What does the term “Rabbit Hole” refer to? And why would you want to escape it?
These are both great questions.
The popular term is “falling down the rabbit hole” and for most people, it is a reference to Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice in Wonderland, where Carroll described a character disappearing into a world full of chaos or confusion.
Speculation in the literary world suggests that Carroll was also describing what happens when a person takes a hallucinogenic substance that depicts a wild and freaky drug trip. Others compare it to a metaphor for the entry into the unknown, the gate into a new and exciting place full of adventure and somewhere where you can just get lost and you don’t have to return from it.
What does the freaky trip into the unknown mean to me?
Last week, I was scheduled to be at a 7-day writing retreat at Rice Lake with the Writescape gang, but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my trip was cancelled. However, when one door shuts, another one opens. I was lucky enough to rent a secluded cottage from a friend, along the shores of Colpoy’s Bay near Wiarton. I spent seven days writing and editing my latest novel attempt.
Good news: I had 168 hours of quiet time to write without any interruptions.
Bad news: There was no Wi-Fi. No Internet connection for me.
Seriously, the rabbit hole was calling me… and I couldn’t connect. I label my Internet connection “The Rabbit Hole”. Why? In my case, it should be called the Dinosaur Hole. Let me explain.
It all started as a small task. So innocent. Imagine me, staring at the water rushing onto the shore, the birds are singing, a low-flying plane is moving across the horizon, and I’m typing away on this novel. I write a sentence about a father being at work instead of staying at home with his son. He sees a little boy walking down the street toward him, and the boy is holding a dinosaur. It reminds him of his son. It is ONE LINE. 14-words out of a 120,000-word document.
In my mind, I needed to add a specific dinosaur, but which one?
If I were at home, I would jump down the rabbit hole with both feet, fingers flying across the keyboard, inserting keywords to search for. I’d start by researching kinds of dinosaurs, flipping through 10 pages of photos wondering which dinosaur looked best in a little boy’s hand. Would the boy carry a dinosaur with large angry teeth that eat people? Or would this boy carry a gentle longneck dinosaur that only eats leaves, and not people? Not to mention, I needed to think about which dinosaur would get the 5-second part in the movie version of my novel? Would the boy look cuter if he held the Tyrannosaurus Rex or the Triceratops with the cool horn front and center? Serious question for me. Before you know it, there are 27 browser tabs open and your novel is no longer in sight.
My imagination runs full-speed ahead with other questions… Is there a dinosaur museum in Manhattan that the boy and his mother could be going to? Or, maybe they are going to a zoo? Does Manhattan have a zoo? These things I would be googling lead me off on a tangent that has no bearing on my novel at all. But they are cool questions, right? Do I need to know where the mother and her son are going? NO, I DO NOT. My character has no idea where these two people are going. He could speculate, but why would he? He’s only going to have a split second when he thinks about his kid before he walks off to solve a murder.
If I had access to the Internet, I would have spent 15 minutes… okay, who am I kidding here. It would have been more like 30-60 minutes wondering about dinosaurs, which leads to articles and websites about dinosaur candy, and purchasing dinosaur jammies, and ordering dinosaur Christmas sweaters, and taking dinosaur quizzes that test you on what dinosaurs eats and how many teeth they have, and do dinosaurs even sleep?
Gah! The horror story starts with searching for a type of dinosaur, and it quickly turns into noticing I have 97 notifications for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Oh, and there are almost 2000 emails I haven’t read yet? And, so the quick trip to find a specific dinosaur has suddenly eaten half my day.
Has this happened to you?
Stats show that the average person spends roughly three full hours a day on social media, reading news, liking their friends’ posts and photos, posting their own and then checking and rechecking to see if anyone liked them…
Bottom line: Research sometimes gets in the way of telling your story and finishing that damn novel. This past week, I found the solution:
1.) Turn off the Internet, or go somewhere that doesn’t have a connection.
2.) Write the story and leave a blank space to insert a detail that you don’t know and can easily find that specific answer later.
Example: “The boy walked toward him, holding a (insert cool dinosaur name here), which reminded Noah of his son. Or use a blank underline instead, so you know you need to fill it in later.
3.) Use the 15-60 minutes of daily writing time (once you are back at home) to add or edit these tiny details, using the Internet for a specific purpose. Use a designated time limit to fill as many unknown details in your novel as possible. Make it a game.
Rabbit holes are a fun place to fall into, but are deadly to your progress of writing the novel. It sometimes takes days for you to crawl back out (some may call this a form of procrastination).
The simplest solution for escaping the rabbit hole and not falling into the Internet abyss is: Get in, get what you need, and get out. Fast and furious. Otherwise, escaping the Internet addiction with the constant urge to know what the President of another country tweeted today, or to watch continuous cat videos (instead of writing) is too strong.
Resist the urge to visit the Rabbit Hole. Escape. Be productive and get that novel finished.
