Solitude

Zadie Smith's ten rules for writers include the following:

6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.

Smith is a novelist, of course, and novelists need to be alone. But is there a grain of truth in this advice for nonfiction writers? Could too much time on Gangrey be bad for your writing?

I'm thinking of a young guy like J. Wes Yoder, who's about my age. He completed a fantastic first novel back in 2007, and is presumably working on his next one. If he ever shows up here, he's strictly a lurker.

Which brings me to Smith's seventh rule (almost identical to one followed by Jonathan Franzen):

Work on a computer that is disconnected from…