Instagram was making me lose my writing voice and that was not okay with me.

What I did to get it back.

I knew that Instagram wasted my time. I knew that Instagram stoked the fires of comparison and self-doubt. I knew that I wasn’t getting much that was positive from Instagram, and that it drained the time and attention I needed to write another book. But still, none of that was enough for me to quit it. It wasn’t until I sat down to start writing a novel I’d been thinking about that I realized Instagram had slowly, sneakily been taking something vital away from me: my voice.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Every time I started to write a sentence, it abruptly turned brief, a little punchy, a little cute. In short: advertising copy. Like a body that had grown comfortable sitting in the same comfy couch, in the same position, every single day, my writing muscles felt atrophied to the point where all they could do was arrange words in the tight container of an Instagram caption. Afterall, every time I swiped and scrolled, a new image and burst of words flashed into my mind. A quick scroll, and they were replaced by more of the same. An endless slot machine of shiny cherries and bright lemons. A two-dimensional, anesthetized aesthetic of life that didn’t offer its users a chance to grapple with the truly real. I sat there, my notebook before me, Instagram tucked away, waiting, in my phone right beside me and I wondered: Where have my words gone? Where is my ability to think? To be creative and experimental? Who even am I???

I freaked out. Not a lot, because I knew I would work my way out of this, but I freaked out enough to make a serious change: I logged out of Instagram, sighed in relief at the realization I had forgotten my password, and deleted it off my phone.

Now, I’ve deleted Instagram in the past, and within a few days, have re-downloaded the app to my phone. But there is little on this earth that means more to me than my ability to craft sentences and to play with my ideas via words on the page. The fact that my skill in this area felt threatened was enough of a terror to make me go cold turkey. I knew that I couldn’t fully delete Instagram, at least not yet, because I do use it to promote classes I teach and work I publish, but my day-to-day scrolling? My minutes wasted trying to fit an idea into a small box on a performative grid when I could have been exercising my voice in a novel or essay? Yeah, that had to go. That should have been gone. But there was no use beating myself up about it. I had work to do.

With Instagram gone, I had to fill the time and mental space with something worthwhile, something delicious enough to keep me from redownloading Instagram. I decided I would use this novel idea as a way to practice my long-form writing, and I would enhance my study of the form by forgoing my TBR pile of contemporary books for a time and focusing on dense texts written by people who wrote and received hand-written letters instead of DMs.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Here, on Substack, I’d taken to reading essays by voracious readers with all sorts of obsessions. One reader, Martha, dedicated a month to reading women in translation. Another, Petya Grady, decided to crown one month all works Joan Didion and see what she could discover by doing a deep dive. A reader named Haley Larson shared reading skills she learned while earning her Ph.D. in literature in the form of reading guides and comment discussions. I was perusing her work when I saw that she was leading an upcoming group read of The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I’d heard of this book and its author, but knew nothing about them.

For the past long while, I’d mostly read contemporary works, drinking down brand spanking new hardcovers and novels by debut authors like water. I finished one and I picked up another, my glass never empty for long. There were simply so many great books coming out all the time! But this revolving door of contemporary work sometimes overwhelmed me. I could read them quickly, easily. This is not to say that these works themselves were sophomoric or that they were not brilliant in many ways. I am not dissing contemporary authors and their works––heck, I am a contemporary author (check out my first book here).

Rather, I simply began to crave something different, something more akin to the must-be-sipped or choked back, acquired taste of, say, an aquavit. Say, maybe, even more specifically, the Norwegian Linje Aquavits, which were distilled and placed in oak barrels and then sent on a ship from Norway to Australia and back again so that the constant churning and fluctuations in temperature aided the spirit’s maturation. I wanted to read something that required me to pitch and roll and soak inside the oaken barrel of someone else’s mind. I wanted to read something that would slow me down and challenge me. Most of all, I wanted to read long sentences. Really, really long sentences, preferably in an omniscient point of view. Why omniscient, I couldn’t tell you exactly, though I suppose it had something to do with the fact that I’d never particularly liked omniscient or understood how to write it, and my instincts told me that I would need to augment this skill for the novel I wanted to write. Most everything I read in contemporary lit was in first person or close third. I wanted something that would break my brain out of the box it had found itself in by reading the books recommended to me on Instagram.

Ships in port awaiting barrels full of aquavit.

So I downloaded The Age of Innocence onto my Kindle from the library, and I subscribed to Haley Larson’s Closely Reading guide, and I dove in.

What I found completely surprised me. From the start, I loved the book, especially the syntax. Wharton’s sentences and ideas unfurled in unexpected, particular ways that still felt natural and effortless. Every day I looked forward to curling up in bed at night where I could open the book and fall into the lives of Ellen, May, and Archer. There was something about the voice—distanced but warm—that I knew I wanted to try myself in my novel-in-progress. When I finished The Age of Innocence, I requested The House of Mirth from the library.

In the meantime, I decided to revisit a book I’d had to read in high school that I didn’t “get:” Howards End by E.M. Forster and follow it up with Zadie Smith’s ode to the same work, On Beauty. It turns out that growing fifteen years older adds a bit of perspective that a work like Howards End requires to appreciate. I absolutely loved it. I tried some Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisted, A Handful of Dust) and works by his good friend Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate). I read the absolutely haunting Passing by Nella Larson. I have plans to continue my Wharton and Forster journeys and to revisit Willa Cather, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, all authors I read many years ago and loved. I also have the goal to try some Dostoevsky, something I’ve not attempted.

In re-training my brain to read slowly and carefully, I am gaining access to a wonderful education. I’m learning new ways of lingering in scene, of complicating a character’s arc, of twisting the plot line a bit as you go to keep things interesting. Working on my novel has become immensely more fun because the space to play has opened up for me. I’m no longer host to the same tactics and techniques and modes of employing voice that I was reading over and again in similar works. By expanding my reading, I’m expanding my brain, and what is so exciting is that there are so many other avenues into which I can delve. Think of what I can learn by reading more translations! What will happen when I bring more plays into the mix? And poetry! My god, poetry.

When I earned my MFA, one of the biggest lessons I learned was that every time I turned over a rock in the garden of literature, I found an infinite array of fascinating things about which I wanted to learn more. Getting rid of Instagram has allowed me the time and attention span to crouch down and examine what’s under that rock.

Queen Edith Wharton.

In a world of AI, glossy consumerism, and flashing squares that hack away at attention spans, I want to create my own creative space of respite where I can linger, think, and experiment. A place where things can be raw and unfinished. Where there is a revolutionary lack of urgency, and instead a trust in myself to think and create on my own time. For me, that required I take a large step back from social media and immerse myself in works from the early to mid 1900s, an era of writing that I stumbled into largely by chance, and then see where my instincts took me next. When I don’t fill my mental space with tiny squares of recommendations for the next thing to buy, it frees me up to follow my curiosity and take chances on works created in other time periods, and what richness I have found. My novel is going to be the better for it, I’m convinced, and so am I as a person.

Another thing I’ve taken to doing is writing the first draft by hand. I have a dark green Moleskine and a set of Japanese ink pens I love, and when I am able to carve out time to write, I’m writing by hand. I was an avid journaler in high school and college, and in college and grad school, I always took notes by hand. In more recent years, I took to typing my drafts from the start because I thought it more efficient; my mind is often trucking along so quickly and typing is a faster way to get that first draft on the page. But in eschewing that mindset, I’ve found that my writing has become richer, more playful and unexpected, and there is a deep satisfaction in turning the pages of my journal and seeing the pages upon pages of my handwriting. My writing looks mine in a way that it doesn’t in type. A simple concept, perhaps, but one that makes me feel a profound sense of ownership of my unique voice and hand.

Just last night, my toddler was helping me tidy up when he grabbed my journal, handed it to me and said, “Ma need this.” He knows that when I am working, I am writing books, and that this notebook is the home to my current work-in-progress. What he maybe doesn’t realize is that I do need this––my writing––to feel myself, to be a better mom and a better person. (More on that in a future letter.) And don’t worry: Because I have a toddler and drinks spill all the time in my home, I try to have a typing session every few weeks where I transfer all of my handwriting into a Google Doc. This becomes my very rough first pass at editing, and most of the time I find myself happily surprised at the turns of phrase and scenes I’ve written. I can see the influence of Wharton and Forster and all of the texts I’ve savored.

You might be wondering: did I delete my Instagram permanently? No. It’s still there, and I even logged on last week to promote a new class I’m teaching at the Loft Literary Center (it’s called The Mother Writer and I’m SO excited about it. Check it out here.) What pleasantly surprised me was that I logged on, made my posts, and logged off, and I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything. I haven’t logged back in since. I’m off to crack open Ethan Frome and expand my world once again.

Talk to me. What are your social media woes? What avenues of literature have you stumbled upon and loved? What should I read next? Tell me, tell me, tell me! And, as always, thank you so much for being here. If you enjoy what you have read, please consider sharing it with a friend, or, heck, a foe!

With love from my kitchen table,

Kaia