It’s undeniable that the web offers an infinite cache of content ripe for a person’s perusal; mindlessly entertaining Tumblrs, Flickr accounts with engrossing images of foreign landscapes, and the notorious cat videos on Youtube seem specifically engineered to distract people from the tasks at hand. Writers are no less immune to these web based honey traps than anyone else. But for writers, the web can work as a hazard or a boon; the difference lies in their ability to harness the web’s potential for research and rich writing material.

Sure, you can bypass web-based distractions altogether by manually disconnecting the internet from your computer or by resorting to handwritten content. You might even experience a significant uptick in your productivity if you eliminate your internet usage all together. But if you turn your back on the web, you’ll be missing out on one of the richest resources available for any writer, be they a novelist, copywriter, or a freelancer. Taking advantage of the web’s potential is just a matter of redirecting the energy behind impulsive web surfing. To utilize the web successfully as a writer, you must turn your restlessness on the web to inspirational online content and resources built to unite and support writers as they practice their art. Consider these propositions to turn a web-addicted writer’s short attention span to constructive web surfing.

Blog your ideas

Blogging is both the easiest and the most rewarding hobby you can undertake if you spend most of your time online. Regardless of your writing background, blogging can help you to see the web’s potential as a writing tool. Think of your blog as a digital notebook with limitless opportunity for customization. On one hand, you could choose to use your blog the same way you would a journal, jotting down ideas as they come to you throughout your web surfing. But you can also use the blog as a storage facility for inspiring web content, whether they’re arresting images or news articles that relate to your writings’ subject matter. You can store a virtually unlimited cache of content on your blog that might help shape your writing, or at the very least bring some organization to fierce and time consuming surfing.  And your blog doesn’t necessarily have to dominate your time while you’re on the web; you can keep it open in a tab so you can easily refer to it when you’re struck with a thought worth fleshing out later.

A well-maintained personal blog is the ideal answer to writer’s block. If you continue to log your blog with notes accompanied with online inspirational pieces, you’ll have a treasure of material to draw from in the future to incorporate into your writing. With so many ideas and leads stored in one place, you’ll have no shortage of inspiration or writing prompts.

Search out other writers

If you’re not too keen on blogging, you should at least peruse social networks for potential writing contacts and confidants. The web is inundated with online communities made up of professional and aspiring writers of all stripes looking to help out their peers. If you’re looking for advice on how to execute a writing style or how best to develop a character, invest your time in one of the many online forums available—there are literally thousands of experienced writers waiting to lend their expertise. The focus of these online communities can run the gamut of the writing industry. Sites like inkpop and writer’s café house huge communities of solely fiction writers, while others like Scribd focus on the publishing side of writing. You could also “like” the Bookmasters fan page on Facebook to access a community of authors/publishers.

You should also investigate social media services like Twitter to find fellow writers. Using Twitter, you can quickly locate and then follow writers of any field by using the service’s comprehensive search engine. What’s more, you can quickly separate the Twitter accounts of more popular writers from those who have fewer followers. Popular writers typically utilize Twitter as a means of promoting their own work, but some of them offer free advice and invaluable tips of the trade as a way to entice more followers. Lesser known or struggling authors may be worth following as well, but for an entirely different reason. If they’re not solely interested in selling their works, these writers may be more likely to answer your direct messages and help out a fellow writer. There’s ways some choice information to glean from writers on social media services, you just have to be willing to engage with your peers online.

Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com. 

Photo: Travis Isaacs, Creative Commons