Works I Haven't Finished Exploring Are Piling Up by My Bedside. Could It Be That's a Benefit?
This is a bit embarrassing to reveal, but here goes. Several books sit by my bed, each incompletely read. Within my phone, I'm midway through thirty-six listening titles, which seems small next to the nearly fifty ebooks I've set aside on my digital device. This does not count the growing collection of advance copies near my living room table, vying for blurbs, now that I have become a published author myself.
Starting with Persistent Completion to Purposeful Setting Aside
On the surface, these numbers might seem to support contemporary thoughts about today's focus. One novelist noted a short while ago how easy it is to break a reader's concentration when it is divided by online networks and the news cycle. They suggested: “Maybe as people's attention spans shift the literature will have to adjust with them.” However as an individual who once would stubbornly get through every novel I picked up, I now consider it a individual choice to stop reading a novel that I'm not in the mood for.
Our Limited Time and the Glut of Possibilities
I don't feel that this habit is a result of a limited attention span – rather more it comes from the sense of life slipping through my fingers. I've consistently been struck by the spiritual teaching: “Place mortality daily in mind.” A different point that we each have a mere 4,000 weeks on this world was as horrifying to me as to everyone. And yet at what previous point in human history have we ever had such immediate access to so many mind-blowing creative works, anytime we desire? A glut of treasures greets me in any bookstore and behind any digital platform, and I strive to be deliberate about where I focus my time. Could “DNF-ing” a book (shorthand in the literary community for Incomplete) be not just a sign of a poor mind, but a selective one?
Selecting for Connection and Self-awareness
Notably at a era when the industry (and thus, commissioning) is still dominated by a specific demographic and its quandaries. While exploring about individuals unlike ourselves can help to strengthen the capacity for compassion, we furthermore select stories to think about our own lives and role in the world. Until the works on the racks better represent the experiences, stories and interests of potential individuals, it might be quite hard to maintain their interest.
Current Storytelling and Consumer Interest
Naturally, some authors are skillfully crafting for the “today's focus”: the short prose of some modern works, the compact pieces of additional writers, and the short chapters of numerous modern stories are all a impressive showcase for a briefer approach and technique. And there is plenty of craft guidance designed for grabbing a reader: hone that opening line, polish that start, raise the drama (more! more!) and, if writing mystery, put a mystery on the beginning. That suggestions is all sound – a possible agent, editor or buyer will spend only a few valuable minutes choosing whether or not to continue. There's no point in being difficult, like the person on a writing course I participated in who, when questioned about the plot of their manuscript, declared that “it all becomes clear about 75% of the way through”. No author should subject their audience through a set of difficult tasks in order to be understood.
Writing to Be Accessible and Granting Space
And I absolutely write to be comprehended, as to the extent as that is possible. On occasion that demands guiding the consumer's attention, steering them through the story beat by economical beat. At other times, I've understood, insight requires perseverance – and I must allow myself (as well as other creators) the permission of exploring, of building, of straying, until I find something authentic. An influential thinker contends for the fiction developing new forms and that, instead of the standard plot structure, “alternative forms might help us conceive novel ways to make our stories vital and authentic, keep making our books novel”.
Transformation of the Story and Contemporary Mediums
In that sense, the two perspectives agree – the fiction may have to evolve to suit the today's reader, as it has continually done since it originated in the 18th century (in the form today). It could be, like earlier writers, tomorrow's authors will return to serialising their works in publications. The future such writers may already be releasing their writing, part by part, on web-based platforms including those accessed by millions of frequent readers. Creative mediums shift with the period and we should permit them.
Beyond Brief Concentration
However let us not claim that all changes are all because of reduced focus. If that was so, short story anthologies and very short stories would be viewed much more {commercial|profitable|marketable
