Just Write: Or How the Internet Might Be Making Things Hard for Writers

In 2008 Nicholas Carr wrote an article called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" In 2012 some professor at a New Jersey college made his Writing Arts class read it.

That was this weekend. I am in that class, and while I'm not sure if Google is making us stupid (although I'm more inclined to think "different" is a more accurate term), I'm certainly forced to wonder if the Internet is not making us different, and perhaps worse, writers.

This is a symbol for the "information super highway"
By  crewe1 on sxc.hu

In 2007 I still had dial-up Internet service (AOL!) and my time on the Internet was mostly reserved for cooperative writing. Long, drawn-out posts of fiction between myself and other writers. Most of it was trite, an exercise in which a bunch of high school kids who liked writing tried to be better than everyone else at writing. I'm not proud of anything I wrote in that time, although I don't regret it.

Yet soon after high school I finally got what everyone else already had: high speed Internet, and oh! how things had changed. Suddenly I could fly through pages, access information at the speed of light, and it was undoubtedly awesome, and yet as I was consuming more and more information, I noticed one this: I was producing less and less. I was suddenly a country who imports more than exports, and while it did not bother me at the time, it does now. Eventually I would become much like Nicholas Carr, going from page to online page in a dizzying speed, no longer reading as much as I used to, only with the added bonus of not writing much anymore either. It was suddenly a clicking game: A few sentences of writing here, another hit of the Internet, repeat.

It took me time to realize that perhaps this new way of consuming information was harming my writing, effecting my ability to sit and write the amount of words I wanted -- needed, really -- to advance as a writer. I could think of a thousand plots but I was no longer able to keep up with the speed of my own mind because so much time was spent jumping around. It got to the point where I eventually had to learn to deprogram myself if I wanted to have any hope of becoming a talented writer.

For me, the real change came when I was forced offline cold turkey, though. My computer fried, I was left with the plucky little netbook, which is good for nothing more than word processing and image-light websites with small layouts. I had to change my way of thinking again, going back to how it was in my dial-up time, where my word processing program was my favored application and the Internet was something to do on down-time, nothing more.

And for awhile I thought this was just me, but as I look at my lovely twitter friends I can't help but see many trapped in the same cycle, tweeting and browsing and posting about how they should be writing when instead they're trapped online, trying to get their thoughts out while still sating the need to consume more and more Internet information, and it makes me strangely sad. How many talented writers are unable to thrive in this environment? And what will it take for them to switch off the Internet, turn off their phone, and just write.

Because that's the most important thing about being a writer, isn't it? Being able to just write?