How to Kill a Writing World

I found the Google article immensely interesting, but in an abstract way. It was an article about how nobody can read articles anymore. It's actually genius rhetorically speaking. It makes readers think "Oh yeah? I'll show you! I'll read the whole article." My mind drifted the whole time reading this because I was thinking about implications and personal examples to match the text. Normally, I would think, "It's awesome that I'm thinking about the implications!" However, I had to keep dragging myself back to the text. My mind didn't want to keep reading. It wanted to take a different thought train. That, proves the validity of the article itself. I couldn't focus on the article. I could only focus around the article.

One of my bigger thought trains took off from left the station on page four. To quote briefly "Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand." It took off completely in the next paragraph when it brought in a writer.

In that first quoted paragraph, I, all of a sudden, wasn't comprehending the text anymore. I started, instead, seeing all these weird symbols bunched together to form "words." All the while, I had a narration going on in my head. This narration somehow sprung into being by my witness of the bunched symbols. AND, I understood it all.

The second paragraph that launched the train was a little more productive. Prior in the article, it mentioned how reading was changing, and how difficult it was for the writer to get through "War and Peace" (at least hypothetically). This was from a reader/writer having difficultly reading for any extended length of time. As a writer myself, I couldn't help be mourn the audiences my books will never have because of this decline in the ability to sit and read novels. This took my train to the station known as Audiobooks. I thought "People can still access my books in an audio format." Then my own experiences came into play.

I'm an ardent reader. As a Creative Writing emphasis, how could I be anything but. I finish at least two books a week. I'm already at one finish this week and it's only Tuesday. Be that as it may, it means I'm always looking for the next book. I can't luxuriate in the one, whatever it be, that I'm currently reading. I'm always watching for when I can start the next one. I've worked in a warehouse for years. Because of that, I've become a connoisseur of audio books. While my train was stopped at the Audiobooks station, I realized how often I check the time remaining on my audiobooks. I had the realization I just described prior in this paragraph. I'm always looking to see when I finish. I don't enjoy the journey because I'm too busy looking ahead.

So, as the attention span for reading decreases, I can foresee a corresponding correlation in the attention span for those who've developed the taste for audiobooks. It's a no win scenario. My hypothetical future audience will continue to dwindle unless I turn to screenplays . . .

The paragraph about the writer, Friedrich Nietzsche, really brought home my own limitations for reaching readers by making me reflect on my own writing. Then I had a scarier thought. How is the decreasing attention span going to personally impact my writing? I could clearly see in my mind all of the unfinished stories and ideas hanging out on the desktop. I have very few finished pieces. I think it's time to stop worrying about my shrinking audience and worry about my ability to stay with a piece long enough to finish. How many other writers are out there like me? How much writing, as a society, are we going to lose because the upcoming and, according to the article, current generation of writers can't focus long enough to finish their masterpieces?