This past summer I took a bit of break from social media, which I’ve done periodically in the past for a few weeks at at time. As always, the time off offered some good reminders and fresh perspectives (including what I love about social media, but that’s another post). One insight that I’ve been thinking about lately is writerly obsession and our use of in-between time.
“Writers are not all here, because a part of them is always ‘over there’—’over there’ being whatever world they are writing about at present. Writers live in two worlds—the real world of friends and family and the imaginary world of their writing…. Each is compelling in its own way and each makes its demands on a writer’s time.” ~ Terry Brooks, Sometimes the Magic Works, page 5
Social media becomes an easy substitute for the kind of obsessive thinking that is good for writers, a kind of positive distraction. Think of the last time you were truly engrossed in a writing project. You went to bed thinking about it, you woke up thinking about it. If you were lucky, you dreamt about it. You may have bored your family and friends by talking about it. Like Terry Brooks, you went through your day only half present, because the other part of your mind and heart and soul was somewhere else—with your writing. This meant that any in-between times in the day—waiting in line at the Post Office, sitting in a car wash, watching a pot of water come to a boil—would be jealously snatched as writing time, if only to think more about the words you would put on the page as soon as you were able.
This was how writing worked for me at the beginning of my writing career, when our son was very young and before 24/7 internet and smart phones. I admit it happens more rarely these days. Those in-between times are too easily filled with checking email or Facebook or Twitter, playing Words with Friends, seeing if a friend has posted a new Instagram photo, or, these days, compulsively checking election news and polls.
When I do sit down to write, it takes much more effort to gather momentum than if I’d been quietly obsessing all day long. And if I can’t think of what to write or how to continue from where I left off, rather than stare into space until I figure it out, my phone is always within reach.