Works I Abandoned Enjoying Are Piling Up by My Nightstand. What If That's a Benefit?
This is slightly embarrassing to confess, but here goes. Five titles sit beside my bed, each incompletely read. On my smartphone, I'm some distance through over three dozen audiobooks, which pales compared to the nearly fifty ebooks I've set aside on my Kindle. This doesn't include the growing pile of advance editions beside my living room table, striving for praises, now that I work as a published writer in my own right.
Starting with Persistent Reading to Intentional Letting Go
At first glance, these figures might appear to support recent thoughts about current attention spans. A writer observed recently how easy it is to break a individual's concentration when it is scattered by digital platforms and the 24-hour news. They remarked: “Maybe as people's concentration evolve the literature will have to adjust with them.” Yet as an individual who once would stubbornly get through whatever novel I began, I now view it a human right to stop reading a book that I'm not enjoying.
The Limited Time and the Glut of Choices
I don't think that this practice is due to a brief focus – rather more it relates to the awareness of life slipping through my fingers. I've often been affected by the Benedictine principle: “Hold the end daily in mind.” Another reminder that we each have a mere finite period on this planet was as horrifying to me as to others. But at what different point in our past have we ever had such direct availability to so many mind-blowing works of art, at any moment we choose? A glut of treasures awaits me in each bookshop and behind every screen, and I aim to be purposeful about where I channel my attention. Is it possible “not finishing” a novel (abbreviation in the literary community for Did Not Finish) be rather than a mark of a poor focus, but a selective one?
Choosing for Understanding and Self-awareness
Especially at a time when book production (consequently, commissioning) is still dominated by a specific demographic and its issues. Although reading about individuals different from ourselves can help to strengthen the muscle for understanding, we also choose books to think about our personal experiences and role in the universe. Until the titles on the shelves better depict the backgrounds, lives and interests of prospective readers, it might be very challenging to maintain their interest.
Current Writing and Consumer Interest
Of course, some authors are successfully crafting for the “contemporary focus”: the short style of selected recent books, the focused sections of different authors, and the quick parts of various modern titles are all a excellent demonstration for a briefer style and technique. Furthermore there is no shortage of writing advice designed for capturing a consumer: perfect that opening line, improve that opening chapter, elevate the stakes (higher! higher!) and, if crafting thriller, place a mystery on the beginning. Such advice is all sound – a potential representative, publisher or audience will use only a several limited moments choosing whether or not to forge ahead. It is little reason in being difficult, like the person on a class I participated in who, when challenged about the narrative of their novel, declared that “the meaning emerges about three-quarters of the through the book”. Not a single writer should put their audience through a set of challenges in order to be grasped.
Creating to Be Understood and Allowing Time
And I do create to be clear, as to the extent as that is achievable. At times that needs holding the audience's interest, steering them through the narrative point by economical point. Sometimes, I've understood, understanding requires time – and I must allow myself (and other writers) the permission of wandering, of layering, of straying, until I find something meaningful. One writer contends for the fiction finding innovative patterns and that, rather than the conventional plot structure, “different structures might help us conceive novel approaches to make our tales alive and real, keep making our works fresh”.
Evolution of the Book and Modern Mediums
In that sense, each opinions converge – the story may have to adapt to fit the today's consumer, as it has continually achieved since it began in the 18th century (as we know it now). Perhaps, like previous authors, coming creators will go back to serialising their novels in publications. The future those authors may even now be releasing their work, chapter by chapter, on digital services such as those accessed by countless of monthly visitors. Genres change with the era and we should allow them.
Beyond Short Concentration
However we should not assert that any evolutions are completely because of reduced focus. If that was so, short story compilations and very short stories would be considered far more {commercial|profitable|marketable
