Reshared post from Joseph Persia:

Original Post from Joseph Persia:

The Idea of the Author Is Facing Extinction
Are Authors facing burn out and extinction?

Jane Fried­man, Web Edi­tor for the Vir­ginia Quar­terly Review, based at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia, where she also teaches dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and online writ­ing seems to indicate the possibility.
She writes:

"Instead of com­pos­ing our sym­phony, we cre­ate a “shadow sym­phony,” of which we our­selves are the orches­tra, the com­poser and the audi­ence. Our life becomes a shadow drama, a shadow start-up com­pany, a shadow phil­an­thropic ven­ture. […] The ama­teur is an ego­tist. He takes the mate­r­ial of his per­sonal pain and uses it to draw atten­tion to him­self. He cre­ates a “life,” a “char­ac­ter,” a “personality.”

There is a dan­ger in the industry’s call to authors to build rela­tion­ships with read­ers, to be respon­sive and engaged, to be in “con­ver­sa­tion.” How big of a dan­ger, how­ever, totally depends on the val­ues and goals of the writer. If the goal is sales and long-term read­er­ship growth, there might not be any harm at all. But if the activ­i­ties impede the writer from pur­su­ing his pri­mary pur­pose (how­ever that may be described or quan­ti­fied), then we can see the call to engage­ment as seri­ously detri­men­tal and distracting."

You are the ones who are juggling all these plates, are theses new engagements impeding your primary purpose to write your story?

10/14/13 - 1