Pamela -
I'm going to assume the "Patricia" Steve mentions is me. Ten published
books. Four of them novels. You write because you must. I feel blessed
to be able to do what I love to do.
Absolutely... my apologies... I should have turned my brain over at
least one more time on that one. I *feared* was misnaming you! I did a
scan of my e-mail contacts and of course found no "Patricia McCorduck"
and should have trusted my instincts. And of course, just as we are
many of us too flitter-brained to read more than a few words at a time,
some of us are also unable/unwilling to focus properly on what we write
(thus some portion of the *wrong* connected to the *lofty* and *long*).
Thanks for speaking up...
I understand that "Writers Write" and I am thankful for that. In Glen's
vernacular, that (Writing) would be your Twitch I suppose? What I'm
mostly addressing is that even those of us who have been the most avid
readers of such writing in the past have undermined ourselves with a new
texture of stimuli that feeds (some of) the same needs. I fear,
however, that it is the white-sugar/white-flour/grain-alcohol of the
intellect and emotion... and it does not serve us.
Like most authors, I'm always saddened to hear that literature doesn't
speak "any more" to a certain group of people, but that's the way it
is. I could argue that the numbers it ever spoke to were always small,
so what's new. But my missionary work is past, so no arguments from me.
I am not arguing that the work embodied in good
writing/literature/novels is not worthy, but sadly that many of us are
allowing our palates to go to pot, as it were. We are reading
headlines, bumper stickers and tweets where we perhaps once read
paragraphs. We are reading summaries and abstracts where we once read
short stories and articles. We are reading Cliff's notes, the abridged
version or "watching the movie" where we once read the novel. I am far
from reveling in this collapse of attention span from the epic tales ( I
recently toiled through the Illiad, but alas by listening on audio) to
the soundbite, the catchy phrase, the tweet! But it seems widespread.
I hope that this in fact, as i mentioned last posting, can come full
circle and the storytellers don't all get buried or brushed aside in
favor of the "twitch emoters" (again to adopt/adapt something of Glen's
terms) or the tweeterers or the YouTube creators.
I occasionally (surprise) get the response from folks "TLDR", an acronym
for "Too Long, Didn't Read".... and while I know it is a highly
motivated response (for I am lengthy and perhaps tedious and pedantic to
some), I believe that some of this is in the eye of the beholder. TLDR
(as an acronym) can be a self-admission to having given up one's ability
to attend to more than a phrase or a sentence or two before rotoring on
to "the next thing"?
Please *do* continue to write, and maybe even a few of us will shake off
our twitching stupor, find our fingerprint-smeared and dusty readers and
read your work, cover to cover.
- Steve
Pamela
On Mar 21, 2013, at 2:58 PM, Steve Smith <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Glen -
Unfortunately I fear you are correct. *I* have probably *written* at
least one Novel's worth (a Michener or King's worth?) right here on
the FRIAM list, yet you don't see me buckling down to publish my own
next to Doug's. And in fact, I think Doug will acknowledge that
even *he* wouldn't (couldn't) write his novel today... it was enough
focus just to dig it out, re-asciify it, reformat it, edit, dust,
clean, etc. enough to publish as an e-book on Amazon. Patricia (and
other published fiction authors here???) might have another
perspective of course!
I don't play video games for 6 hour stints, even though I came of age
along with Pong, then Asteroids, Pac Man, Battlezone, and Missile
Command. I do occasionally fall into a hole dug by Tetris on my
iPhone, however.
But I *rarely* read a novel anymore. I was, as you were, was
trained on such... but the last 22 years (if you read my last post)
have slowly eroded that. 22 years ago I had a TV connected to a VCR
in a cabinet with doors, and I might have indulged in a movie once
every week or two... maybe two during a weekend. I rarely even
turned the tube on, and then only to maybe catch a local weather
forecast.
*Even* I didn't have a *laptop* until about 1998 and while I spent at
least half my time at work in front of a computer, I spent almost no
time at home on a computer and the other half of my work time
arm-wrestling (other) idiots in meetings or crawling around fishing
cables under raised floors or dropped ceilings. Today I spend (to
this list's chagrin) 4-16 hours a day (350/365 days) in front of this
(or one or another) damned machine either reading/writing e-mail,
surfing the web (for very important stuff), writing proposals,
writing code, (occasionally) writing invoices, building 3d models for
proposals or for specifying physical parts of systems, or streaming a
movie or ...
I'm lucky to pull my face out
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3j9jpBez8g>(2:14) of this machine
for any significant amount of time, it is only because I maintain
something of a "homesteader's lifestyle" that requires me to chop
wood, carry water, repair a dumptruck/tractor/trailer haul my own
trash away, etc. I still spend *several* hours a week arm wrestling
(other) idiots in meetings but half of them are on Skype!
Someone needs to design a haptic-interface (and mediation protocols?)
for a USB attached device to facilitate arm wresting over the wire
proper? Rob Shaw's (also on this list?) brother (Chris) was involved
in a startup 15 years ago (Haptek?) that was designing pneumatic
haptic "suits" for martial arts games, unfortunately it didn't make
it to the market. They got distracted with People Putty
<http://www.haptek.com/> (and more)...
I *am* working with the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) to
try to help them develop/teach *immersive* storytelling in their
Digital Dome <http://www.myiaiaonline.com/digitaldome/> but I fear,
even with full 360 surround environments and full motion tracking,
storytelling is losing something, unless it can somehow transcend and
come full circle. For those lucky enough to experience Robert
Mirabal's live performance (Po'Pay Speaks
<http://indianpueblo.org/mirabal/>), you might know that there is
always hope for such!
We (most of us) are of a generation that preceded all this, I can
only imagine what it has been like for the current generation of
children who were born *after* Al Gore invented the Internet and the
rest of us invented the rest of it. I only see MiniVans and SUVs on
the highway with 2.6 (or is it 1.8) kids in the back seat with 2
video screens (one on the back of each parent's seat/headrest with
either a movie or maybe a video game (or web browser) running. I
have quoted Jerry Mander with "Shoot your Television". Obviously that
was not enough, my computer snuck in and filled it's niche to bursting!
Off to a face-to-face meeting that will actually require walking
around outside waving our arms (Hi Jane) !
I've gotta stop this Twitch!
- Steve
Steve Smith wrote at 03/21/2013 10:24 AM:
I'll see your "King's Men" and raise you a"Stone Junction"
<http://books.google.com/books/about/Stone_Junction.html?id=woneSCNLbrYC> by
Jim Dodge
Ordered!
When Glen writes his "great american novel" (surely to be also an
alchemical potboiler, a digital noir happening, an outlaw epic?) all his
(published on paper or internet, indexed by Google) forgotten influences
and sources will be exposed. His Twitch will be a folding of the
origami paper, or perhaps a pull of the taffy.
Unfortunately, I think the novel is dead as a format for story telling.
It may return if peak oil or a zombie apocalypse obtains. But overall,
I think it's efficacy is dwindling rapidly. I still like them because
that's the way I was trained. But I find them increasingly difficult to
read ... the surrounding people, devices, and non-fiction books with
good indices draw my attention away from novels. I'll play a video game
for 6 hours. But I won't read a novel for 6 hours. Even when I do
manage to read for a long time, it sparks ideas that I have to write
down or pause to look something up in another book. I am no longer
linear ... or even first order continuous.
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