Y’all, sometimes being the Friday blogger is a little rough. I was going to write about my love of Scrivener, but Cass beat me to it, and then I very nearly wrote an entire blog post of all the weird things I googled while writing The Diminished, but Julie beat me to it!
I started writing novels while I was living overseas, half a world away from all of the other writers I knew. Thanks to a curious mind and a millennial’s mastery of Google, it wasn’t long before I found my way to Twitter and the writing community there. It didn’t take me long to find friends– friends that I’ve kept to this day and with whom I have eeked out other spaces, away from the chaos of Twitter.
It’s interesting, I think, to consider the writers who came before us, who, if they didn’t make their ways to the creative hubs of their time, lived solitary existences, away from the others who practiced their craft. Now don’t get me wrong, some things about that kind of solitude– free of the endless comparisons and constant updates on other writers’ progress– are appealing.
But I am so, so grateful for my community of writers, and I wouldn’t have them without the internet. The internet has given me friends who keep me steady, who read my work, who make me laugh. Without the internet, I wouldn’t know what’s normal and what’s totally wacky. And when publishing gets wacky, which it inevitably does, my friends keep me steady.
For me, the internet that makes it possible for my writing community to come together from all the corners of the world is the most important piece of technology for me. Go out. Find your people. They’ll send you texts to make sure you’re meeting your word count goals and keep you honest when publishing gets wacky.
