In the November/December issue of Poets & Writers - The Indie Innovators issue - Adrian Versteegh has a brief piece on the challenge writers have in shutting out the noise of the internet so they can get some writing done.
The usual suspects are cited, from Jarod Lanier of You Are Not a Gadget to Nicholas Carr of "Is Google Making us Stupid?" and The Shallows fame. Write Room, Dark Room, Q10 and Writespace are noted as vital tools that allow one to write without the distractions that TweetDeck and Facebook and Tumblr throw up in unwitting writer's ways when all they really want to do is get back to their plots.
All good. All well. All fine. I get it. (Other than, um, why have most "distraction-free" options opted for a horrific green screen vibe? Must distraction-free also mean design-free? Pfft.)
What I loved most, however, is Wells Tower's approach. He "maintains two separate writing spaces: one with an Internet connection (for research and magazine work), the other without." The money quote?
"It's difficult to write good sentences and simultaneously buy shoes."
Indeed. Yet, I try in vain to accomplish said feat on an alarmingly regular basis.
