🔗 Share this article

This is a bit awkward to reveal, but here goes. Several books wait beside my bed, each only partly read. Within my mobile device, I'm partway through thirty-six audiobooks, which pales alongside the nearly fifty Kindle titles I've left unfinished on my e-reader. The situation fails to count the increasing pile of advance editions next to my living room table, striving for endorsements, now that I am a professional author personally.

Starting with Dogged Reading to Intentional Abandonment

At first glance, these figures might look to support recent opinions about current attention spans. A writer observed a short while ago how effortless it is to distract a individual's concentration when it is fragmented by digital platforms and the constant updates. He stated: “Maybe as readers' focus periods shift the literature will have to change with them.” However as a person who previously would stubbornly finish any book I started, I now regard it a personal freedom to set aside a book that I'm not in the mood for.

The Limited Time and the Wealth of Choices

I wouldn't feel that this practice is due to a short attention span – rather more it comes from the awareness of time moving swiftly. I've often been affected by the spiritual teaching: “Hold death daily before your eyes.” A different idea that we each have a just finite period on this planet was as sobering to me as to everyone. However at what previous moment in human history have we ever had such immediate availability to so many incredible works of art, whenever we want? A glut of treasures awaits me in any library and within each screen, and I want to be deliberate about where I direct my energy. Could “not finishing” a book (term in the publishing industry for Unfinished) be not a sign of a limited intellect, but a selective one?

Reading for Empathy and Reflection

Especially at a period when the industry (and thus, commissioning) is still dominated by a certain demographic and its concerns. While exploring about people different from ourselves can help to strengthen the muscle for empathy, we additionally select stories to consider our own experiences and place in the society. Unless the titles on the shelves better reflect the backgrounds, realities and concerns of potential audiences, it might be quite challenging to hold their focus.

Current Authorship and Audience Interest

Naturally, some writers are successfully crafting for the “modern focus”: the concise writing of certain recent novels, the compact pieces of others, and the quick sections of several modern stories are all a impressive example for a briefer form and method. And there is plenty of craft guidance geared toward grabbing a reader: perfect that opening line, enhance that beginning section, raise the drama (more! more!) and, if writing crime, put a dead body on the first page. That guidance is all sound – a possible representative, editor or buyer will spend only a several valuable seconds choosing whether or not to proceed. There's no point in being difficult, like the writer on a writing course I joined who, when challenged about the narrative of their book, stated that “everything makes sense about three-fourths of the into the story”. Not a single author should subject their audience through a sequence of difficult tasks in order to be comprehended.

Crafting to Be Accessible and Giving Space

Yet I certainly write to be comprehended, as much as that is feasible. On occasion that requires guiding the audience's interest, guiding them through the narrative step by succinct point. Sometimes, I've discovered, insight takes time – and I must give my own self (as well as other creators) the freedom of meandering, of building, of deviating, until I hit upon something true. One writer argues for the novel discovering new forms and that, instead of the traditional plot structure, “alternative forms might help us envision innovative methods to make our stories vital and true, persist in creating our works original”.

Transformation of the Story and Modern Mediums

In that sense, the two perspectives converge – the story may have to adapt to fit the modern reader, as it has constantly achieved since it originated in the 18th century (in its current incarnation now). Maybe, like earlier writers, future authors will return to serialising their books in publications. The next these writers may already be publishing their content, part by part, on digital services including those used by many of regular visitors. Art forms shift with the times and we should allow them.

Not Just Brief Attention Spans

However we should not claim that every shifts are entirely because of limited concentration. If that were the case, short story collections and micro tales would be regarded far more {commercial|profitable|marketable