Writer's Rite

I've spent most of my life writing. Having just turned 53, I look back on the time span I've spent writing seriously, and I've been at it since I was 18, so I've been at it for 35 years.

It's obviously a labor of love for me, as I have very little to show for it was a writer, at least professionally. I've produced the works, have done the time, slung out the stories, accumulated the rejections, even DIY'd my way into self-publishing.

But despite my failure to find my audience, I've continued, because I love writing. However, of late, the weight of the world is hanging heavily upon me, and the realization that most of the world doesn't particularly love writing in return.

I fear writing is swiftly being relegated to a curious little thing people do, instead of anything of any sort of cultural relevance. There was a time when novels were a big deal -- even if/when the larger pop culture pretended to care about them, they had to pretend to care about them.

Nowadays, though? Not so much. The digital-driven world is careening forward so rapidly, the accelerative pace of it is leaving writing behind, because writing demands time, patience, and attention (both from writers and readers). Most people don't have enough of any of those things.

Like it kills me when people talk about "slow burns" and "atmospheric" stories as if those were somehow a bad thing. I love me an atmospheric slow burn of a story. The buildup is worth it.

Attention spans have evaporated in the face of the accelerating world, and books (and writers) are the quaint jetsam of the digital age. We're the hallmarks of a quieter, slower, more analog time.

Even e-books (so many people's go-to for reading) STILL require time, attention, and patience to read them. Those rare resources are being readily expended in the hustle-bustle of the digital world.

It's why I see many writers (most of whom could never write a novel, let alone several) trim their sails (heh, and their sales) by writing novellas, or novelettes, or just short stories, or, gods forbid, drabbles and flash fiction. Quick little bursts of writing, because neither they nor the majority of people have the patience for longer works.

What's that say about us as a species? Maybe we'll move back to pictograms and hieroglyphs to communicate in a post-literate world. I just think the meditative act of reading is moving beyond most people's line of sight.

Sorry if this is too much reading, Gentle Reader. But the point I was making is I'm suffering from a crisis in writing -- not in the work itself, which I dutifully do -- but in the sense that writing itself is dying out, or, at best, being exiled into a human curiosity.

Much like the place occupied by poets and poetry -- there was a time when poetry was a huge force in human life. But that time is long past. Yes, there are still poets and poems; it's just that their time has passed. Writers are entering that space, too. Maybe all the fine arts are really in that place as well. I can only imagine what sculptors think (I have huge respect for sculptors, along with all fine artists).

As ever, the work itself is what we do. And we do it because it's what we do. However, the Romantic that I am can't help but mourn the loss of literature from its place of prominence in the culture.

Maybe we're simply moving away from any sort of cultured world, toward a kind of rapid-fire, 24/7 digital barbarism, and that becomes our dystopian landscape. I see that with my Writer's Eye, and it alarms me.

DEVO | What We Do is What We Do