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Why Smartphones Are Bad for Writing

I began living a novel today.

At a bookstore I stumbled across an old paperback horror novel about Satanic skullduggery called The Druid Stone by Simon Majors. And I thought, “Hmm. Simon Majors sounds like Simon Magus, the folkloric occultist/wizard from the Bible. I bet that’s a pseudonym.”

And at that moment this should have kicked off a globe-trotting adventure novel in which I sought to uncover the truth behind this mysterious author and learned what mystic secrets he had laced into the pages of his book, all while I was being pursued by agents of an ancient conspiracy.

And instead I pulled out my smartphone and in twenty seconds learned that yes, Simon Majors was a pseudonym for Gardner Fox, a prolific comic-book and fiction writer from the last century.

And so the novel ended, scarcely after it had begun.

This is why smartphones are bad for writing.