Forum / How is the Internet changing the way you write?

Marcus Speh
May 20, 05:33pm

I got interested in this after reading the EDGE book consisting of many answers to the question "how is the Internet changing the way you think".

My own lengthy convoluted answer is on my blog:

http://bit.ly/InternetWriting

There's no harm in continuing the debate here or there, or everywhere.

How is the Internet changing the way you write?

Ann Bogle
May 20, 06:20pm

Marcus, that is a sehr interessant post at your website with a useful link to writers' griefs about writing at the other website. I like the MBA dual triangle model!

My collection of stories and other prose comes in two volumes, yet to be published, the first written for print, the second for the Internet. I look into them as if they were a scope, and try to realize if the stories written for the Internet can have a similar effect to that of the stories written for print. The end result -- product -- seems different, the process on the Internet faster, the process for print slower. How the Internet affects product is a different question than how it affects procrastination.

Tendency to digress has always been with me, and it is a hallmark now. Audiences -- assuming their shorter attention spans and beginning with the voluntariness of reading what I write at all (as opposed, say, to the required reading of works on a syllabus) -- wend.

I dislike it when I refer to writing on the Internet IN a piece of writing intended for publication, Internet or print, as when I write Internet jargon: thread, email, Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Fictionaut, profile page, tweet, site, et al.

I view the Internet as a habitat.

Writing for the Internet is closer to writing for a daily or weekly publication; writing for print is closer to etching or inscribing.

James Lloyd Davis
May 20, 06:31pm

I believe that if the art of writing had navigational charts, marked with rocks, hazards, shoals and sandbars, Sirens, Scyllas and Charybdises, there might be a symbol for "major diversionary detour" and that symbol would be a photo of a shirtless Picasso behind a straw mask of a bull. This hazard would rank closely with most diversions suffered by would be novelists.

As always, you ask the most unique question, compelling, even, and offered up in playful, but deadly forms. Genius it is.

But... Consider how the Algonquin Round Table and the Summer of Love sucked up their respective generations into marvelous sidesteps, swallowed novels whole while the novelists in their various cups and hookahs followed the seductive capriciousness of marvelous ideas.

I read your post... but this time, I'm going to finish my daily two thousand words before I respond. (If I'm able.)

Love these concepts. Love diversion. Must be the addictive gene.

Marcus Speh
May 20, 08:40pm

Ann, I like your view of the Internet as a habitat. That's more than an office and more than a publishing venue. I like it. Of course, we are multi-habitat creatures, so one place is never enough. Perhaps you'd like to post this over at my blog, too.

Marcus Speh
May 20, 08:41pm

Jim, thank you, much appreciated. I'd love to hear your views on diversion and on communities swallowing novels over at my blog, too. Or here. Or both. But by all means get those words out of the way first!

Susan Tepper
May 20, 10:14pm

For me it has been both extremely helpful and intrusive. I'm writing less than I used to, because places like f'naut and facebook, and all the great people I've met online, take up a lot of what used to be my exclusive writing time. I get into a lot of fun and silly chats when I should be writing another novel. Who knows? I guess I'm trying to go with the flow-- and that has its ups and downs. But thanks to online I've been published in many more places than just print (which was my beginnings). So for that I'm grateful to the internet.

Meg Pokrass
May 20, 10:42pm

It has created a safe, happy nest for back-scratching social-media savvy average writers and Yay Team! players whose work would never have been considered interesting.

... and a terrific chance to have work seen (less commonly) by excellent writers, who are not good at either social media or the schmooze.

So much good, so much mediocrity.
SO MUCH... EVERYTHING.

It is easier to get published now than to walk the dog. And can often be done faster.

Jim V
May 21, 12:10am

Everything Meg said: ditto.

Dolemite
May 21, 12:31am

I disagree about the ease of publishing thing.

If you HAVE standards, then it is as tough as it ever was.

I, for one, won't submit to a "magazine" unless it's been online for AT LEAST three months, is "edited" by someone I know, responds in three days (max), has an acceptance rate of at least 85% and hands out Pushcart Nominations as if they were party favors (No Writer Left Behind!).

James Lloyd Davis
May 21, 01:03am

No writer left behind. Is that sarcasm? Hard to tell in some venues.

David Ackley
May 21, 02:11am

I'm not sure that the internet has changed the WAY I write--too many miles of bad road having established that, for better and worse--but it has offered, particularly here at Fictionaut, a place to publish work I'd never have shown before. I don't mean inferior work, but rather short pieces I would have either set aside or tried to work into a short story. These now become Flash. Even so, almost always they're fallout from a longer work in progress, a chunk that, perhaps with editing, can stand alone. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to write with a particular format--internet or print, say--in mind, exactly because it might change for the worse the treatment and form that need to proceed from deeper-in necessities of art.

James Lloyd Davis
May 21, 04:04am

Blackouts.

Like old television skits, fillers between one thing or another, with or without costume, but always unusual and unexpected if expected to succeed.

I think of flash fiction as both the medium and the massage on the internet stage, a theater of the absurd, the avante garde movie house, the postcard with an unusual theme. It can be many things and presents opportunity for study, a little theater production that gauges the taste of the readership and their willingness to accept new forms and voices.

Maybe it's like the borscht circuit, but rather than a proving ground for stand up, its an open mic for the writer, a place where he or she can try out new literary routines.

The internet has probably affected my writing most by providing this heretofore unavailable access to an audience with the added benefit of virtually instantaneous feedback. I started using it in the mid 90's posting poems and vignettes in online venues. In the past five years, I've experimented with flash fiction. Although I don't really think of my own flash fiction as an end in itself, some treat it that way and I won't argue about its value as an art form. I enjoy reading it, but for me, it's a vehicle for practice, for discipline, for experimental revery and flights of fanciful tangents, which may or may not go down in flames. It's also a forge for the iron pants a writer needs sometimes just to survive criticism, a place to build confidence.

All in all, I think the effect has been positive for me and believe I'm experiencing breakthroughs in style and form, made me a better writer... or at least a more successful writer. It makes for a marvelous apprenticeship, in a sink or swim fashion.

James Lloyd Davis
May 21, 04:06am

For the younger people here, borscht circuit = comedy clubs.

Meg Pokrass
May 21, 06:25am

I hear you Matt! and i have standards! And 3 mos old.. that is longevity! I love the Pushcart nomination party favors too, of course!

Your sense of humor, Matt, keeps me here. I mean on this forum. I mean late at night!

Dolemite
May 21, 06:51am

Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection—
We shall get ourselves rather disliked.

--Ezra Pound

Marcus Speh
May 21, 07:37am

I love all the different aspects mentioned here, including issues of quality (impossible to control, and who'd want to, 1000 flowers etc), the mission of Mr Matt ("No Writer Left Behind"), the word and application of "Borscht Circuit" (never heard of it but what's Google for), and the general spirit.

An editor of the European journal VERSAL speaks about the slush pile: http://bit.ly/JhUyCz

On my blog, Noah Cicero has turned my question around and says "it should be one's goal: not to allow the internet to change the way you write, but for you to change the way the internet writes." http://bit.ly/InternetWriting

Elsewhere, other things happen and eventually, if they're important or interesting to anyone and meant for you to see them, they'll land on your doorstep.

W.F. Lantry
May 21, 02:18pm

First huge step: it brings us into contact with other writers we never would have known. I was reading an interview with a Kurdistani poet this morning. I'm in constant contact with other writers all over the world. And that contact is nearly immediate. Erasmus was famous for writing letters back and forth with other authors, but often had to wait *months* for a single reply.

Second huge step: Ease of research. I used to have to haunt the library. And even then, everything took forever. Anyone who's ever had to use a concordance is grateful for the net. Side point: some of my best library finds were peripheral - picking up the book next to the one I was actually looking for. This happens much more frequently on the net.

Third huge step: Speed while actually writing. It used to be, when I was writing, I'd have a dozen books open on my desk. I'd be flipping through pages, looking for books on the shelf, searching, searching. All that took incredible amounts of time, and sometimes I'd lose the emotional spirit I was in. Now I have a dozen (or two) windows open on my desktop. Looking up a word takes a few seconds. Checking a reference is immediate.

Fourth huge step: there's not a good word, so I'll call it cleanliness. In the days of typewriters, every single piece I published had at least one typo. Remember galleys? One time, I very carefully crossed out a misprinted line, and wrote in the line as it was meant to be printed. The printer reproduced exactly what he saw from the author. When the book appeared, there was the old line, crossed out, with the correct line printed below it... complete with a new typo. And once it was set, there was no way to fix it.

It's easy to look at the situation now, and see problems. They're real, and they're important. But when I think of the process before the net came along, I shudder, and turn back to my screen... ;)

Best,

Bill

Marcus Speh
May 22, 08:17am

Thanks, Bill, personally, I oscillate between screen and quill, but all your points resonate with me.

Meg, Matt: enjoyed, thanks for weighing in!

I wonder what Ezra Pound, the old grouch, would have made of all this.

Sam Rasnake
May 22, 11:43am

Most likely, Marcus, the Internet would have killed Pound's writing - no Cantos - but would have saved his soul.

Ann Bogle
May 22, 02:51pm

Sam, what an interesting thought about Pound.
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