The Age-Old Cynicism Surrounding the Dream of Book Writing

The Caxton Celebration

I’ve known about this joke for nearly as long as I’ve worked in book publishing. It goes like this: “More than 80% of people say they have a book inside them. And that’s exactly where it should stay.”

While speaking and tweeting at the International Digital Publishing Forum at BEA this week, I had the opportunity to hear Jane McGonigal speak. (She’s well-known for this TED talk.) She shared this statistic:

More than 90% of young people in the United States say they want to write a book someday.

I tweeted the stat, and while there were some people who considered that inspiring, the more common response looked like this:

That’d be inspiring if more wanted to learn basic grammar and improve their reading skills.

But do they want to READ one?

Jane McGonigal saw the responses later and said:

oh my gosh your followers are very cynical about young people wanting to write books! Wow! (Reading their replies)

Unfortunately, every generation is quite the same in this regard, which is nicely expressed in the following 1900s quotation: “The world is coming to an end. Children no longer obey their parents and every man wants to write a book.” (A Twitter response reminded me of it.) This type of complaint dates back to when the printing press was invented, when many warned that the bad books outnumbered the good.

McGonigal’s talk was meant to inspire publishers to think more imaginatively about how to engage young people in reading—by making the experience match the positive emotions that come from gaming (such as creativity, curiosity, awe and wonder, excitement, surprise, and joy, among others). She emphasized that younger people aren’t interested in passive consumption—they want to engage, respond, create. And this message fits what you’ll hear if you talk to the folks at Wattpad, where 40 million people (predominantly young adults) go to read and write.

I’ve had more than one conversation with adult writers who just don’t understand why anyone would take Wattpad seriously.

But it’s a mistake not to take it seriously. (If you’ve never heard of Wattpad, I encourage you to watch this video to begin to understand it.) It’s where young people are learning to write, in front of a “live” audience if you will, and going on to publish with traditional houses.

Why do we feel the need to place value judgments on how young people read or write? Dare I ask why we believe someone must become a serious reader before it’s okay for them to begin creating/writing? How much reading should be required before you get the green light to write? Doesn’t writing make you a better reader? (I must say at this point that I have never formally studied these issues; if there are educators who can comment intelligently on this, please do.)

What I observe in the reaction:

  1. There’s an overabundance of books and it’s just as upsetting now as it was in the 1400s. With digital publishing tools, even if you can’t get a publisher, the manuscript doesn’t have to collect dust under the bed. You can publish it. And as Clay Shirky has said, the question today isn’t “Why publish this?” It’s “Why not?”
  2. We think young people are not as smart, hard working, or [fill in the blank]. Every generation thinks the one after it is somehow deficient. Today’s young people are especially under this burden, as they’re constantly referred to or identified by the fact they grew up with the Internet, or digital devices, which tend to take the blame for the many evils in the world. We’re all fretting about whether or not we’re slowing down enough to read a book—even though we’re likely reading more than ever, just in different formats and mediums.

We are potentially entering a new era—what has been called the Era of Universal Authorship  (see graph below). And one of the tweeted responses did in fact acknowledge this subtext: “That [statistic] is a bit depressing. Not just the competition. That takes away from the notion of writer as identity.”

Exactly. If everyone is a writer, then what makes any particular writer special?

Era of Universal Authorship

That’s a pretty damn scary thought for the “serious” writers out there—who can also be the ones who cringe at the masses who wish to write or ridicule them for their attempts. If everyone is a writer, and no one is a reader, then who will read us? Who will care about our special snowflake work? Who will put us on a pedestal if everyone else is writing? And won’t the good work get crowded out?

Our culture used to have the same qualms about the spread of literacy. There were elitist objections that books would be misread by unworthy and ignorant readers. We somehow progressed in our thinking, so much so that we’re now erring in the opposite direction. (You can hardly go a week without seeing claims of how important fiction or novel reading is because it increases empathy or some other social good. It’s a tiresome argument that smacks of desperation, but that’s another post for another day.)

In any event: Trying to stop the era of universal authorship is pointless. We’re not going back to a time where we all passively consume media again. Writers who want to be visible or differentiate themselves in the market will have to:

  • Have an authentic and engaging connection with their readership (and before even that, of course, they’ll have to find out who their readers are or where they are!)
  • Think beyond the book artifact when it comes to what they create

Of course, those two things have been the topic of my blog for a very long time now.

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Amy Butcher

Thanks so much for this post, Jane. I hear complaints all the time about how there are too many books, and people who write badly are “wannabes,” as though the greatest writers in the world never write anything bad, or never wrote anything bad when they were young and starting out. Pooh-poohing things like Wattpad or other self-publishing platforms is kind of like saying we shouldn’t use email because people use it to send spam. I’m never sure what kind of math is used to decide that an abundance of badness detracts from goodness. Do you have any particular sources that describe people’s reactions in the 1400’s to the overabundance of books? I would love to read them.

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David Biddle

This is a great (and super timely) post, Jane. Gonna share with my side of the mountain. I agree with all your points. We are just beginning down the path of Universal Arts in general I would think. However, with books in particular, or stories and essays too for that matter, there is not as much tendency for writers to see themselves as hardcore readers. I have never met a musician who didn’t know a boatload about all the rest of the music hitting the streets in their genre. That’s not true with “writers” of all ages and it really should be — needs to be, in fact.

shirleyhs

Love this post. So much to think about here. And the quote you cite in response to Amy’s question above is priceless. Makes me want to read the whole book. Oh, and thanks for the Wattpad link. Now I’ll understand a bit better its appeal to young readers and writers. Oops. Reverse that order. 🙂

Kim Foster

Hi Jane – I love this post. I have a horror novel series posted on Wattpad and the whole experience has influenced my idea of young people and reading and writing. I couldn’t have a more enthusiastic reader base. They love to read, get into the characters, pick up on inconsistencies, make really thoughtful comments and are just generally supportive of writing, creating and putting out work. A reader just wrote me last night saying she read the book 4 times! The interaction between reader and writer is so immediate.

I also love that while older folks are hemming and hawing about putting work out, young people are pushing send on unedited chapters right from their phone, between math and social studies at school. Although this does seem like the death of grammar and editing, I think it’s more telling of the unabashed way kids feel they can say something and put their ideas out into the world, even if they aren’t perfectly formed. I admire it, and it has informed my work a lot. I’m publishing another stand-alone novel in the next couple months, and working on the next book in the series, and can’t wait for the interaction.

Again, thanks for this post and this reminder. we need it. – Kim

Suw

I think this reaction is related to societal norms on who’s allowed to have a public voice. When I first started blogging, nearly 15 years ago now, there was an attitude amongst the primarily American bloggers I knew that anyone’s opinion was valid and important. If you knew your onions and could write about them engagingly, then you were good to go.

But as blogging slowly took off in the UK, a different attitude came to the fore: “Who are these people? Why do they think their opinion is important?” If you didn’t have some sort of authority to speak from, it was hard to get taken seriously in the UK. (Equally, there was/is more -isms, so if you’re an old, white, middle class male, you get taken a lot more seriously than anyone else, even if you talk nonsense.)

At the heart of these cynical opinions about who gets to write books now is that question “Who do you think you are to be writing a book?” It’s not about the writing per se, or the book per se, but about who gets to have and share an opinion in public.

Special Kitty

Regarding the question of quality, I like what Margaret Atwood said (paraphrasing): Everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger.

lexacain

We’re all just special little snowflakes, aren’t we? Some of us are hard-working, learn-everything-about-the-industry-and-writing snowflakes, and some are “following rules would stifle my creativity” snowflakes. Yet 90% of us melt the same way. I enjoyed the article. Thanks!

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[…] More than 90% of young people say they want to write a book some day. So why does that inspire such cynicism among adults?  […]

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[…] More than 80% of people say they have a book inside them. And that’s exactly where it should stay.”  […]

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