Works I Abandoned Exploring Are Accumulating by My Nightstand. What If That's a Positive Sign?

This is slightly embarrassing to confess, but let me explain. A handful of titles wait by my bed, all partially finished. Inside my phone, I'm some distance through 36 audiobooks, which seems small next to the nearly fifty digital books I've set aside on my Kindle. This doesn't account for the expanding collection of pre-release versions next to my coffee table, vying for blurbs, now that I work as a established author personally.

From Dogged Finishing to Intentional Letting Go

On the surface, these numbers might seem to support recently expressed thoughts about current attention spans. One novelist noted a short while ago how effortless it is to break a reader's concentration when it is scattered by digital platforms and the constant updates. They suggested: “Perhaps as people's focus periods shift the literature will have to adjust with them.” However as a person who once would doggedly complete every novel I started, I now regard it a human right to stop reading a book that I'm not enjoying.

Life's Finite Duration and the Wealth of Options

I do not believe that this tendency is caused by a short concentration – instead it relates to the awareness of existence passing quickly. I've consistently been affected by the spiritual principle: “Hold death daily in view.” One reminder that we each have a only limited time on this Earth was as sobering to me as to everyone. And yet at what previous point in human history have we ever had such direct availability to so many mind-blowing works of art, at any moment we want? A surplus of riches awaits me in every bookshop and behind every device, and I aim to be intentional about where I direct my energy. Is it possible “not finishing” a novel (term in the literary community for Unfinished) be rather than a mark of a limited mind, but a selective one?

Selecting for Connection and Self-awareness

Notably at a period when book production (and thus, selection) is still dominated by a particular social class and its issues. While engaging with about people different from us can help to build the capacity for empathy, we additionally read to reflect on our own lives and position in the universe. Until the works on the racks better depict the identities, realities and concerns of potential audiences, it might be quite difficult to keep their interest.

Contemporary Writing and Reader Interest

Of course, some authors are successfully creating for the “today's interest”: the short style of selected recent novels, the focused fragments of additional writers, and the short sections of several modern stories are all a excellent demonstration for a briefer form and technique. Furthermore there is no shortage of author tips aimed at securing a reader: perfect that opening line, enhance that opening chapter, elevate the stakes (further! more!) and, if creating thriller, put a mystery on the opening. This guidance is all sound – a prospective agent, publisher or buyer will spend only a several valuable moments deciding whether or not to proceed. There is little reason in being contrary, like the person on a class I joined who, when challenged about the plot of their book, announced that “it all becomes clear about 75% of the through the book”. No novelist should force their reader through a set of challenges in order to be grasped.

Creating to Be Clear and Granting Patience

Yet I certainly compose to be understood, as to the extent as that is feasible. Sometimes that needs guiding the audience's attention, steering them through the plot beat by succinct beat. Sometimes, I've discovered, understanding demands patience – and I must give my own self (along with other writers) the permission of wandering, of layering, of deviating, until I discover something meaningful. One writer makes the case for the fiction discovering innovative patterns and that, as opposed to the conventional narrative arc, “alternative patterns might enable us imagine novel approaches to craft our tales alive and authentic, persist in making our works original”.

Transformation of the Story and Contemporary Mediums

Accordingly, the two opinions converge – the story may have to evolve to accommodate the modern reader, as it has constantly achieved since it originated in the historical period (as we know it currently). Perhaps, like earlier novelists, coming authors will return to releasing in parts their novels in periodicals. The next those authors may even now be publishing their writing, section by section, on digital platforms including those visited by millions of monthly visitors. Genres change with the era and we should let them.

More Than Short Concentration

However let us not claim that every evolutions are completely because of limited concentration. If that was so, brief fiction compilations and flash fiction would be considered much more {commercial|profitable|marketable