Who needs a social network to persuade her not to do any social networking? I do! I love all those websites that allow you to meet like-minded people, share embarrassing photos from high school, and talk up your book/album/organic bath products, etc. Too much. Which is why I'm going on a cyber-diet. That's right. I'm declaring Tuesday, March 3, a social network-free day, and asking you to join me.

Why? Because I'm supposed to be writing a novel, but I spent all of Tuesday setting up a facebook fan page for The Year of Fog (you don't think I'd miss this opportunity to promote it, do you?), and much of Wednesday discussing fan pages and the like with other writers, in several cases sucking them into the vortex. How many words of my novel did I produce on Tuesday and Wednesday? 157--TOTAL. For authors, there's a great deal of pressure to get our books into the hands of readers. But, somewhere in between all the promoting, the books actually have to get written.

The rules: no Facebook, no Goodreads, no Linked-in, no blogging, no Redroom (no matter how much we love it, which we all do), no Library Thing, no (name your poison) for one whole day. My personal poison is email, so I'm cutting that one out too. Spend that time writing instead. At the end of the day, take a look at your word count. Now, how many social-networking-free days would it take to finish that novel?

Okay, who's with me?