Quitting Social Media to Finish My Book
Hello, my lovely MsBrowns family, and welcome back to the AllAboutBooks hearth.
It is NotesOnDawn here, checking in with a heart full of autumn air and a desk covered in the beautiful, chaotic remains of a project nearing its finish line. We are officially at Day 45/70 of my challenge to finish this short story collection before we ring in 2026.
If you have been following the countdown, you will know that Day 70 was our starting point. At Day 45, we are now roughly four weeks into this focused sprint, and I have some wonderful, slightly shocking news to share: it is going super, super well!
I know I have been a bit like a ghost lately, flickering on and off your Instagram feeds, appearing for a moment before vanishing back into the shadows of my notebook. But there is a very deliberate reason for that silence. I am finding that as the deadline for my collection looms, my appetite for the digital world is shrinking while my hunger for the analogue one grows.
Today, I want to talk about that transition, the "weirdness" of stepping back after a lifetime of sharing, and the sheer, exhilarating joy of having only "two and a bit" stories left to go.
The Backlog and the Breakthrough
Firstly, let’s talk about progress. When I last checked in around Day 53, things were "ROUGHHH." I was battling a cold, work was draining my soul, and I was relying on voice dictation just to keep a single spark alive.
What a difference a few weeks make.
I managed to film quite a bit of this writing challenge even during my time away from the apps, and looking back at the footage, I can see the shift in my own energy. I have moved from the "struggling to survive the 9-to-5" phase into what I can only call the "flow" phase. I am currently staring down the barrel of the final few pieces of the puzzle: I have about two and a bit stories left to finish.
There is a specific kind of magic that happens when you reach this point in a long-term project. For years, since 2022, actually, this collection has been a vast, nebulous cloud in my mind. Now, it has weight. It has a beginning, a middle, and a very visible end. I feel incredibly hopeful. The "bit" of a story I’m working on feels like the final corner of a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. You know the one, where you stop looking at the box and just start feeling the shapes of the pieces because you know the landscape so well.
The Collective Realisation: Reaching the Social Media End Point
The most significant change in my process over the last few weeks hasn't actually been about my prose, but about my presence or lack thereof online.
I took a few weeks on and off Instagram recently. Initially, it was a necessity because I was too tired to "perform" my creativity. But then, it became a choice. I have decided that apart from sharing these updates and essential bits of my journey, I will likely continue staying off the apps and trying to be more analogue until this project is finally done.
I think I’m part of a larger shift. I believe there is a collective realisation happening right now for many of us in the #writingcommunity and beyond: our capacity for social media is reaching an end point.
For years, we have been told that to be a "writer," you must also be a "content creator." You must post your aesthetics, your word counts, your "writerly" morning routines, and your book hauls. We have been conditioned to believe that if a story wasn’t shared in a reel with the perfect trending audio, did it even happen?
My capacity for that performance has reached its limit. I found that every time I opened an app to share a "Day in the Life" of my writing, I was stepping out of the story and into the gallery. I was looking at my work through the lens of how it would be perceived, rather than how it felt to write. By choosing the #analog path for the remainder of this challenge, I am reclaiming my own attention.
The "Weirdness" of Silence After 14 Years
This is a strange transition for me to make, and I want to be honest about that. As someone who has been sharing her life consistently since the age of 14, thinking about not posting at all is a very weird thing.
I am a digital native. I grew up with the internet as my diary. From the early days of blogging to the rise of Instagram, I have documented my growth, my reading tastes, and my writing journey for over a decade. To suddenly "go dark" feels almost like a loss of identity. There is a nagging fear: If I don’t post, do I still exist to my community?
But as I sit with this feeling and I am going to sit with it for a while, I realise that the silence is where the stories live.
When I was 14, sharing was a way to find a tribe. Now, as I work toward finishing a professional short story collection before the end of 2025, sharing can sometimes be a distraction from the tribe I’ve already found my characters. Going analogue isn't about hiding; it’s about intensifying. It is about taking all that energy I would usually spend editing a reel and pouring it into editing a paragraph.
The Analogue Advantage: Why it Works for the Final Push
So, what does this "staying off the apps" and "being more analogue" actually look like in practice?
It means my phone stays in another room while I write. It means that when I finish a particularly "core" scene, my first instinct isn't to take a photo of my notebook with a cup of tea, but to simply take a sip of that tea and think about the next scene.
There is a psychological depth that comes with analogue focus. When you aren't constantly interrupted by the "ping" of a notification or the urge to check your engagement metrics, your brain can enter a deeper state of "Theta" flow. This is where the truly surreal and magical realism elements of my stories come to life. These stories require a level of stillness that the modern internet simply does not allow.
By choosing to be analogue until the project is done, I am giving my brain the space it needs to finish those last "two and a bit" stories with the quality they deserve. I want the end of this collection to be as strong as the beginning. I don't want to limp across the finish line, exhausted by digital noise. I want to arrive there peacefully, with a notebook full of ink and a mind that is still quiet.
The Backlog: A Gift for Later
While I am staying off the apps for my own sanity, I haven't stopped documenting the process entirely. I’ve been filming the backlog of the days I did write, and I’m so excited to share those with you in due time.
Think of it as a time-capsule approach to content. Instead of "Live" updates that drain my energy, I am creating a record that I can share once the work is safe. It allows me to be a writer first and a sharer second.
To everyone else feeling that "social media end point," I want to say: it is okay to step away. It is okay to be "weird" and not post. Your worth as a creative person is not measured by your consistency on an algorithm, but by your consistency with your own craft.
Looking Toward the End of 2025
We have 45 days left in this countdown (and only a handful of weeks left in the year). The goal is closer than it has ever been.
The plan for the next few weeks is simple:
Finish the "bit" of the story I’m currently transcribing.
Deep dive into the final two stories, allowing them to be as wild and surreal as they need to be.
Maintain the analogue bubble. Notebooks, pens, tea, and silence.
I am so grateful to the MsBrowns community for being here, whether I’m posting every day or once a fortnight. Your support is part of the "hopeful" feeling I have right now.
I’ll be back soon with more from the archives, but for now, I’m heading back to the notebook. There are characters waiting for me in the quiet, and I think it’s time I went to meet them.
Please enjoy the backlog of writing days I've shared in the reel it's a little window into the "super well" progress we've been making!
Until next time, keep reading, keep dreaming, and perhaps... try putting the phone down for an hour today. You might be surprised at what stories start to fill the silence.
NotesOnDawn