me and e-mail

[swan_tower]

Imagine a cartoon hamster. She's running on her little hamster wheel, whiskers flailing with effort, and then the wheel starts going faster and faster, because she's not the one making it turn; and then finally it starts going so fast that it flings our poor little hamster off into space.

That's me and e-mail, right now.

Something like half a dozen times over the last couple of months, I've put out a herculean effort and gotten my two inboxes down to a state of near-manageability. Just when I think I've got the problem licked, though, twenty new messages come through and I start getting swamped under again. And so the cycle goes.

A large part of the issue, I've come to realize, is blog comments -- which get e-mailed to me -- and that puts me in a bind. See, I like posting here on LJ, and over at SF Novelists. I especially like posting stuff that generates actual discussion. But then I get a minor flood of comments, and they're comments with substance in them, that deserve substantive responses; so they sit around waiting for me to have brain enough and time to deal with them, and next thing I know my inbox is stuffed again. Which makes me feel guilty, because a lively back-and-forth is a pretty important ingredient for a lively blog, and I want the latter but am having trouble wrangling the former.

(And in the grand scheme of things, my problems on this front are tiny. I do not have the readership of some people I could name, much less the kudzu comment threads.)

This is not a problem with a simple solution, and I'm not expecting anybody to hand me one. But I thought it was worth at least acknowledging the situation, so you'll understand what's going on when I say: I'm sorry for not having responded to stuff, and I'll try to get to some of it (but may not get to all of it) as soon as I can.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree -- but there's also a little voice reminding me that in certain respects, LJ is part of my job. "Being interesting on the Internet" (to borrow a phrase from a friend of mine) is part of self-promotion, not so much in a directed way (buy my books!), but in the way that helps raise my public profile. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of this being something I do just to benefit my career, and interacting with people (rather than flinging stuff up and ignoring what results) is one of the ways I make it meaningful for myself as well as others.

It's finding the balance point that's hard.