Member-only story
There’s a part of me that enjoys getting distracted; the dissipation of technology; it creates a numbing womb around my brain — tells me, no, no, don’t work on your novel, your play, that poem, don’t finish the book your reading, don’t practice languages. Just sit and watch.
When I first moved to New York, I would leave my (flip) phone at home. Just wander. I worked on a novel, by typewriter or hand mostly; my laptop took 5 minutes to boot up and didn’t work without being plugged in — I couldn’t take it anywhere. Now I do 75% of my writing on my laptop — much of it here, on Medium; for an exclusively digital audience.
My brain has become more and more resistant to the old tools — my typewriter is in Pennsylvania, at my parents house, so I don’t use it very often. I used to go home a lot to write, but I have less and less time to escape because my work in the city is too demanding, demands too much of my time.
As a writer, my writing is my existence, so when my writing leaks away, or dissipates, loses focus and concentration, my existence seems to leak away. I cease to know who I am; I seem to be reduced to a buzz of neural activity, a swarm without a central personality. Anxiety.
Does writing need to be written by Writers — central organized personalities? Or can writing be performed by these buzzing swarms; these former personalities? These shattered souls?
