Post by account_disabled on Jan 2, 2024 4:48:58 GMT 1
When I read Alessia Savi's post " Life of an authorpreneur: why writing is not enough ", I reflected on what it means to be and want to be a writer today. In short, the article explains the figure of the 21st century writer , touching on themes that I have also touched on various occasions. While I agree with what he wrote, reading it made me think. Worth thinking about because I consider all of this – the technological world in which we live, the fever of social media, the need to communicate, the commitment of the blog, editorial marketing – the main source of distraction . All this, however useful, however necessary, slows down the writing process . It slows down the number of pages we can – that we otherwise could – write every day and consequently the number of books we can write in our life or what remains of it.
Today you no longer need to be an author, but you need to be a content churning machine . Today an author is such if he has his own platform: not the blog, the blog is only a part of it, but also the various social media, the newsletter, etc. Alessia makes a list of everything that the author of the 21st century must do more than the author of the past: find reviews Special Data write newsletters manage the blog manage social profiles promote your novels create an editorial marketing plan schedule interviews reply to emails If he works, he must also work. And he also needs entertainment. And if he has a family, he needs to spend time with the family. I don't know about you, but my days are still 24 hours. And I don't write at night, I sleep at night. I live during the day, I am a diurnal animal. For me, all this - the technological world in which we live, the fever of social media, the need to communicate, the commitment of the blog, editorial marketing - is starting to feel tight, too tight to bear for much longer.
All this is taking away my taste for fiction , which was stronger when the web didn't exist, when I had my piles of paper on which to write my stories with pen and plan novels. Before, I had a lot of time available to write. Now no longer. Now there are all these distractions. On Saturdays and Sundays I start drawing my comic strip, I don't turn on the computer at all. It's a return to the past that I'm passionate about, which I felt I needed. Maybe drawing is just an excuse or a tool to cut through distractions. Saturday and Sunday have become longer days than the rest of the week. Time seems to have slowed down, so much so that I wonder: what if I started writing on paper again, in the face of the 21st century? Today the 21st century author needs to take care of his online presence, otherwise he is nobody. But this presence limits the time to write novels.
Today you no longer need to be an author, but you need to be a content churning machine . Today an author is such if he has his own platform: not the blog, the blog is only a part of it, but also the various social media, the newsletter, etc. Alessia makes a list of everything that the author of the 21st century must do more than the author of the past: find reviews Special Data write newsletters manage the blog manage social profiles promote your novels create an editorial marketing plan schedule interviews reply to emails If he works, he must also work. And he also needs entertainment. And if he has a family, he needs to spend time with the family. I don't know about you, but my days are still 24 hours. And I don't write at night, I sleep at night. I live during the day, I am a diurnal animal. For me, all this - the technological world in which we live, the fever of social media, the need to communicate, the commitment of the blog, editorial marketing - is starting to feel tight, too tight to bear for much longer.
All this is taking away my taste for fiction , which was stronger when the web didn't exist, when I had my piles of paper on which to write my stories with pen and plan novels. Before, I had a lot of time available to write. Now no longer. Now there are all these distractions. On Saturdays and Sundays I start drawing my comic strip, I don't turn on the computer at all. It's a return to the past that I'm passionate about, which I felt I needed. Maybe drawing is just an excuse or a tool to cut through distractions. Saturday and Sunday have become longer days than the rest of the week. Time seems to have slowed down, so much so that I wonder: what if I started writing on paper again, in the face of the 21st century? Today the 21st century author needs to take care of his online presence, otherwise he is nobody. But this presence limits the time to write novels.