, let myself settle for immediate gratification when I should have been working on the mundane but steady path to improvement, to becoming closer to being the writer I hope to be. I've exposed fragile, incomplete efforts to outsiders when what they needed most was my undivided attention and the private freedom to make them magical. I see these works as carcasses, half-eaten and spoiled in the heat of the sun. I've sold out, and I haven't gotten any money for it. I'm a fairly shoddy whore, really.

I've decided to pull back from my online communities--to shift my focus back onto writing as a learning process. I have too much unfinished work to keep coasting, reveling in the easy camaraderie of others who may or may not be quietly finishing their own work in the shadows.

Writing is a solitary endeavor for a reason.