Writing Unplugged

One of my favorite (or at least most rewarding) things to do is spend an entire morning on my deck working on an essay, researching, and reading books. I love the cool breeze paired with my hot coffee. I love the natural light and the surrounding wildlife. I like when big, dozy bumble bees hover around me, mistaking my floral dress for actual flowers.

This past weekend, I broke out my typewriter and was even visited by a good friend of mine (yes, she’s a chicken, and shortly after this photo was taken she began to peck at my bruises).

 It felt so nice to be outside, surrounded by fresh air. This was on Saturday, and I challenged myself to stay away from my computer until 5:00 pm. Only then could I check my email, update my blog, or check the Sunday weather forecast. If I wanted to check a fact or look up a word, I was forced to put it off or use a dictionary. It was liberating.

Although I rarely check my phone and can easily go entire weekends without the internet, I do find that it can sometimes be a challenge to resist the lure of the internet, even while I’m writing. It’s become so easy to look up sources, to check my facts, to read reviews of a book I’m studying. These are great things. But it’s also easy to fall into dangerous habits, like taking multiple Facebook breaks, watching mind-numbing Youtube videos, and scrolling through the Twitter feeds of total strangers.

Writing unplugged from the internet, either in notebooks or on a typewriter, is absolutely liberating. Picking up a dictionary and carefully learning a new word is an activity I cherish, and marking my reading with sticky notes instead of browser tabs is a great habit.

From now on, I’m going to challenge myself to do the bulk of my weekend writing on my typewriter or in my old Moleskine. I’m more productive when I’m not enticed by the web, and I find that I don’t look for the easy way out of questions. If I want to know why Eliot quoted Baudelaire, I don’t type it into a search engine… I go pick up The Flowers of Evil.

Here’s to a more productive, more liberating summer!