Communication Through the Internet Has Made Me a Better Writer...

Is the internet and things like DMs and Messenger the new form of letter writing? Is it so bad? We had this discussion a bit in The Nu Romantics the other day about the handwritten manuscript, notes, or letters, that it is becoming a lost art, the beauty fading, and so, too, may be our words. Are these capabilities making interpersonal relationships and communication a thing of the past? Are we doomed to face a world like the one presented in the novel, "Ella Minnow Pea"? (If you haven't read that by the way, I highly recommend it.)

For all its ills, there is something romantic about the communication of writing. Yes. I see its flaws. I see the idea that people may be losing their ability to talk face-to-face, that interpersonal skills may be lacking as a result of texting and the like. But, for me, it has freed me. It has freed me from a life of writing academically, of putting on my masks at work and even in my personal life. R.B. has freed a world of words and ideas and thoughts, free to say almost (almost because I still am me) anything I'm feeling, to embrace my dark and my light. To write. Yes. To write. 

I write all the time now because of technology. I speak into my phone and type it later. I pull over on the side of the road and write into my notes. I can be at work in the most boring of meetings, listening to someone who just wants to hear himself talk, see a prompt somewhere, and type into my notes app on my phone. I see a sunset. I write. I watch a ballet and I write. I go to the theatre and I write. I lie on the beach...and yes, I write.

​I cannot tell you how many times I had an idea or a thought and poof, it's gone, because I didn't have my notebook or pen, or if I did, it would be too obvious and maybe even rude. The phone, once a rude invasion, has become almost a part of us, to pull it out now is normal, expected...do I put it away sometimes? Of course I do. There are times and places it's unacceptable, and sometimes, even then, I scurry off the bathroom and hide and jot down a thought, a phrase, a moment. I dare say it's made me a better writer. Even these blogs I write: So many ideas flit through my mind and I lose them if I don't write them down...and so, my phone is my mind on many occasions...I write poems on it. I write micro shorts. I write these blogs.

But the best thing I love about this thing we call the internet is the ability to find love, to fall in love with someone's soul rather than their looks or other things we tend to judge people on. I get to communicate with people all over the world, and get to know them, as we learn to communicate more clearly through the written word. Like a time long ago where a lover across seas or at war can only communicate through a written letter, so, too, has the internet's channels of conversation done the same. The only difference? Sometimes it even makes us closer. It's immediate. It's right there, at our fingertips. I see something, I want to share with a friend, and I can write her. I can take a picture and send it. We can "talk" about it live...and it's organic and just as real as a real-time conversation in person. There is nothing stopping us from communication but a signal. Why must in-person be the best form of communication? Says who? I challenge you to tell me why. It's a shift, I realize, in thinking...but that's life. Evolution. 

On Twitter last week, there was a prompt about what our phones are saying behind our backs. I laughed reading some of those. We can be naked. We can be in the tub. We can be in bed, under covers, in the dark when we're supposed to be sleeping, and have some of the most beautiful conversations. We can learn at any hour, from anyone we choose. We learn about other people and countries and ideas, things we could never do in person for myriad reasons, like money or time or space. it erases those obstacles. It opens us up to worlds this lifetime would never allow us to see. We may even fall in love with people we'll never meet. 

And somehow, that in itself, is one of the most romantic notions I can think of. Perhaps, even, I shall write a story and publish it about one such love affair, a couple madly in love, whose fate hangs in the balance of cyberspace. Yes. I dare say it again. The internet has made me a better writer. And this blog will now be shared with thousands of people, for better or worse. THAT could never happen otherwise. And to think, my phone and the internet made it possible...