THE DOCTOR IS IN

WIRED—AND TRYING TO WRITE

I wrote last week http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/2010/06/the-doctor-is-in-1.html#comments about the burnout effect of too much electronic engagement. This topic fascinates me generally, as I know it does others, but of course what you look for here is relevance to writing.

It seems to me that the e-revolution has affected writers in two major ways. One has to do with the process of writing, and the other with the content of what we write. This week I want to talk about process.

Obviously, the internet makes research easier, faster, and neater. Fact- and date-checking used to mean laborious trips to the library, piles of scribbled notes, complex and often unreliable filing systems, and data that tended to be outdated by the time we got around to using it. Now it’s just there, in our living room, whenever.

The down side is, of course, that it’s just there, in our living room, whenever—and so is an endless stream of other information, most of it useless to us, and much of it virtually irresistible. We might start out to confirm the years in which the War of 1812 was fought, and end up embroiled in Napoleon’s romantic life. This can be fun, and ultimately fruitful, but it can also be a huge waste of time. And that’s only the information we seek ourselves.

Composing on the computer, for most of us, entails keeping an open email window, and for some of us, keeping one or more social networking sites active as well. And those little mail and message icons are really, really hard to ignore. Writing is lonely, scary work, and when we see that a friend is reaching out to us—even if the friend is a distant acquaintance, and the reaching-out consists of forwarding threadbare jokes, conspiracy theories, or “inspirational” nonsense—we feel less alone in a potentially hostile universe. This is a good thing, of course, except that it can have the effect of trying to sleep in the hospital—just when you get to a deep place, someone drops by to take your vitals or ask you for your social security number, and after a few hours of jumping back and forth, you tend to stay on the surface.

Even if we want to ignore all but the most authentic, heartfelt communications, our friends tend not to let us. They send us links that they assure us will crack us up or change our lives, and follow up a few days later to be sure we’ve clicked. “It’ll only take five minutes,” they insist, not realizing that we have three lifetimes of five-minute tasks backed up in our inbox.

I don’t have a good answer to this. I know I’ve offended friends by losing track of electronic conversations, failing to click through, and generally being a poor excuse for an internet friend. I’ve also been on the other end, wounded because someone I was in an intense exchange with suddenly fuzzes out, and I’m left wondering if I said something wrong, or if a more interesting conversation grabbed their attention—only to learn later that their sister was in a car accident or (in one case) that my friend had had a heart attack while writing to me.

Recently I’ve just been telling friends that I check email only every few days, and Facebook even less frequently—and doing my best to live up to this. When I’m writing I try to have only the document I’m working on up, and to pull up Firefox when I need to look something up, and turn it off when I’m done. I’m trying to do this, but it’s so hard.

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D.,is a clinical psychologist with a New York City-based practice. A fiction writer herself,she specializes in issues affecting writers and other creative artists. She is the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity(Seal, 2007). Her Career Coach column appears every Monday on Inside Higher Ed's Mama, Ph.D. blog, and she is a regular monthly panelist on Litopia After Dark. Send your questions to her at Dr.Sue at mindspring dot com.

Comments

[Rbholbrook]

I hear you! I often lose touch with my friends as well. Facebook and my blog get my attention once a week if that. Most of my social networking is delegated to my phone when I'm on the go. I've learned that if I want to write, I have to sacrifice some of my social life. Here's to hoping your true friends understand.