These days, we spend our impulse to communicate quickly. It comes upon us and we can hop over to that rectangular box on Facebook and post that thought, pin up the photograph, forward the quote. The impulse dissipates, or we wait for the “likes,” the comments, we scroll through and make our own. It’s delicious, this immediate fulfillment of the impulse to communicate, but it’s also facile. Donuts when you are hungry, when your body is craving nutrition. It’s also like eating all day long, never letting yourself listen to that hunger—the hunger to communicate. Never letting yourself lean into it, prepare something wonderful, labor over it, in other words: write.
I used to teach people how to throw words down on the page. It’s easier to write than it is to worry about writing, I would remind them, and myself. It’s still a great tool to write down your struggles, doubts, frustrations, to think things through in written words, to dialog with yourself, with Wise Mind, with your characters, with the population of your past or future or present without actually hitting send. But what happens when that kernel of desire to capture and share is acted on right away? What happens when it’s not allowed to build, to be reconsidered, to blossom into something else?
In my novel, I am thinking through identity and memory and self, invention and lies and editing, fiction and truth. As I write these characters and also muse about these ideas, new angles and truths occur to me. I hash them through, discovering that some of my theories are inadequate to the mass of story I know, some of my characters are halves of each other or should be divided, re-apportioned.
There is something wonderful to be said for learning in public—Angie has blogged at times on “Public, Not Perfect,” about overcoming the impulse to hold everything back for the better version, the better idea, the perfect product. But there is also something to be said for learning in private, for having the conversation with yourself and giving it time to percolate before sharing it with your high school and college friends, your veterinarian and your sister-in-law.
What do you think? How has social media spurred your creativity and supported your impulse to communicate, and how much has it truncated that desire by fulfilling it too quickly?
I am definitely in the middle of my middle-of-the road camp. I had to stop writing “new” stuff by the end of the summer, I needed a break. Also, I was expanding my banjo and whistle skills. I love those things. And it was good to give the words a rest. The social media ennerve (?) me.
But, I dunno, I just can’t shut my deeper words up. I needed to get away from the White Teddy Bear story, but only far enough away to circle it and consider what is missing. And I got my answer. Still, I did not want to jump into writing. And then your pre-assignment for Craft came up, a nice catalyst, and I don’t think that’s what I’ve actually written today, I’ll have to check, but it’s what I wanted to write. A satisfying big explosion of situation, prequel to White Teddy Bear. The actual starting place was a surprise, but I recognized it. I like the surprise. The incubator, editor and writer like the surprise of the whole thing. So there we are, la-la. Write and sometimes don’t write.
So this was supposed to be about social media. I repeat, it ennerves me. I try to keep all my communications important to me. Little fluff, if I can help it. I have enough fluff with, you guessed it, my old BWW friends, washing dishes. And ancillary activities.