Thursday, October 20, 2011

Too Much Information....

I love the internet. I love that pretty much anything you need to know can be found within a few clicks of a mouse. I spend far too much time here, reading blogs, hanging out on Twitter and trawling other sites. But I'm beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

There is so much information out there for writers, and it's often conflicting. I want to be the best writer I can be, want to be successful at it and get agented and published. So I read blogs about writing and publishing and follow agents on Twitter. I write this blog to share and network with other writers. I take part in blogfests. Oh, and every now and then I actually write too.

With all these things out there to help me be the best I can be, telling me what I need to do to reach my goal, surely it shouldn't be so hard.

But it is. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Too much of it can flummox you, make you like a deer in headlights, unable to move forward or back away. And that's how I feel at the moment. Buried in information that's supposed to help me, but is really just keeping me from being able to move forward.

Do you ever get overwhelmed by the wealth of resources available to you? How to you push through it?

3 comments:

  1. I completely agree that too much knowledge can be paralyzing. I had a boss once who loved to say "If you can't find a difinitive answer, make one up. You might be wrong, but you've got better odds of being right than if you don't do anything."

    I try and remember that. I don't always succeed, and I almost always second guess myself, but I pick a direction and move forward. I think despite all the doomsday warnings out there, mistakes are expected, and can usually be recovered from, even if the path turns out different.

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  2. I'm the Queen of Overwhelmed. My enthusiasm tends to trip me up when I search for tips and advice to improve my writing. It fills my head to the point of burying my story idea. Then, writing doesn't come easy anymore. I decided to seek out help when I'm stuck with my writing. Not before. Good luck!

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  3. Yep, too much information can be overwhelming, especially when a lot of that information contradicts with each other (that's the magic of the internet). When I feel overwhelmed, I just focus on the information "I" need and sift through the sites that I think will be of more importance, ignoring the rest.

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