The Big Empty

This is linked to my post ‘The Art of Daydreaming’. I realize that I think a lot in a void. Not having social media and not watching TV means that I’m somewhat distant from the modern world. It’s not something that I can quantify, but when I do hear about social media posts, they feel almost like a foreign language.  Not having social media also means a significant loss of audience for a (currently) self-published author. But I can still draw from social media as a bystander and use what I hear in my stories. So I can’t say I’m isolated, but sometimes I do feel as though I’m writing in a vacuum.

Contributing to my writer’s semi-isolation is the fact that I live in a small city in Italy, but I write primarily in English. This means being part of a community of writers is next to impossible. But there is an advantage, and that is, I am free to use my imagination without constraints. I can think inside “the big empty” and I write with virtually no worries. I don’t have to care what people think since I’m unknown. Eventually this will change, but in the meantime, being unknown has been hugely powerful in fuelling story after story. And I think anonymity has helped the quality of my writing as I have fewer distractions.

To sum it up, staring at the wall for an hour is highly productive.