“Shutting Out A World of Digital Distraction”
Yesterday I said in my “Just Arrived” post on Courtney Schafer’s novels The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City, that one of the great things about the internet is the way it enables me to connect with other writers internationally.
While that reamins true, I also think the internet and social media are as much a curse to writers as they are a boon. I saw this article by Carl Wilkinson in The Telegraph and the thrust of it really resonated, as I feel that creativity requires concentrated time and energy, and the internet and social media are all about distraction and fragmented energy.
Here’s a snippet to give you a feel for the full article, which I feel would repay a read:
“Shutting out a world of digital distraction
Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers and Zadie Smith are among a growing group of novelists who struggle with internet-addiction. Carl Wilkinson investigates the powerful effect of the web on the creative mind…
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Tucked away in the acknowledgements at the back of her new novel NW, along with the names of friends, family, editors and publishers who have helped her, Zadie Smith thanks freedom and self-control “for creating the time”.
Every writer needs the freedom to be creative and the self-control to stick with a project until completion, but Smith has something rather more 21st century in mind: Freedom © and SelfControl© are computer applications that can be downloaded and configured to increase productivity by blocking access to the internet.
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It seems that Smith, Hornby, Eggers and the rest have taken to heart a comment made in 2010 by Jonathan Franzen, …: “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”
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I feel Franzen may well be right—but to read the rest of the article, click Here.