But there is, says the writer Susan Hill, a sensible middle way. Hill is in an ideal position to advise a poor wretch like me because, although she is something of an internet junkie – a Facebook regular, with a new blog in the Spectator – she has also managed to maintain her career as an author of proper, old-fashioned books made of dead trees. (Just as I try to do but increasingly find all but impossible: every time I sit down to write a chapter of my next novel, I hear the ping of an incoming email and that's the end of my literary endeavours for the day).