The other day I picked up a book I’d had for years but hadn’t gotten around to. It’s a small volume, a biography. I decided to read it because I’m writing a biography and although I don’t usually like to read  in the genre I’m writing, I thought this would be a small investment in time to see how someone else wrote a biography about someone whom a lot is known, but not, perhaps, enough. I thought it might help me figure out how to write my book.

     However, instead of a guide, I found a treasure. 

This book is a cross between an essay and a biography. There are no footnotes. There are a lot of suppositions: she might have been taught dancing at that school; she probably had trouble writing for those seven years because she was not comfortable in Bath. Normally those kinds of things in a biography bother me. Especially, frankly, if I am writing about that person and want FOOTNOTES & SOURCE NOTES & CERTAINTIES! But I went along with Carol Shields because she, by way of Jane Austen, has brilliant and insightful things to say about the writer’s life. Portraying the writer Jane Austen, Shields manages to be universal. Or I should say, I feel as if she’s speaking about me, to me. I am certain many writers out there will feel the same way reading this book. 

One of the things I’ve been struggling with is how to fulfill my social needs while tackling this big project. I need a lot of time and space around me to write this book (or any long book) and I’d been finding that harder and harder to do. It’s partly living in New York City (this city really never sleeps). But it isn’t just city life, it’s internet life. I know you know what I’m talking about if you’re a writer and you have the internet.   

Shields writes, “The ability to sustain long works of fiction” [and here I would insert--or narrative nonfiction] “is at least partially dependent on establishing a delicate balance between solitude and interaction.” Too much human noise, she says, “distracts from the cleanliness of its overarching plan. Too little social interruption, on the other hand, distorts a writer’s sense of reality…” 

Shields, who died way too young in 2003, has nailed it. Most writers, she says, “knowing that ongoing work is fed by ongoing life, prize their telephones, their correspondence, and their daily rubbing up against family and friends.”  

I certainly prize my family and my friends. I live for moments of meaningful social interaction. I am dependent upon my writer friends–for support, love, fun, and sanity. Shields says: “Writers uphold and defend each other with discussion of their difficulties–this has always been the case–and persuade each other that their individual endeavors, which often seem no more substantial than paper airplanes tossed into the uninterested air, are not egotistical projections… but contributions…”  

Poor Jane Austen did not have writer friends. She was isolated in her family and in her community. She loved her family, and obviously got great material from them and her community. But she didn’t have a community of writers with whom she could talk about the ups and downs of writing and the roller coaster ride of publishing. She probably would have loved Facebook. Jane Austen needed Facebook. 

I got off Facebook a few months ago. It was with fear that I did so. I was scared I’d be lonely. And feel terribly disconnected. And miss things. I’m here to report that I do feel sometimes like I’m missing things. People publish books and move and have babies and eat a great sandwich AND I MISS IT. I can do without the sandwich (but what kind was it?), but I’m sorry to miss the rest. And yet, I feel better, saner, more alive as person and as a writer for not being on it. I relish my in-person connections with my friends and family so much more. I seek out the nourishing moments and live IN them, without thinking what I might post about it on Facebook. So for now, I’m staying away. I might go back. I might… But for now I’m living the life that I wish Jane Austen had been able to have–solitude surrounded by friends and family. And a rich writing community nearby and on the telephone (and email). Jane would have loved email.

I hope you will pick up this book by Carol Shields. I’m going to reread her novels soon, too. Being off Facebook has given me, as was part of the idea, so much more time to read. Also a yay. 

Ok, I’m going to tweet this post and then get back to work, she said with full knowledge of the irony. But Twitter is, somehow, different. In fact, maybe Jane would have liked Twitter better than Facebook. To the point. Easy to be witty and ironic and incisive in 140 characters.