Writing’s Future
James Dugan
I can’t think of anything to write. My body is tired. My mind is worn. My spirit, well, I guess it has been in better places. I want to get excited about a topic, but there is nothing that intrigues me. Writing is a personal game. I know that, but there seems to be no one who does it except for money or fame. So where does that leave me after a week of mostly gray May skies. It leaves me tired, worn, and with a spirit trapped in February.
I guess that is why people start novels or write books. The constant recognition of writing is not needed. You do not have to wait around and see if anyone read your stuff or will give you a nice comment. A writing community was supposed to fix that. It was suppose to use your words as a jumping pad for their own inspiration. It was suppose to read keenly and make comments that you may be encouraged to keep going.
So as May ends and the summer begins and my time opens up like Ohio coming from the Alleghany mountains of PA, I have to rekindle a fire that I started with or enter a new path, a path that seems to be heading away from needing and wanting recognition from an audience. I have to head into myself. I have to start a longer project. I have to begin fresh on something that the motivation will exist mostly in me to finish. There are only so many circles you can draw.
A writing community is necessary and I thought if we built it, there would be more interest in expression. There would be an outlet for people to string words and thoughts together in an original way. That was the goal. People have ideas. People need to express them. Writing helps get them out there. But why would I care if businesses buy them when they don’t read? If a business knew the site and took advantage of it, they would want to advertise there. They would want to because there was so much interest in the writing that we would have to page through countless submissions, but again it comes down to people doing it only for pay.
Maybe writing should die. Maybe those blank stares and rolling eyes of students are not just teenage quirks, but something systematically larger representing the rotting smell of something dead. Writing is becoming so incestuous that we mimic the few players who can still squeeze out a living without selling themselves constantly to every news feed and cable station in the nation. Reading is barely registering an EKG, but writing of any type of quality seems to be confined to insane asylums where the patients are left to please an audience who doesn’t care if you write or not. When you meet a writer, it is as if that person is a monastic desert dweller that only rumors attested to their existence.
As the audience of apt readers declines and we are left to pedal our words to people who could care less, the writer falls further and further away from a source of importance in society. We are left to think of ourselves as entertainers who are battling insane gadgets that are meant to shorten attention spans, be timely glamorous, and be gone shortly after. Entertainment is one scene plays that hold little connections to each other. It creates big buzz for an off-chance opportunity of big money. Writing cannot compete with that and we belittled the art and skill by trying to keep our status there as Hollywood changed it. God help the writer who doesn’t put an image on his article. What would Time be without its covers? The writing we have done over the past two years has mostly been reviewing and perusing on other forms of entertainment so that maybe if a person might have a free moment to review a more popular form from yesterday and want to remember, they will come to do a little reading. But the time they spend reading only proves that they are not reading the whole thing. It will not compete against the forms of video, movies, music, television, games, and news. It just requires different things.
Writing requires you to slow down and focus. Papers are dying because for the most part they stopped being about new stories and more about reporting on the other forms. Writers thought they could remain part of the industry and cater to the readers left with that agenda. Writing requires attention to detail, forming a course of logic, expressing yourself clearly and then enticing a disinclined reader to read. It is like pushing a shopping cart of bricks uphill for the whole project. And instead of getting accolades for the effort in a quick downward slope, there is just a level plane you reach as the project rolls to a stop. There is not much here for the writer. You write because you like to and you feel alive when you do it. But it isn’t entertainment any longer for the masses. In fact, I don’t think most know what to do with anything over 300 words.
And it is because reading is dying. I believe there will be writers for some time after everyone has stopped reading. I even believe there will be writers when people do not even know how to read any longer. Reading is boring and anti-social. We even invented a computer that looks like a book so readers can read looking technologically savvy. We use movie actors on covers to sell the book the movie was based upon. The worst thing I heard last week was a writer actually mocking how little he reads and as a teacher of writing at Columbia, how little his students do. Reading is for the losers who can’t write or so backwards they can’t find anything to zone out to on four hundred channels.
Where are we to go from here then? Should we keep carving away at the fringes of society’s interest until we are valid again? Are we already fossilizing and should just type away into oblivion? Has the slow dying of adult reading offered the warning shot for writers to jump ship and go learn html and Dreamweaver? I cannot help feel that we are at the end of something great instead of the start of something exciting. And for someone who loves both forms, silence seems to be the inevitable conclusion.
Reader Comments (3)
Keep faith, Dugan. Writing is a solitary pursuit; no technology will change that. Take the words of Thoreau as your guidance.
"Those authors are successful who do not write down to others, but make their own taste and judgment their audience. By some strange infatuation we forget that we do not approve what yet we recommend to others. It is enough if I please myself with writing; I am then sure of an audience . . . . The artist must work with indifference. Too great interest vitiates his work."
There's a lot going on here that I'm not sure where to begin. While you address very legitimate and large social issues, these concerns seem to be far more personally driven than larger social issues.
For starters, why exactly do you feel entitled to feedback or recognition for your writing? It should be noted that you do receive feedback about what you write, how you write, etc. on a fairly routine basis. Yes, it's usually from people who routinely comment, but aren't their words valuable to you? People take time, give consideration, and respond, just maybe not to the degree you desire. And I wonder why you desire that communication so much.
The practice of writing is always solitary. And although the purpose might be connection, the reality is that is often disingenuous. Writers for all sorts of reasons, but the primary one is for readers to read- plain and simple. Whether it be to make money, improve people's daily behaviors, or alter the moral fabric of society, writers simply need readers. Since when do they need comments or feedback or anything else from their audience.
And although people are reading less, according to most studies, it doesn't mean they're not reading at all. You lament the existence of the Kindle, but its sales have exceeded a billion dollars and it and other ereaders are solely responsible for nearly putting Borders and Barnes & Noble out of business. This means people are still reading, maybe not what you want to, but reading none the less.
I believe in the sentiment that almost all reading is good reading. Be it cartoons, the sports page, a blog, a classic work of literature, a science or history textbook, or any other type of literature that necessitates a sustained effort is a good thing. This site in particular should be seen as nothing other than a success in its production of high-quality, diverse writing from a large number of writers from all walks of life and experiences. Also, there are people in different states and countries who actually visit this site, linger for 3-5 minutes and read something you or me or any one of the 20+ different writers have submitted for no other reason than to express their thoughts or ideas. That's impressive and should be placed into its proper context.
I look forward to your next piece even though I disagree with your apprehensions of this piece. And there in lies the beauty of this site- the ability to always return, whenever you want, knowing there will always be something new to read!
I agree and I edited some parts that seemed to be lamenting a personal situation. What I tried to create here is the frustrations of all writers and try to logically figure out why many more people don't write. It is hard for me because I do write and after a few days without it, I come back hungry. I started out with that Columbia idea and the funny part is that it didn't get in until the end.
I appreciate the insights and comments and I do get enough for me. Personally, if I do not get comments, it only bothers me 1 out of 10 times. Damn, I want to be a poet and no one reads that at all. I know how fast life is but reading should provoke discussion and conversations, and if it doesn't, then perhaps it was not good enough to evoke compassion, passion, or anger.
On the other hand, I believe these are the ideas of writers who put themselves out there and fail to make the above response. It is disheartening and feels you did it for nothing. We have to be trained to make comments and have lunch. There is nothing worst than having lunch alone. This is a commenting site as much as a writing site. When there are no comments, lunch is dead and worst, alone.
This is what makes our site social -- an different and greater than any writing site -- and we need to rekindle that idea to make it work.
It is about sharing experiences, books, movies, sports, news, stories and poems. It is a dialogue to check in, and not to check out. If we do not have comments, than we are just wikipedia or something. Then we are just writing for ourselves, which is the saddest of all existences. Sorry Nick.
Thanks for the comments and hopefully I made the piece a little stronger by focusing on the real message: a community of writers is of readers, and dialgue is the goal of any expression, and especially of a good, active lunch table.