How not to respond to reviews, and why social media is bad for authors

It seems to me that "social media" has done more harm than good for writing. I mean, a lot of authors really capitalize on it, using their Twitter streams and Facebook pages to engage with fans and build a massive following. There are authors like John Scalzi and Charles Stross who build an intelligent and dedicated following on their blogs (honestly, I think Scalzi owes more to his blog than to his books for his preeminence in the sci-fi field), but it's important to note that they have been at it for a long time (Scalzi was blogging, and also writing professionally, before he was a published novelist), and they make their blog content interesting in itself, not just because you happen to be a fan of the author. Authors who just create Facebook pages and Twitter accounts because nowadays all the agents are saying you need a "platform" seem likely to do themselves a disservice.

( Why I don't Tweet and my Facebook page is boring. )

AQATWA: cutting room floor material

Wrote almost a thousand words today, but I don't know what I'm going to do with it. (Too long-winded, infodump about the history of the Ozarkers.) It was supposed to be a story about Troublesome, and trying to write an authentic-sounding folk tale from a fictional culture loosely based on a real one is really hard.

So anyway, I kept writing even though I'm pretty sure it's going to get chopped.