Since the advent of the internet, there has been a seismic shift in the way that we write.
People are writing more than ever, and they are doing it in unconventional ways.
From trying to cram your thoughts on something political in a 140 characters to typing “k” to a lengthly text from a friend, there is no doubt that we are changing how we write.
We now want to write efficiently, saving ourselves time and effort by going back to the principals of writing. Brainstorming and outlining are coming back into vogue, and people are trying whichever new software will save them time. Things like Bullet Journal, Medium, and (more examples) are wildly popular, since they are able to succinctly capture your thoughts in a small amount of time.
However, the greatest amount of writing that we do is stuff that we don’t even think about. Social media has allowed us to pour out our thoughts, feelings, and ideas to those around us, and it has revolutionized how we interact with those around us.
When you are writing in succinct sentences, there is no need to fill that massive blank page in front of you, no need to stare at the vastness of it and completely draw a blank. You already feel accomplished, since you have written down many sentences of what you are intending to write.
The key to writing is to just write.
We spend so much time overthinking or fussing about formatting that we rarely get any actual writing done. With Twitter, you can agonize over a tweet, but that is rarely the case, as you hardly worry about what you are writing because its so short.
Why isn’t this the case when we write?
We need to just be able to pour our thoughts out onto the page, and then worry about editing, organizing and formatting later. We need things that have the capacity to be linear and non linear at the same time, because our brain doesn’t always think in a straight line.
We need a programs like Wattpad and what Speare promises to be, capturing thoughts wherever you would like to write. However, unlike Wattpad, Speare allows you to capture those succinct sentances and organize them however you wish. It also allows you to enter non-linear thoughts and keep them for later, out of the way of your main document.
These up and coming programs are changing how we can craft papers, write books, and even pen poems. But the real era of writing changed with that little text box inside social media, and we have just scratched the surface of this new age of writing.
