I hate social networking. I do. I also love it, but that doesn’t lessen my hate. Allow me to explain…

If you’re anything like me — and if you’re reading this, you’re probably another science fiction and fantasy writer, so you’re at least a little bit like me — then you know exactly how effective Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and other social networking sites can be at helping you vacuum the cat. Oh sure, you could work on that novel or write that short story you’ve been thinking about… or you could check your friend stream, and peruse various amusing pictures of cats. Look, your friend Gary’s got a new chihuahua, and gosh, that’s a hilarious video of monkeys grabbing a sandwich from someone standing too close to the bars at the zoo! It’s midnight already? Oh well, no time to write tonight…

Don’t get me wrong, social networks aren’t all bad. Among other things, they’re good ways to remain connected to friends and family you might otherwise grow distant from. Awesome. But they’re designed to keep your attention on them instead of on, for instance, that novel or short story you’re trying to finish.

But suddenly that has changed, with the advent of Google+. Google has done something I once considered impossible: It has provided the world with a social networking site that actually helps its users be more productive, not less. It accomplishes this with something they call “Hangouts.”

A Hangout is essentially an on-the-fly group video-conference. It allows groups of people from anywhere in the world to chat with each other. For writers, this is an absolute miracle of productivity, because nothing quite gets the creative juices going like peer pressure. It’s why we meet up to write in coffee shops and libraries.

Now, if I’m in a writing mood, I can essentially create my own virtual coffee shop, announce its presence to the world, and let writers I can’t normally hang out with drop in for some productivity. It is, in a word, awesome.

How awesome, you might ask? Well, let me put it this way… As a parent of two young kids, I hardly get writing time at all before 9:00 PM, when my eldest is asleep. Most of my writing for the last few years has been on buses, while commuting to and from the day job. This is not a terribly productive atmosphere, and I usually have to pack up and get off the bus just when I’m really getting going. And at 9:00 it’s really hard to make myself write instead of surf the web for those aforementioned cat pictures. But somehow, knowing there are other writers staring at me through my webcam forces me to open that story document, and start writing — even if they can’t actually see me, because they’re too busy looking at their own story documents. Their mere virtual presence is enough shame fuel to get me started. And of course, once I’m started, I keep going, because I like to write. All I need is some impetus, and something to distract me from the cats.

So from now on, I’ll be doing these hangouts regularly. Right now, Wednesday nights starting at 9:00 PM seem to work best, but I’ll update if that changes. If I have a couple hours to spare at other times, I’ll do hangouts then, too. If you see me, drop by, say hi, and start writing.