The Death of the Writer
Posted: Thursday, September 29, 2011
by Tharuna Devchand
WHEN I was a child, I wanted to be a writer so that I could be immortal. I longed to be like William Shakespeare and make everything that I loved live on after my death through my words. There was a power to words. Maybe it was all in my head, but as a kid I truly believed that the pen was mightier than the sword.
Computers seemed to guarantee the immortality of writing by transferring it away from the easily tainted, torn or misplaced medium, paper. The Internet, however, has killed the significance of words in the same way that portable music devices and free podcast and music downloads have killed the radio. It has also decreased the life span of words from centuries to seconds, due to the fleeting nature of the medium and the myriad material available on the Internet.
Or maybe start a blog.
A friend of mine who likes to be at the forefront of everything introduced me to the world of blogging when it was still considered a waste of time and was frowned upon by “real” writers and those who appreciated the way of the word. He believed that everyone had a story worth telling and that blogs let people tell them. At the time, the idea seemed like a shortcut to immortalising my life. I was Shakespeare. Nothing could hold me back except for the fact that I had one reader, my friend.
When I stopped posting new blog posts, my blog, and all of its words, was engulfed by the dark side of the Internet and entered the abyss for all abandoned blogs, old tweets and outdated content no longer making any appearances on Google.
In the past five years, the usage of blogs and such, as well as their readership, has increased rapidly and having a good online readership can strengthen, if not guarantee, your chances of being published by the same company that rejected your potentially award-winning novel before reading it.
It sounds easy: start a blog, get lots of people from around the world to read it and then get published and hopefully be good enough to become immortal. There’s just one problem: attracting a consistent flow of traffic to your blog is not easy. There are too many other blogs to compete with and too many Justin Biebers and Lady Gagas hogging all the limelight.
The appreciation for a well-written piece or book or poem is dying, while the popularity of all things mindless has increased. More people would choose to browse through Lamebook.com and similar websites than read through an entire story on dailymaverick.com. Is there any need for the writer?
The Internet swallows skill and mixes it among the masses, making it almost impossible to find. There’s no selection process, no rank system, no bureaucracy for us to hate. It’s the ultimate freedom, where the voice of the plebs is louder than the senate. It’s what we have always wanted. It sucks.
Who knows, maybe in a few years the Internet will succeed in killing Shakespeare.
This Article has been viewed 267 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Wow, Tharuna. This is an amazing piece of writing you have presented. I just loved every word of it. I don't know if I can agree or disagree with anything except the last line. Shakespeare is dead today already!Lol thanks:) but u know what I mean, shakespeare is not truly dead. Like elvis and sinatra and the smiths are not really dead. Though the spice girls and boyzone pretty much are
Tharuna, this is absolutely amazing, I have goosebumps. What a fabulous writer you are! all the way through I was saying Yes! Yes! Yes! but I got to the end and though, you're a brilliant writer. The internet didn't kill you, that's for sure.Thanks Jen. Now I just have to start believing it :)I've just seen I wrote a word wrong. "Though" should've been "thought". Hate when I do that!
Great writing, I agree with you totally. I believe that the good writer is dying because of the internet. I, too, have always wanted to be a writer. I, too, have a blog, but unfortunately I only have 3 followers. But, on the other hand, God has been with me, for I am able to write with SearchWarp.com and I have my story published on Thebody.com in two parts, it is titled "Beneath an Angel's Wings: My Story of Struggle and Longtime Survival." I hope to inspire others with my story of survival. So, maybe not all is lost, Keep the Faith.Thank you:) and well done! Will def check it out:)
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.