Market Research Or Waste of Time?

Well just for the heck of it, I just toodled on over to the community section of LJ to see what there was to see in the way of writer’s communities.  I am a member of only 1 (the name of which I don’t even remember), with which I was NOT impressed (other than the fact that it brought me my fabulous and wonderful writing buddy

susan402

).  When I clicked on “writing” as an interest, it came up with 402 communities.  Hmmm, I just noticed the irony of that…  I browsed through a few before I just gave up.  I regularly read 3 writer’s blogs, Romancing the Blog, Murder She Writes, and Romance Worth Killing For.  These are all professionally geared blogs that deal with topics and issues in the genres of romance, suspense, and (big surprise) romantic suspense fiction.  They are maintained by various professional writers who have lots of great advice to impart about this exciting and sometimes frustrating undertaking of writing for a living.  I enjoy the weekly posts on these blogs and was hoping to find perhaps one more to add to the list–well it won’t be through LJ.  I don’t have the patience to dig through them to find any that might actually be worthwhile.  And it occurred to me that a great many writers and aspiring writers end up wasting a great deal of time catching up on news in “the biz”–to the exclusion of getting any (or much) actual writing done!  So far with my new daily system, that doesn’t seem to be a problem.  If I haven’t finished my word count for the day, I don’t touch the blog scene.  I’m a member of a great writer’s workshop group on ForumsAmerica, although I haven’t visited in a few weeks (since my laptop died).  I’ve been more concerned with getting the writing done than with workshopping it.  And right this moment I don’t have a great deal of time to read and write the requisite crits to earn posting rights for my next chapter.  Once I knock out my full drafts, I’ll be more interested in workshopping them to get both ready for the process of shopping it around for publishers and agents.  In the meantime the privileged few (or perhaps the privileged one?) are reading and critiquing my daily progress and helping me brainstorm for  the plot further down the line.  And I, of course, return the favor for her.