“An author needs to keep some kind of exclusion zone round his mental processes”
Do I wish (Don) DeLillo was on Twitter? No, that would be grotesque: the worst thing that could ever happen to my relationship with his books.
Boxer, Beetle author Ned Beauman in an interview with Ideas Tap. I agree with this in part: writers who trade in a sort of aloof authorial demeanour or carefully-constructed mystique will not be particularly well suited to broadcasting or interacting on Twitter. On the other hand, Margaret Atwood — a writer one could hardly accuse of being frivolous — apparently enjoys a certain repartee with her Twitter followers.
As for the question of Twitter’s impact on productivity, you can no more expect to get any writing done if you’ve got Twitter open than you would if you set up a typewriter in a middle of a party. But few sensible people would advocate that one should never go to parties.
I hope none of the above reads as though I’m being dismissive of Beauman (from the evidence of Boxer, Beetle he is an exceptional writer) — or that I’m being precious or defensive about Twitter, for that matter.