Writing will result in people reading your work, and people reading your work will result in them talking to you. Even if it’s only friends and family. But of course, like all of us, you dream of lots of people reading your work.
By the act of writing, whether you want to or not, you open yourself up to scrutiny and criticism, as well as praise and admiration. Interacting with your readers will take time, and that time will be taken out of your writing time.
How to balance it?
Some writers choose to be kind and respond to everyone with love, even to those who trash their work. Other writers choose to take a stand and respond to everyone with firmness, keeping strict boundaries, and trash those who choose to trash them. Twitter is full of both examples.
I’d tried both. I was trashed on Twitter, and I trashed those who trashed me in response. Wrong. I then chose to respond with kindness to everyone everywhere, and it gave me more peace, but it was still wrong, as reading the trashing left me devastated, no matter how much kindness I gave in response.
I’ve come up now with the third option that works miracles and that has given me back more writing time.
I’ve eliminated the human factor everywhere I could, learning how to say no, how to say no often, and how to say no in such a away as not to hurt the other party but giving them one firm decline that is kinder than dragging them through a conversation without a firm decision, afraid to decline them. And I’ve learned to respond with silence to requests that are unreasonable, inappropriate, or issue from people who have no power over me and to whom I don’t have an obligation.
It has been very peaceful since then.
I love people. Love, love, LOVE people. And yet I’m an introvert who loves solitude and gets charged by solitude more than by interaction with people. So I’ve learned my interaction limits, and eliminated the interaction that irritates me, or takes away my sleep. My patrons on Patreon are my beloved tribe who lift me up, and that’s where I spend most of my time talking. The rest is mostly done.
I suggest you try it, to reclaim your writing time and your peace of mind.