The Accessible Author – What now for fiction?
One of the things that has changed, in this new socially-enabled world we live in, is the accessibility of authors.
This is not just about me. Writers such as Chuck Palahniuk (The Fight Club), Paul Coelho (The Alchemist) and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaids Tale) are all Tweeting. These are among the most popular authors in the world. There are lots more at it too. Here is a list of 100 mainly US authors for starters http://mashable.com/2009/05/08/twitter-authors/
What I’m interested in is, what this means for authors.
There has been a tendency for authors to be unavailable in the past.
When I grew up the idea of contacting an author was something you might do, but only on the rarest of occasions. You expected to be rebuffed. Many authors didn’t even give interviews, never mind tell you the quotes they like from a master in their genre.
Part of this was presumably due to the cost involved in responding to letters. Authors also adopted a mantle of inaccessibility. Whether it was a natural inclination to shut themselves away, a desire to appear superior, or a perceived need to maintain a cloak of mystery is hard to say. Each of these probably had a role to play.
But all that is in the past now. If you don’t play the social media game, especially as a new author, you risk becoming lost in the flood of hundreds of thousands of new novels and non fiction books being published every year.
So what does this mean for the author, both now and in the future? For now it will require a change of mindset. If you want to despise the internet go ahead. When paper was introduced in the middle ages, making volume production of books possible due to paper’s lower cost, the vellum and parchment lovers despised the new medium and denigrated its ability to expand the reach of authors. Those who despise the internet now, an increasingly social medium, have a similar mindset. This post is addressed to the rest of us.
The Seven Golden Rules of Twitter (being open about your real interests, not where you are, engaging with people, following people, adding your opinion to RTs and posts, being positive, teasing, providing insights) force a writer to come out of their shell. It’s great therapy for the isolated. And a support tool to make us all smile. I certainly have felt supported and have had many enjoyable moments reading the comments of my online friends.
But does all this have a greater significance for writers? Will it affect how we write and what we write about?
I believe that the Internet, our easy accessibility to people and facts, will fundamentally change the stories writers tell.
Being able to contact people, to get their views, is very useful, Being able to find out information without having the luxury of free time to visit great libraries, combined with an easier access to people, will change the stories written in the next 50 years.
Since before James Joyce literary writers have focused on the individual, his or her feelings, internal doubts, interpretations of the world they encounter in any given day. Only a few had experience of the wider world. To write about how a waitress serves you coffee, what the turn of her head might mean, as Raymond Carver does so well, became the ultimate goal for many literary and stream-of-consciousness writers.
I believe that internally focused literary age is coming to an end. Sure, there will be great writers who continue to do that well, but much modern literature is likely to open up to what the world is really about, savage murders in New Orleans, the secrets of Istanbul, the reality of romance in a modern London. Such stories are less cerebral, more tactile, more grounded. The internet and social media is likely to drive this popular literary revolution even further.
If you want to write about the reality of the world, real people, hard facts, your goal is now achievable. It’s time to write 21st century fiction. Don’t let the Ivory-Tower-Literary-Luddites fool you. They are less relevant than ever and will soon be about as popular as early twentieth century experimental poets are now.
Don’t you agree?
To read a post about the possible impact of ereader data on writers, how many people finish a book for instance, go here.
I agree Paulo is a classic example as he writes about life and you can see he just wants to hear from everyone and it helps in, with his work and life needless to say it did indeed help his booksales but then he gives allot in return.. People these days want connection.. I mean to be honest we need to get beyond the mentality that someone who creates something and is successful means they are better then us as we are all equal’s but sometimes its hard not to put someone on a pedestal. I would add another person to the list Anais Ninn I’ve just been reading her books and life, I found her the most dramatic and interesting of all authors.
I could see even then that she very much loved to connect with just about anyone, if she where around to day I reckon she would most definitely been blogging and connecting with everyone, she somehow needed that in order to survive even in her live of which her work was so tightly entwined.
It was so funny actually as my manager is looking to self publish and was asking how he could do it and of course the answer is to be as active as possible on line, it is quite amazing that now we have the internet the world is literally at our fingertips. I suppose the only down side if you wish to make a living out of it is the fact there are so many writers, but I suppose hopefully there are many more avid readers most of whom bored at work I hope ready to delve into unknown books. Who knows what the future holds!
Thanks for your comment. You are right that many more of us are writing, but I think that is a good thing. Creativity is the antidote to consumerism. Long may it rise! Laurence.
Hey Laurence, found this post and linked to it from my blog today. Agree re believing “the internet, our easy accessibility to people and facts”, will change the stories writers tell, in fact I think this has already happened and is triggering greater accuracy in various kinds of fiction, as well as some historical novels. Having worked as an editor as well as a writer, I know the internet is an amazing resource for fact checking and research. And I love using it to ‘visit’ a library in New York or somewhere hard to reach (maybe Istanbul in your case?), instead of having to go to the library concerned and fill in tedious request slips…
Thanks Lane. I’ve been to Istanbul, but there is always some little corner you’ve missed, some tree you need to name, some sunset time you need to check to get accurate in your fiction.
I expect fiction will change, as you say, and get closer to fact, but we are also seeing a rise in fantasy and distopian-future sci-fi too, so the pressures are going both ways!
Thanks for the link too!
Laurence, one of the best blogs I’ve read in months. We all fight our marketing obligations, simply because we’re not marketeers – we are writers who want time to write. That’s no longer the case. We need to reduce our writing output targets to accommodate time for other activities, such as building and maintaining a social network platform.. More and more, you can’t have one without the other.
Reblogged this on NewsLetter.
I imagine you’d have to be careful not to get burnt out. I edit a village newsletter, nothing like the workload that you have as a writer. But each month I need to take a break from email once I put the mag to bed, as I just feel exhausted!
I love being able to connect directly with readers in such an easy way. My e-mail address is readily available, not only on my Web site but elsewhere, and I average more than a dozen e-mails from young readers every day. However I’m stunned by the questions they’re asking for their author reports: “How old are you? How old were you when you were born? What was your phone number when you were born? How much do you weigh? How much money do you make? Why aren’t there any pictures of naked women in your books?”
The problem I find with the Internet is it intimidates me, plus it can suck you in and take away valuable time you could be using to write. I don’t like the idea of self-promoting either. I guess I’m just shy and old-fashioned. I wish I could hire someone to help me with it all. But I’m not published yet, so I guess I don’t have to worry about it for now. Enjoy your posts!
Hi Laurence, The ready-availability of information devalues the carefully researched novel. In Ulysses Joyce wanted ‘to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book’; nowadays he’d have used Google Earth. Social media increasingly seems to be an obligation for the writer rather than an option. From my neophyte perspective it has both positives and negatives. The positives are those you enumerate: connecting with writers and the writing world and, from the publisher point of view, the market. The negative is that while I’m leaving a reply to your post revisions of Michaelangelos Chapter 12 are sitting beside me, on hold. My fourteen year old pointed out that I do not, however, have to spend all day online, that an hour a day should suffice to fulfil all my social media needs!
Paula, Your fourteen year old is right. How much time do we spend watching TV? Social media is simply one more communication tool. Some people hated the telephone when it was introduced, some hated TV, but each of those technologies has a role now. Social media is a similar development.
The opportunity to engage with readers and other writers opens so many doors. For example, a writer/reader in the US asked me if I could source an annotated copy of my book, Sliding on the Snow Stone for her. She’s blind and she and her daughter like to read annotated books together and discuss the notes. I hadn’t a clue where to get one from, so in the end I thought, I’d do it myself. It took longer than I would have hoped, but in the end I did it and arranged for a local bookshop, who have stocked a few copies, to carry out the transaction. She’s now received it, and it was a great piece of transatlantic networking for all concerned. I don’t believe it would have happened without social media.
I think there are several distinctions that should be made:
1. Fiction vs non-fiction. Non-fiction requires research and veracity. Fiction relies on the imagination. It must be factually coherent, but to substitute fact for imagination deadens the page. With non-fiction, that connection to readers and fact-checking can be just as vital as you suggest. For fiction, you can always spot the novel where the author tried to cram all their research in, vs the novel where the research is in the background and the imaginative story takes flight.
2. Literary vs commercial fiction. People might quibble over the distinction, but for the purpose of this discussion, I’m defining commercial fiction as plot-driven, encompassing the familiar genres like mystery, science fiction, romance, suspense thrillers, etc. Readers are drawn to the genre and they are very loyal to specific authors. Commercial fiction relies less on reviews and more on leveraging readership. Commercial fiction authors are well served by having a social media platform to help build their readership, announce new books, etc. Factual accuracy for setting and the mechanisms of plot are also vital. Here, your point about engagement with externals is well made and I agree.
For literary fiction (which I define as fiction driven by language and character, relying for its impact on revealing an emotional truth) this need to deal with the outside world is far less important. Yes, lit fiction takes on big subjects – think of Russell Banks or Richard Ford with their exploration of class conflict, or the cultural legacy of the 1960′s, or aging or the legacy of violence. Or, think of Alice Munro in her closely observed domestic worlds, with their small stage but big, universal emotions. Or any of Raymond Carver’s heirs. Dave Eggers. These novels can be set in a trailer park or in Liberia. They are still about the big preoccupations on a human level. The power in such novels relies on individual emotional responses to the situation. They remind us that ultimately, we as individuals share emotional pain and joy, that we are human for exactly that reason,even if they also comment on that story. (And yes, they have to keep the reader engaged, or who will care?) With lit fiction, I think the point about engaging with a bigger world is partly true, but still secondary to the emotional response on the part of, first the character, and then the reader. And here social media and internet checkups are far, far secondary to an understanding of human nature. And readers will always want that kind of story because those stories are mirrors for our own place in the world.
Finally, lit fiction writers can absolutely benefit from interaction with their readers, either at bookstore signings, or via Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. But they don’t tend to build readership in the same way.
Ultimately, it depends on the kind of books one wants to read or write. Experimental writing of whatever genre has its place (e-originals can be said to fall into the experimental camp too) but aside from the giants in each form, none will last much beyond the first printing or the current generation of the e-reading device of choice. The same is true, though, of most writing. It’s not why writers write, or readers read, of course. Digital is not superior to print and nor is it inferior. It is a tool, and like any tool, the results and their impact come out of some unpredictable mix of the writer’s skill and happenstance.
Jeanette,
I agree that literary fiction has less need for research, engagement with modern technology and worldly relevance. Literary fiction is a virtuous world where emotional response and the character journey become the reason for its existence.
But surely too, as readers have Joyce and Proust and a thousand other journeys to go on the need for new literary fiction is diminishing.
How many times can we learn about the catharsis of a single day?
And for that reason, among others, I believe that literary fiction will end up like poetry. much admired, rarely purchased, taking up a shelf at the back of the bookshop. Already this is the case in the last few bookshops near me.
Many will wail at this, and so be it. Let them write, not wail. Let us see what they can produce to turn the tide.
What do your write?
I just don’t believe that lit fiction is dying as the body of lit fiction work builds up. If that’s true, why isn’t it true as well of commercial fiction, when commercial fiction is additonally challenged by the fact that it has more competition in terms of readers’ options for entertainment? If you look at comparison sales numbers, the decline is most noticeable in commercial fiction. But I think readership will remain for both.
One reason I think lit fiction will survive is that we all need old truths re-presented in contemporary dress. (People will read contemporary lit fiction and won’t read Proust/Joyce, for example, in part because of the somewhat archaic language and historical context, though Proust and Joyce will always be the giants on whose shoulders contemporary writers stand.)
I do think there are many, many reasons people are reading less – more competition from other forms of entertainment, a decline in long-form reading of any sort as brains, accustomed to the shorter forms necessitated by the internet, are rewired – though I am not sure we live in a less literate world overall. There is a downside to this, of course; I am sure you have read the studies linking reading fiction to empathy levels in college students; lit fiction presents point of view and the ability to inhabit a narrator’s mind as effectively as any genre. But that’s a whole different discussion.
People need stories. The need the comfort of stories, the escape of stories; the emotional mirror; they need what neuropsychologists call” pattern recognition.” That’s why people keep reading new mysteries, for example, even if they’ve already read everything PD James or LeCarre or James Patterson wrote. That’s not going to change. Arguably, the form will, though no one knows how, and I don’t think it’s at the expense of one genre over another, or a preference for hard facts over imaginative worlds.
I do have a personal preference for lit fiction because it satisfies my personal need to “go deeper” but I’m also aware that that’s not everyone’s thing.
And contemporary poetry is alive and well, though the poetry world may not be getting (relatively) larger.
I get enough reality on the news. Rape, murder, war, murders.
When I read, I want something else. A different point of view than what I’m seeing on tv.
I want a different look at what we do, and why we do it, and what ifs that challenge today’s occurrences.
And why did authors keep themselves separate from their readers? Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fleming and writers of their era lived in a time of nightly martinis, hard drinking and tobacco pipes.
As communication has opened up for everyone else with the internet, mysterious isolation becomes a choice for anyone. With enough good books, I’m not sure an author really needs a large media exposure. But the dynamic of publisher support and advertising is definitely changing, so lack of social media may indeed prove to be a handicap.
This is widely touted, and accepted, but not yet proven.
I agree that the next fifty years will be very interesting.