Writing Efficiently Despite Having All the Answers 1 — The Web as a tool, not a distraction

What makes a great writer? Curiosity? Inspiration? Knowledge? Care?

Let's take them one by one, and explore them in relation to the essential tool of our time — the World Wide Web. And for each, I'll suggest some efficiency guidelines so that the web can become a help more than it's a hindrance.

Curiosity

If you're writing instruction manuals, curiosity has limited use. Basically, the steps need to be expressed clearly, without a lot of opinion and nuance. But art happens when unexpected connections are made and often the impact depends upon the spaces in between. This makes the thrill of collecting bits and pieces of life and exploring them in enough detail so that their relationships become visible a positive practice for writers.

Even before the Web existed, I remember getting lost in libraries, often learning more from adjacent books than the ones I came to refer to. The web provides this library effect on steroids. With a few clicks, arcane subjects can be run down, often providing bizarre discoveries that are totally unrelated to the original intent.

This is a good thing when not taken to extremes. Unfortunately, it's easy to spend more time collecting artifacts (which can range from data to quotations to intriguing biographies) than creating new works.

Guideline 1. Spend no more than half as much time feeding your curiosity online than you spend drafting stories.

Inspiration

Articles, news stories, images, and opinion pieces can provide delicious, often nearly formed prompts and ideas for fiction. And this can be true from the inception of stories to their development to the drafting of scenes and chapters to finding just the right piece to complete the revision of a draft which includes an important hole.

For me, complete stories have come from a chance remark or a little-known fact. The shapes the stories have, at times, been determined by the structures of successful works that parallel my intentions. And I've often stumbled across an article and had it come to mind as my subconscious was busily searching for the answer to a story problem.

It's good to read regularly and broadly. But it's not very useful for writer to read opinion piece after opinion piece that dissects the latest outrage in the news, especially if these all come from similar perspectives. (That's just one example of feeding anger or hardening positions or be obsessive urged to read about subject past the point of diminishing returns.)

Guideline 2. Set a timer before you begin reading articles on the web, and choose the time of day that is other than your most productive writing time. (Give preference to your writing.)
Knowledge

One reason people read books, including fiction, is to learn new things. James Michener made a career out of elegant, in-depth novels that promised readers they would know more about a subject, essentially developing college course level expertise painlessly. Research into a region or a business or a time in history or technology can differentiate a work of fiction and support storytelling. It can, however, become a great excuse not to begin (or finish) a story.

In addition, I suspect some writers get to the point where the facts get in the way of the storytelling. It's very easy to dismiss options, include real facts that are difficult to believe, and magnify elements that are unrelated to the story's theme. I usually rely on my intuition when deciding when to stop research before a draft is written. I also may collect information about something specific over years before I know what story needs to be told.

When I am doing research as part of revision, that work is targeted toward filling holes and answering questions.

Guideline 3. What a story is not set, collect topic information in one file (preferably with some useful subcategories) that is clear, organized, and accessible over years.

Guideline 4. For revision research, clearly articulate what is needed, the specifications for satisfactory information, and how what is learned will be used for the work in progress.
Care

When drafting, I go to extremes to keep forward momentum. When I lack a fact or have a less than perfect word in the text, I'll mark it off with brackets.  If I don't have a near substitute, I'll simply put in the word, "bagel," and fill in those blanks with references once the draft is complete.

Getting it right, my care for the work, is secondary while I’m engaged in the creative process. But I need to move beyond that in revision. Before others see the work, I need to make make sure my facts are correct and my language choices are as good as I can make them.

A writer depends upon keeping the confidence of readers. Mistakes in language and facts can cause a reader to doubt or even abandon the work. Getting it all right matters. And this can't be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders and dependence on editors (as essential as they are). It's part of the responsibility to not be sloppy and to demonstrate respect for the work and the readers.

Guideline 5. Judiciously use Internet references (including fact checking sites) to make your manuscript as close to error-free as possible.
I hope this is a good starting point to explore your use of the Internet as a writer. Other uses (email, social media, entertainment, and marketing) may have more of an impact on productivity than these, next time, I'll provide some guidelines on avoiding distraction and generally fitting the Internet into the life of the disciplined writer.