On March 13, I posted about the importance of solitude to the writing process, writing:

“My experience has been that in order to bring the colour and depth of the story in your mind — which one hopes comprises the richness of the world, the nuances of the characters, and diversity and complexity of the plot — to the page you need to minimise interference with the ‘signal.’ Solitude, and/or long periods of uninterrupted time, are both an important way of achieving that outcome. Why long periods? Because the uninterrupted signal also needs to be sustained.”

But as Cynthia asked then: “What about online interferences? … don’t you think that’s detrimental to the creative process as well?”

I promised Cynthia an answer “later”, and this has perhaps been much later, but my reply is: Yes, absolutely. Online interaction, to me, is very much in the nature of hanging out in the midst of the coffee house or the market square, and although that can be stimulating, it is also by its very nature immediate, interactive, and short term in focus. The complete opposite, in fact, of the novel-writing process as described above.

So it stands to reason, or so it seems to me, that immersion in the one will actively work against one’s ability to deliver in the other.

The conumdrum for the modern author though, is how that will work out in a contemporary world where the received wisdom is that it is vital, in order to succeed, for the writer to be active on social media. Yet that very activity “may” be undermining the writer’s ability to maximise her or his creative expression.

I say “may” because I feel it would be presumptious of me to assume that my experience is universal. It may be that there are writers who feel that immersion in the “coffee house” and the “market place”, simultaneously, enhances their ability to write.

But my own experience is that the two work against each other and cannot be engaged in at one and the same time.