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Shifra Steinberg's avatar

The foundation of loneliness lies in the superficiality of it all. Like you said, the local geographic element is entirely removed, especially now with all the restrictions, though it’s been like this long before COVID. It’s sad, really. And everything is exaggerated by the feeling that we ARE being social, even if that means simply scrolling through instagram. Being “social” has never been so easy, yet through the seeming simplicity of it all, it is also so, so difficult. We can have a screen time of 10 h a day and still not respond to a text message until days later. No wonder depression and anxiety rates have never been higher!

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Mike Avery's avatar

Hi, Mark! Your blog post made me think of Jack Kerouac. He bragged in the 1940s, when he was about 20, that he had already written over a million words. Of course, Truman Capote famously quipped later that what Kerouac was doing was "typing, not writing." Nevertheless, Kerouac found success as a paid writer until his death in 1969.

I think Kerouac was a performance artist, although his performances were alone. He wrote On the Road in about 3 weeks, high on benzedrine, in a bathroom in an apartment. This was after his initial million words. If those million words are considered practice, then his "performance" in the bathroom that yielded On the Road was indeed the product of his practice. And regardless of anybody's opinion of the literary value of OTR, if there is any, it made his career.

I don't think this is what you were referring to exactly in your post, but it is what it made me think of. In my mind, the stamina and constitution of writers, which is important for survival and success, is the direct result of their practice and performance.

Sorry, I don't really have a point here. I just wanted to share this with you since I was excited to read your post. I'm raptly following your journey. I have never considered reading a novel about the topic you describe, but your journey to novelist interests me as a fellow writer. I look forward to reading more from you.

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