Thought experiment. Writing without the Internet.

I did a little mind experiment yesterday, to deal with my impatience over the slow pace of everything outside my own writing: the editing, the submitting, the paying, the publishing.

What would my writing career be like without the Internet?

Pretty awful.

I'd no doubt still be sending off physical excerpts of my books to agents, who would no doubt still be sending back form rejections.  I'd probably have tried submitting to less agents at a time, because of the cost and time of mailing.  So I'd probably still be submitting the original effort.

Or maybe I'd have moved on to trying a second excerpt.

And even if I was accepted, which doesn't seem likely based on what has happened so far, I'd then have to go through the same process with a publisher.

I'd probably have have written no more than a couple of books by now.  And I would no doubt have only written the first book in each trilogy, because what would be the point of writing further?

So I'd be sitting here for a couple of years with extremely limited and probably negative feedback.  I'd have spent far less time writing and learning and hoping.

Frankly, I'd probably have quit.

Meanwhile, when doing this thought experiment, I can't help but think about Linda and how grateful I am to how she responds to my writing.

She is totally supportive.  She says she really "likes" my writing and I believe her.  While she may have constructive criticism, she seems to think I'm a "good" writer.

I don't know.  Maybe that support would have been enough to endure the waiting and rejection.  That and the fact that I pretty much enjoy writing, coming up with a story, living with my characters.

Reading my work in writer's group might also have been enough feedback to keep me going for awhile.

But no matter how supportive Linda is, and no matter how much I like writing, I'm not sure I could have continued without seeing something I wrote in print -- whether as an e-book, or as a physical book.

So what the Internet has done is released my creativity in an enormously constructive way.  I can write as fast and as much as I want, and know that -- in the end -- it will be somewhere online and that a few people, here or there, might actually stumble across it and read it.

And that makes all the difference.