Riley Ballinger

Professor Hisel

English 101

10/09/23

A Critical View of Corey Doctorow’s “Writing in the Age of Distraction”

“Writing in the Age of Distraction” was written by Corey Doctorow as a way to teach writers tactics and tips on how to fight the many distractions in our media. However, he never outright says you shouldn’t use the internet, instead, he believes that you should. Doctorow views the internet as a great way to formulate new ideas, which is instrumental in writing. Doctorow said this about how he views the Internet “But the Internet has been very good to me. It's informed my creativity and aesthetics, it's benefited me professionally and personally, and for every moment it steals, it gives back a hundred delights. I'd no sooner give it up than I'd give up fiction or any other pleasurable vice,”(Doctorow 3). The whole purpose of this article is a way to train readers how to better manage their time, and not solely focus on the internet while writing.

Cory Doctorow is a British Canadian Journalist/Author and Activist, he focuses on many issues when it comes to the internet and creative work. Doctorow was also the former Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Co-Founder of Open Rights Group in the UK (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Doctorow has written several books and is a major publisher of many news articles on websites such as the New York Times, The American Conservative, and Wired. Doctorow has won several awards over the years for his Science Fiction books (Macmillan Publishers). Doctorow is a well-proven writer and is very connected to the internet due to how connected journalism has become to the internet.

With that in mind, the Purpose of this article is to teach writers how to keep away from becoming too distracted on the internet. Doctorow offers tips such as making a word count for the day and giving 20 minutes of the day just to write without any fancy word processors and as little research as possible. Keeping from word processors and research keeps the brain from being distracted. Doctorow also doesn't want the 20 minutes to be a perfect and calm setup, but instead just a normal 20-minute time frame. Instead, it can be crazy, noisy, and chaotic, however, those issues can be put up with for just 20 minutes. Doctorow said this about the 20-minute time frame “Forget advice about finding the right atmosphere to coax your muse into the room. Forget candles, music, silence, a good chair, a cigarette, or putting the kids to sleep…You can put up with noise/silence/kids/discomfort/hunger for 20 minutes.” (8). Doctorow gives these tips as a way to let the creative part of the mind wander and be excited for the next 20-minute time frame. Disconnecting from the internet and all the many distractions it brings will give writers more freedom and creativity in their work.

Given that Doctorow’s article can be found in The Commons: Tools for Reading, it’s safe to assume that most readers of the article are new and up-and-coming writers. The readers of the articles are more than likely college students or young adults who use the internet daily and put a large amount of their time on social media. Or readers of this article could just be writers struggling with how to manage their time while writing. Doctorow hopes that sharing these techniques that he’s gained over the years will help these new writers from becoming too distracted by the internet.

The article itself is pretty informative. Doctorow’s claims are always explained, such as why instead of using a word processor a text editor should be used instead. However, it’s never outright said how these writing techniques will help the reader. Instead, Doctorow just gives his personal perspective on how the techniques have helped him, assuming the reader will have a similar understanding and experience. I felt as though Doctorow supports creativity, but at the same time, he gives people a cookie-cutter approach to writing. Instead of giving people techniques, people should learn good writing tactics on their own. In the greater scheme of things, this article will do very little in helping writers focus on writing, and not on the internet. If Doctorow instead wrote an article about the effects of the internet on writing, it could’ve altered many people’s writing habits.

Overall, Cory Doctorow is a very well-respected writer who has made quite a name for himself. He’s very open about his political beliefs, and what he truly thinks about the modern internet and fights for a more equal world. Also, Cory Doctorow’s goal of keeping creative writing alive is very noble. Cory Doctorow has had years of experience when it comes to the internet and knows his stuff. His ideas and techniques of his own experience will for sure inspire many future writers who want to be just like Him when they hopefully become famous writers too.

Works Cited

Doctorow, Cory. “Writing in the Age of Distractions” The Commons: Tools for reading, writing, and Rhetoric, edited by Jill Parrot and Dominic Ashby, EKU, 2009, 116-119

“Cory Doctorow | Authors - Macmillan.” Macmillan Publishers. https://us.macmillan.com/author/corydoctorow. Oct. 13, 2023.

“Cory Doctorow.” Electronic Frontier Foundation.

https://www.eff.org/about/staff/cory-doctorow. Oct. 13, 2023.

A Critical View of Corey Doctorow’s “Writing in the Age of Distraction” by Riley Ballinger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license 4.0.

Ballinger, Riley. “A Critical View of Corey Doctorow’s 'Writing in the Age of Distraction.'” The Commons: Tools for Reading, Writing, and Rhetoric (2nd ed.), edited by Jill Parrott and Dominic Ashby, Eastern Kentucky University, 2026.