The truth is coming out today y’all. If you’re a writer who wants to build and maintain a social media presence, you may be wondering if you should jump on the bandwagon of sharing your writing progress online. You want to fit in with other authors and share your successes… but wonder if you’ll be able to consistently keep up with the demands. Well, allow me to help! Today, we’re covering the Pros and Cons of sharing writing progress online!

Pros

There are numerous benefits of sharing your writing progress online, including, but not limited to:

Sharing Could Increase Your Motivation to Write

The thing about sharing your writing progress is that in order to share anything, a basic necessity is to have something worth sharing. So, generally, making a goal of sharing your writing progress inspires you to get to work on that story!

Sharing Could Help You Keep a Log of Your Progress and Milestones

Whether you post progress updates once a month, once a week, or even every day, those posts add up into a digital log of your writing progress and milestones. It’s really nice to look back on to see how far you’ve come with your project or career.

Sharing Could Motivate You to Strengthen Your Writing Speed

If the main focus of sharing your writing progress is on increased word count, then making a goal to share about your progress could motivate you to strengthen your writing speed. This could be done by implementing timed writing sessions, or increasing the number of writing sessions you currently do.

Sharing Could Help You Overcome Writer’s Block

Again, like I mentioned in the first Pro, in order to share, you generally have to have something to share about. If you’re currently stuck on your work-in-progress, setting a goal to share about you WIP on social media at the end of the month could force you back into a writing habit, even if you end up writing gibberish, and eventually break your spell of writer’s block.

Sharing Could Lead to You Finding a Writing Community

If you do no currently belong to a writing community on social media, sharing about your writing progress could help open doors to friendships with other authors in your genre, or likeminded writers who share similar writing habits. It’s always nice to have someone who understands rooting for you!

Cons

However, all those positive pros could also turn into consequences:

Sharing Could Increase the Pressure to Write

If you’re in a rough patch of life and do not have the time or motivation to put pen to paper, then having a set deadline of posting about your writing progress can turn what was supposed to be a fun social media post into a crippling chore. Remember to be kind to yourself when making writing deadlines!

Sharing Could Remind You of How Often You Don’t Write

On the flip side of the Pro of creating a virtual writing log of successes and milestones, sharing your writing progress frequently could also become a virtual display of how often you don’t write if you’ve entered a season where writing is difficult, or you find you don’t have time for it. Anyone notice that I haven’t posted a WIP Update or an Editing Diaries episode lately? *Facepalm*

Sharing Could Become a Comparison Trap

Sharing about your progress is great if you stay focused on how you can outdo yourself, but when you post on social media, you can easily be distracted by the progress of everyone else you follow as well. If you find it hard to stay in your own lane and press forward, it’s easy to stray off the path and compare yourself to authors who are writing and publishing faster than you.

Sharing Could Reinforce Writer’s Block

Again, sharing regularly could begin to feel like a chore, especially if you’re going through writer’s block. The looming pressure of having to come up with something to share about during your writing progress update, rather than being a kick-in-the-pants to get you going like I mentioned in the Pros section, could actually end up being a kick-in-the-teeth instead and cripple your creativity even more.

Sharing Could Invite Criticism

For the most part, writing communities are beneficial to writers, but there will always be a bad apple in the bunch. Sharing your writing progress online, or sharing anything at all, really, has the potential to welcome criticism from anyone who comes across the post. So, post with caution.

My Verdict

As some of you know, I’ve posted regularly about my writing and editing progress before, and recently have fallen off the wagon with that due to my upcoming wedding. My current verdict is that, in seasons of life where you’re unable to make writing a priority, it’s probably best not to impose sharing frequent writing progress updates with your online audience. In seasons where you’re full of vigor and the words are flowing through your fingertips at lightening speed, and writing is actually fun for you, then by all means, share away.

While I feel that it is important for authors to be transparent with their audiences, authors are also human. We need breaks just like everyone else, and we shouldn’t feel guilty for taking them from time to time. Sometimes, we need to take breaks for a while just to replenish our creative wells. 🙂

Talk to Me, Arrowheads!

So, are you Pro sharing writing progress online, or against it? Why or why not? Share your opinion in the comments below!

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson 😀