Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Rules of Writing Question

Jonathan Franzen said "It's doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction."

What do you think?
Personally, I would go nuts without having the Internet, mostly because I couldn't bring my various reference books with me to England, so my dictionary, thesaurus and anything-else-I-need-to-look-up are online.  I work 9-6 at a day job, so the library isn't an option for me either.  I use the Internet to fact-check, come up with character names and, yes, to procrastinate.

1 comment:

Rhiannon said...

I think inspiration can come from anywhere. Even from LOLCats. :)

Also that it's silly to discount a massive resource like the internet, which can serve as editor, publisher, fact checker, distraction, communicator, teacher, supplier and distributor for pretty much any subject/object that you could possibly ever want.

I love libraries too, and I think to write 'good fiction' you need to be able to experience reality so you can be better at making it up later, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the vast accumulation of data that is the internet.