The Lost Pleasures of Writing in Isolation
Imagine if you will, that I am not a young, unpublished and abrasively earnest writer. Instead picture me as a 30 year veteran with many published books and literary awards to my name. Now imagine imagined me sitting down to write in my study, with its bare oak desk, and walls lined with bookshelf after bookshelf of rare literary classics. Behind my chair, a framed picture of Salinger, Updike and I hangs, a totem of past glory.
This is what imagined me writes, longhand.
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We have lost something and I’m not sure yet what it is.
Amidst the social media whirlwind, the shifting of marketing responsibilities from publishers to writers and the many technological fads, trends and revolutions, writers have traded away something that was once crucial to us.
I s o l a t i o n
Being alone. Thinking alone. Creating alone. Creativity untainted by the myriad and countless other creativities, messages and ideas flooding the blogosphere and internet everyday. Knowing for sure that an idea, a witty line, a paragraph of glorious prose, a story that needs telling come from somewhere deep within us rather than a tweet, status, or post we read two days ago. Only in deep thought and deep feeling can we create truly great things.
“It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” - Jonathan Franzen.
We have gained much in the age of Facebook, Blogs and Twitter, no question. At no time in history have writers been accessible to their readers as they are right now. Readers can find us, talk to us, learn a little bit of who we are behind our prose. In turn,we can find our readers, talk to them, stay in contact with them and most importantly, we can learn what troubles them or makes them smile in their sleep. We can find other writers half a world away and we can walk this writing walk together and stave off bad writing isolation. You and I, dear reader, have found each other through these marvels.
But I can’t shake the feeling that this was a trade and not a gift, that the use of our creative focus is a zero sum game. More blogging, tweeting, facebooking = Less writing, less thinking, less creating.
I wrote my last novel in Isolation. I wrote no blog posts, I read no blogs, I did not know what Twitter was. It took 3 years. Another novel beckons me now, and I am afraid to answer. How long will it take when there are posts to be written, blog tours, status updates, tweets and a thousand other connectors between the wider world and I. Where are the connectors between my deepest thoughts and I, my deepest feelings and I?
Perhaps I’m being a curmudgeon. Perhaps I miss the romantic glory of the old days. I only know what rings true in the rusty chambers of my heart. For every blog post I write, for every blog post I read, for every status I update, for every tweet I read and send, I must weigh the cost in writing creativity and productivity.
We have lost something and I am not sure yet what it is.
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It’s young, unpublished and abrasively earnest me again. It just occurred to me that this post is somewhat contradictory to Friday’s Becoming a Better Blogger: Your Role in the Blogosphere post. I quite like that. Maybe we shouldn’t be as socially connected as we are. But if we do decide to be socially connected, we should do it well, really well.
Also, Anne R. Allen has an excellent post about Slow Blogging and how it can help preserve your writing time. Check it out.
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It does seem counter productive to try and balance the frantic pace of blog promotion with the needed quiet time for creating. I am the queen of internet ADHD – I will get lost in procrastination for hours – surfing around Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds etc. Much of my reasoning for revamping my blog by adding a weekly and monthly feature post was to try and hold myself to a schedule…left to my own devices I am the epitome of the lazy writer.
I think a lot of self-discipline along with a mini-sabbatical from the internet – of whatever amount of time you can handle without serious withdrawal taking place -as well as setting up and sticking to writing scehdule. It’s the self-discipline thing that throws me..lol
I’m right there with you.
I have this thing for car blogs (especially autoblog) and I end up reading them when I’m supposed to be writing, or working on a blog post. I may have to start going somewhere without an internet connection lol.
Also don’t get a smartphone. I just got one recently and i’m even more addicted to social media now lol.
Thanks for stopping by!
Smartphones. Oh dear. I got a Blackberry and now understand the term “crackberry.” I actually mute the tones, so I don’t jump like one of Pavlov’s dogs each time the thing dings. I often just set it to ring for phone calls.
Ha! crackberry addiction is a proper disease and one with few cures too. Good for you that you’ve been able to limit the number of notifications.
I’ve only managed to not connect my work email to my phone so far but the torrent of social media updates is incredible.
Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for the shout-out. I’m glad the idea of Slow Blogging is catching on!
Crackberries indeed. I don’t own one and I’m sure I’d get nothing whatever done if I did. You make a good point about how writing used to be more solitary than it is now. I think that’s a good thing, in moderation.
Anytime and yes…those crackberrys are dangerous, contagious even.
I think it ends up being confusing for new writers because they are being bombarded with different messages. Agents say build a platform, publishers say the same, industry commentators keep remarking how much of the marketing burden rests on the writer’s shoulders. Few people say “write better. write more.”
I agree about the moderation. There’s a bad kind of writing isolation that can lead to either loneliness or an inflated view of one’s skill.
Thanks for stopping by!
As I had just taken what I intended to be just a short departure from my novel writing to check on email and found myself an hour later still not working on my novel, I know whereof you speak. So with this comment, I will bid adieu to the online world for at least as long as it takes me to finish the intended pages for my novel. Thank you for the reminder.
Anytime…hope you got some work done. Thanks for stopping by!
I think your imagined you may have a point, Mayowa. It seems clear that more distractions can only impede output. Yet sometimes I need to take a step out of a story, and refresh myself before stepping back in. A little blogging can sometimes be just the ticket. Yet it can also be an excuse to proctrastinate. Like, for instance, right now, when I have a story to finish.
Franklin,
It’s a mixed bag all right. Writing on one hand and connecting with all these awesome people online.
Thank you for stopping by.
I write longhand. I can push out an 85K first draft in about seven months. When I am writing, with a pen in a paper notebook, I don’t have any distractions of blogs and twitter and facebook. When I write at home, I don’t write on the computer. All of it’s longhand and I type it up later, as I finish each chapter. You have to find a way to focus on writing during your writing time. When I write, there is no computer, there is no internet, there is no texting or any of that. I have no choice but to face down the blank page.
Scott,
You just blew my mind. I was already in awe of your output (don’t you dare be modest, my google reader has the proof lol). That is an excellent way to get it done sir, no social media, no communication, just writing. I love it.
I scrawl into a writing journal sometimes but I can hardly read my own writing afterward. I might have to settle for writing somewhere without an internet connection.
Thanks for stopping by.
I wrote longhand in composition books for two years and loved every minute of it. The part I didn’t love was having to transcribe later. Now I do a lot of writing in my car or in coffee shops with my iPad and a bluetooth keyboard. Why? Exactly because they are isolated. I get so much more work done than when sitting at my big iMac at my desk. There’s nothing else to do, so I just write, sometimes for a couple of hours. So find a way to isolate yourself, you might find you’re more productive, then you can go back to being the assertive writer. Thanks for a great post.
Joel,
I remember you mentioned that (writing in your car) on one of your posts, think that was pre Ipad though. Anyways, I remember being amazed then too. It takes great focus to lock oneself away from everything.
Thanks for stopping by.
This is why I have kept away from social networking sites. I avoid them like the plague. I dislike having technology dictate to me what to do and when. I don’t like alarms ringing at me, demanding a post to be answered, a call to be taken or a post to be read.
Writing is all about freedom and I like the way you put that into perspective. Writers need isolation, we need to retreat into our den and just pour forth what is inside us. I usually find that most information on the internet is absolutely useless to me. There is a myriad of ways to order it, filter it, measure it, extract it but it always seems to be a floating mass of unintelligible blabber.
Blogs are better. I usually find I can connect and have a meaningful exchange of ideas in the blogosphere, but sometimes that can go too far.
I personally have no Facebook/ Myspace, no android/crazyberry phone and none of those Ipad thingies. I opened a twitter account eariler in the year and that was to connect with other bloggers. I don’t allow it to take over my life! Pen and paper is still the most comfortable way to write for me. It’s more organic.
I think this is as far as I’ll allow myself to go with the social networking thing.
VERY thoughtful post Mayowa, thanks for putting it up.
Zee,
You are way way ahead of the game.
I’ve been working hard on cutting back but I’m still pretty much in it. It does help when I consider the cost (lost time, risk of tainting creativity etc) of every post and every second spent networking.
Thanks for stopping by.
I too have kept my distance from facebook and twitter, in fact I was so bored with Twitter i was only there for a month and facebook not sure how long I’ll be there except to communicate with others.
I have been away from writing for about 3-4 years, I am an isolated person who literally due to my disabilities it keeps me from interacting with others well so in my Isolation I started writing back in 2000, I stopped in 2008 when I got hooked into being on forums and the like so good thing I’m preparing to go back into Isolation and work on my writing plans.
I found this article to be really interesting to say the least, enlightening to see someone else who finds the value in being alone to write.
I’ve dealt with stress from the things I do online and lost my motivation to write but now It’s coming back and reading this article here further influences my decision to cut the connection and get back to my stories since I was onto something potentially BIG back in 2008….the framework was there but I now need to go back to learning the basics of writing and can’t do that if I’m tied into facebook,my blog, or forums.
Course with my Aspergers which has triggered some nasty mood swings to say the least the past month,some ADHD, Short Term Memory Problems and the fact I have set a task so large that will take me YEARS to work on it It’s going to take allot of energy.
http://rborg42.wordpress.com/
That’ll give you a small taste of what I’m working on there.
Hello Tyjos,
First, welcome back to writing. We all deserve a break from it sometimes but I think writers always come back to the craft eventually. Funny enough it seems to be that way with social media too. We may be very social for a time and not at all for another period. What I try to do now is to write whether I am being social or not, that is to have writing be the constant (except when its not heh) around which all other things (social media, distractions etc) variate.
I find solitude very interesting, not only the solitude for writing but solitude for solitude’s sake. Is choice the difference between solitude and loneliness? Does that choice dictate how I react to solitude (good) and loneliness (bad)? What exactly am I trying to find or escape from when I stay on FB or twitter for hours at a time, is it enough? Interesting stuff.
I wont pretend to know what you’re going through with Aspergers, ADHD and short term memory loss or how all that affects your writing. I will only say good luck. I am wrapping up a novel now and it’s been more than four years since i started. I am a different person from when i began, weaker in many ways, stronger in some but the process, the writing has always been worth it. I hope it is worth it for you as well.
Thanks for stopping by and i’m glad you enjoyed the post.