I add posts to this blog too infrequently. The reason: distractions. The largest one, without question, is work. Day-to-day routine is hardly conducive to a truly creative life. Still, its often on my mind.
Number two distraction: the world-wide-web itself. It used to be that writing came in paper form. Even in hardcopy, though, you had to sort the signal from noise. There were choices to be made. When I was a child Ripley’s Believe It or Not featured a man—I can’t remember who—that was the last person to have read every printed book.
Well, I kind of doubt that. Maybe he read every printed book available in Europe. Other languages, such as Chinese, had been printed from an early time. In any case, that period is passed. All reading involves a choice.
Talking with my writing partner Fantasia, I once asked about how a story she was working on was coming along. She admitted to having been distracted by the web. Yes, rightly it is named so. Not only unedited writing, but pictures and videos and music, constant and inexorable, never ceasing. Web without end.
Many writers insist that good writing derives from good reading. Having read even some of what has been through an editor’s fingers, I sometimes wonder what makes a work good. Surely it is subjective. Can it be measured by the numbers?
In terms of sales, Stephen King or James Patterson would seem to be the goals for good writers. But is writing prolifically to make a living the creation of literature, or simply another capitalist throw-away? I like much of Stephen King’s work, but publishing a book or more per year seems just a touch selfish to me.
So much noise. So little signal. When I sit down to read, I like it to be behind a paper book. That way at least some of the noise is reduced. I hope the signal makes it through to my own writing.
Even while I advocate for the signal, I participate in the noise. Maybe that’s why I post so infrequently. At least it makes me sound noble, so I guess I’m going with that.
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