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| Subject: Re: Reading, A Lost Art | |
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Author: pieceoftheuniverse |
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Date Posted: 15:19:52 06/11/01 Mon In reply to: ~Steve-o 's message, "Reading, A Lost Art" on 21:08:38 06/09/01 Sat ~steve-o said: >Personally, I think the web has done more to promote >literacy among the lazy than TV Guide. Unfortunately, as I've stated in the past, this only holds the average steady at about the fourth-grade reading level. Yes, we have more literate people than ever before, but a larger portion than one might feel comfortable with only recognize words made popular by the porn industry. After all, what is the number one word searched for in both search engines and dictionaries? I rest my case. >However, I agree with your statement that serial >writers as we knew them wouldn't make it today. >Dickens might sell a piece or two to some women's >magazines, but that's about it. If you really want a glimpse of a modern-era Dickens, I suggest you pick up Robert Jordan someday. Dickens was spectacular in the level of detail he would conjure up about something as obtuse as a storefront window display. Jordan is just as descriptive -- perhaps even more so -- but instead of being admired for his verbosity he comes off as being annoying and, if anything else, exhausting. I was reading him the other day after having finished Oliver Twist, and thought to myself, "Is it me who's too impatient or is it him who just doesn't have the knack?" Then I threw the book away. >I think even someone like Hemingway would have >problems selling to the mass market. Nobody would give >a crap about his travels. Well, I've never been a big fan of Hemmingway. I still don't give a crap about him, no matter what era he's from. >Arthur C. Clarke would never make it trying to live on >pieces sold to pulp magazines. Even current authors have accepted this. Living off the occasional paycheck from a pulp magazine is no longer a viable option for the struggling writer. >The way it stands now, the only way to make it as a >writer is in journalism or novels, both of which are >incredibly difficult fields to break into, but are the >young writer's only hope of becoming a professional. The best way to be a successful novelist is to have a well-recognized name. There's an inherent Catch-22 there that is very difficult to break out of. >The answer is, of course, the internet, where >everything is a level playing field [snip] >the >glut of bad writers has taken the visibility away from >good writers. Content providers are afraid of working >with content producers because the image of the online >writer is an amateur geek who writes bad soap operas >or X-Files slash. And here we have a pro and a con, both of roughly equal weight. The internet may be (for all intents and purposes) a level playing field, but that's the problem. Someone working strictly from a Markov chain has the same amount of publicity as you do, and yet for some reason -he- is getting all your hits. Why? Because no matter what you do, someone is going to run a search string that misses you completely. Not too long ago I was bored (this was at work, of course) and so ran a search for stories in Yahoo. Actually, not so much a search as clicking through the categories they have set up. No Hydrogen Guy, no Grayhound, no Christopher Ford, but instead a lot of people who would probably be sifting through ten-feet piles of rejection letters were they to petition for actual dead-tree publication. There's much more chaff than wheat out there. Out of the potential millions of webcomics out there, I've got ten that I faithfully read every day. I've been to the evil network, I've browsed through just about every comic, and ten -- just ten -- I deemed as worth my time. So tell me: what are the other nine hundred thousand nine hundred ninety doing when their time could be better spent devising new and interesting ways to win Darwin Awards? IMHO, of course. This is the crux of the matter, and one of the major mental blocks I can't seem to get by when I think of updating my site. Damn near everyone has a website with their little fifteen megabytes of fame. What makes my particular contribution valuable enough to innundate surfers around the globe with yet another link? What if I, unknowingly, am part of the chaff? Worse yet, what if I carry the metaphor too far and become moldy wheat? >Right now, it's just a matter of writing because you >like doing it. Maybe some day it'll be different for >content producers. $DEITY, I hope not. Writing should, IMO, be done only because you like doing it. Anyone writing for any other objective -- for money, for sex (well, this one might be okay), for fame, for glory -- is going to suck. Which isn't too say they won't achieve their objective; after all, some folks will buy anything. But how many truly classic works have been created in the past decade? The past three decades? Out of how many writers? Now compare that ratio with, say, the late eighteen hundreds/early ninteens. Sad, isn't it? Not to say that everyone who puts pen to paper (or, in this case, fingers to keyboard) has to be Samuel Clemens, either. But what the internet does is allow anyone with a copper line going into their work or home to "publish" whatever they like with no third-party intervention or editorial process whatsoever. Censorship is one thing; public appraisal of true worth is something else entirely. And the number of hits a site gets is no indication of worth at all. -- pieceoftheuniverse - as to the future ... well, who knows? [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: Reading, A Lost Art | TechnoAtheist | 16:55:51 06/11/01 Mon |
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| Re: Reading, A Lost Art | Hetta | 10:43:50 06/12/01 Tue |
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