Social media and its discontents

New York Public Library archive (ca. 1910s)

I need to listen to Steve Almond's "The Writing Life" again. That is because I spent most of the day reading up on modernist writers, like Dorothy Parker, partially due to a Facebook posting on women writers who went to New York City to seek their literary fortunes. I also reviewed the Harlem Renaissance and Zora Neale Hurston and dug into the life history of Sylvia Plath. Silly me, I thought by reading about the lives of writers, I would find inspiration to write. However, it wasn’t drinking, depression, dogs, destitution or death that made them writers. It was writing.