Is tweeting talking it out before you write it, or part of a process?
This can go both ways. Posting thoughts or ideas online allows you to see what is attracting people's attention and what isn't. You can go back and see what is working and what needs work. Getting advise and other viewpoints on topics could also be beneficial when writing. However, this could lead to an unintentional social media arguments or someone else stealing your ideas.
I found the experience to be strange, exhilarating, outrageously narcissistic, frightening, and embarrassing. In other words, like writing. But also like acting, or playing a concert—something whose essence is bound up in the fact that it’s being done live.
As with anything that is controversial, when posting it there is always a fear of being the next targeted person. I tend to steer clear of anything that allows for other opinions. Social media is like acting. Only showing the good parts life and acting like that is the whole story. I do it myself because posting about life's struggles is embarrassing and frightening. However, it's exhilarating when my post gets a lot of likes and comments.
Is tweeting the same as publishing?
Tweeting your thoughts allows others to see your ideas. It's not published, it's not a written contract saying no one else can use this idea. It has now become public information. Anyone can now see your train of thought and say "hey, I like where this is going. I should write a book about it." However, it is a way for you go back and see what wrote and what attracted an audience but you risk someone else stealing this idea. Because how were they suppose to know you were posting these ideas for a book too.
Does a thought need to be shared to exist
Thoughts are meant to be private and does not have to be shared to exist. Social media allows us to have control over what we want to tell the world. When I go down my feed on Facebook, I see to many random post that seem to be an irrelevant thought. Something that just popped into someone head and they thought they would share it. It is like having someone who can see all your interpersonal thoughts, which people use to fear, but now it's ourselves posting it.
We live in public
This 4 word statement has so much truth behind it. We focus on how our social media life looks more than how our actual life is. It is more important, nowadays, to have this prefect image to trick everyone into thinking our lives are better than their life. Even if that isn't our intentions, that is essentially what we want when we post the happiest, funniest, perfect picture with the perfect hashtag.
But when you read the essays and diaries of those people in the past, their cries of dismay are nearly identical to ours: Our minds wander too easily! The world won’t leave us alone! Our ancestors had it better!
The more technology develops the more distractions there are. Distractions have been around for years, as he mentions in his article. However, has the amount of distractions been the same throughout history? I know we all have distractions and our generation isn't the first to encounter distractions. But the distractions we go through is not the same as the distractions our ancestors went through. Technology did not happen over night and neither did the abundant amount of distractions we see today. It was all a slow increase. So yes, we have been fighting distraction for ages but there has also been as increase in the amount of distraction over time as well.
The book becomes the diversion itself, the thing your brain is needling you to engage with.
Having technology helps with looking up parts of the book I don't understand but reading an entire book seems, ultimately, too distracting. I've never been able to get invested enough into a book that I was reading on a screen to be less distracted by my notifications. I've never tired reading with a larger font so maybe that is the difference. However, I have tried to read multiple books online and I never finish them or even get interested in them. Maybe it is because we view paper books as a more serious thing.
We break it ourselves, voluntarily, checking and rechecking Facebook the instant our mind wanders away from the plot of a novel.
Suffering from ADD, I find myself drifting off into my own thoughts and begin mindlessly reading. After a few minutes go by, I realize I don't have a clue about what I just read. Sometimes, I have to read out loud to keep myself focused on what I am doing. When I get bored it is easy for me to pick up my phone and scroll through all the latest Clemson articles. Learning to be more mindful is something I struggle with. Hearing my phone go off I immediately reach for it just to have any excuse not to continue reading whatever book to told myself I would read.
Phones are twitchy hives of activity, speeding us up and yanking us in all directions. Paper books, in contrast, calm us and slow us down.
I have read other studies that researched the ability to remember material more on paper vs on screens. Every study had the same conclusions, there was a significant differences on retaining more information using paper books than screens. I know from personal experience whenever I find myself focused on my phone more than usual, I tend to be all over the place and can't focus on one task at a time. Phones are useful in many ways but when it comes to learning I believe having a paper book in hand is always more beneficial.