WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW
Blogs, Twitter, Facebook: these outlets are supposedly cheapening language and tarnishing our time. But the fact is we are all reading and writing much more than we used to, writes Anne Trubek ...
Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE
The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?”
Forget that most of the pundits lambasting Facebook and Twitter are familiar with these devices because they use them regularly. Forget that no one is being manacled to computers and forced to read stupid prose (instead of, say, reading Proust in bed). What many professional writers are overlooking in these laments is that the rise of amateur writers means more people are writing and reading. We are commenting on blog posts, forwarding links and composing status updates. We are seeking out communities based on written words.
Go back 20, 30 years and you will find all of us doing more talking than writing. We rued literacy levels and worried over whether all this phone-yakking and television-watching spelled the end of writing.
Few make that claim today. I would hazard that, with more than 200m people on Facebook and even more with home internet access, we are all writing more than we would have ten years ago. Those who would never write letters (too slow and anachronistic) or postcards (too twee) now send missives with abandon, from long thoughtful memos to brief and clever quips about evening plans. And if we subscribe to the theory that the most effective way to improve one’s writing is by practicing—by writing more, and ideally for an audience—then our writing skills must be getting better.
Take the “25 Things About Me” meme that raged around Facebook a few months
ago. This time-waster, as many saw it, is precisely the kind of brainstorming exercise I used to assign to my freshman writing students decades ago. I asked undergraduates to do free-writing, as we called it, because most entered my classroom with little writing experience beyond formal, assigned essays. They only wrote when they were instructed to, and the results were often arch and unclear, with ideas kept at arms length. Students saw writing as alien and intimidating--a source of anxiety. Few had experience with writing as a form of self-expression. So when I stood in front of a classroom and told students to write quickly about themselves, without worrying about grammar or punctuation or evaluation—”just to loosen up,” I would say—I was asking them to do something new. Most found the experience refreshing, and their papers improved.
Today those freewriting exercises are redundant. After all, hundreds of
thousands of people wrote “25 Things About Me” for fun. My students compose e-mails, texts, status updates and tweets "about seven hours a day," one sophomore told me. (She also says no one really talks to each other anymore). They enter my classroom more comfortable with writing--better writers, that is--and we can skip those first steps.
My friends and I write more than we used to, often more than we talk. We correspond with each other and to colleagues, school teachers, utility companies. We send e-mails to our local newspaper reporters about their stories; we write to magazine editors to tell them what we think. And most of us do labour to write well: an e-mail to a potential romantic partner is laboriously revised and edited (no more waiting by the phone); a tweet to a prospective employer is painstakingly honed until its 140 characters convey an appropriate tone with the necessary information. A response to our supervisor’s clever status update on Facebook is written carefully, so to keep the repartee going. Concision and wit are privileged in these new forms. Who would not welcome shorter, funnier prose?
The conversational arts may be suffering (despite their enduring rules), but like it or not, we are all writers now. Perhaps this explains the loud clamouring over the questionable authority of online authorship. With traditional media feeling the pain, many professional writers worry that they have become dispensable. So they unfairly degrade the prose of amateurs in order to guard the ramparts.
True, much of what is written online is quotidian, informational, ephemeral. But writing has always been so: traditional newspapers line bird-cages a day later; lab reports describe methodology in tedious detail; the founding fathers wrote what they ate for lunch. And the quality of many blogs is high, indistinguishable in eloquence and intellect from many traditionally published works.
Our new forms of writing—blogs, Facebook, Twitter—all have precedents, analogue analogues: a notebook, a postcard, a jotting on the back of an envelope. They are exceedingly accessible. That it is easier to cultivate a wide audience for tossed off thoughts has meant a superfluity of mundane musings, to be sure. But it has also generated a democracy of ideas and quite a few rising stars, whose work we might never have been exposed to were we limited to conventional publishing channels.
Amateurs and experts share real estate on our screens. We scroll down to add our comments; we join the written fray. The rush of prose is intense, but also exhilirating. So many hats are in the ring.
Yes, we need to darken the line between what is verifiable and what is hearsay. The financial downturn and its disastrous impact on print publishing has led some to think we can do without trained reporters and editors--professionals who know how to check facts and strip the gloss off hasty pronouncements. We need this work, perhaps now more than ever. But not at the expense of silencing the new voices--an exciting new crop of self-possessed scribes--ringing all over our screens. There may be too much, but that does not mean it is unworthy.
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com (via Flickr)
(Anne Trubek is an associate professor of Rhetoric & Composition at Oberlin College. She has a blog at GOOD magazine.)
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I really appreciated this
June 26, 2009 - 23:47 — Kaitlin (not verified)I really appreciated this piece. I just wanted to let you know that you misspelled "writing" in the second paragraph and "exhilarating" in the penultimate paragraph in case it can be fixed easily. I wouldn't have commented if I hadn't enjoyed the piece so much!
The only issue with this
June 27, 2009 - 06:24 — Nick (not verified)The only issue with this assertion is addressed by the author, if deemed of little import. That whole "fact checking" business, the role of professional journalism, is broken to the point of having little value in the brave new blog-world. After the simple act of putting words down on medium, fact checking and accurate reportage are the most important aspect of News itself. The problem with blogs, et al, is not the fact that we're all learning to be proto-literate; it's that we now have an unending array of screaming morons vying for our time. You might say this is, in fact, desirable, as the breadth of opinion makes for good cultural discourse. I would assert, without question, that there is a greater value to the ideas espoused by a handful of truly thoughtful writers in one small room than an auditorium filled to the rafters with shrieking monkeys.
We were all supposed to learn to write in school. The newfound inability to contract "you are" or differentiate "then" and "than" are not signs that people are becoming more comfortable writers, it's the expository death rattle of language on paper as worth anything other than a handful of hot poo.
One small dispute, not to detract from the value of the piece
June 29, 2009 - 04:28 — Visitor (not verified)Not to detract from the main point and value of Ms. Trubek's piece, I note that in the final paragraph she asserts that: "The financial downturn and its disastrous impact on print publishing has led some to think we can do without trained reporters and editors--professionals who know how to check facts and strip the gloss off hasty pronouncements. We need this work, ...."
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _On the contrary, I would submit that the recent/current "financial downturn" is not the reason for the recent precipitious decline in the fortunes of print publishing, "journalism," etc., but rather that these "old" publishing realms have long since abandoned in large part, fact checking, well thought through, balanced, and honest pronouncements, and any remote effort to pursue truth and facts without personal and/or political bias.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _The current financial downturn is merely an historical artifact that conincides with these "disastrous results" on publishing to which Ms. Trubek refers. Financial downturns occur periodically, and it has been ever so; the current one has probably only hastened these disatrous effects on publishing in a comparatively minor way as opposed to the erosive--and corrosive--effects of the steep decline in objectivity, honesty, and the presentation of Truth and fact (and even well-reasoned argument along with truth and actual facts in opinion journalism) in publishing and what is called "journalism" today. --Toss in a sizable portion hypocrisy as participating causal element and we have a pretty complete root cause analysis as opposed to Ms. Trubek's statement.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Regardless of this concern, thank you Ms. Trubek for the the main point of the piece--and especially, the original thinking and your "dare to be different" posture in putting it forth.
Writing
July 7, 2009 - 10:08 — Maggie (not verified)I wrote a Top Ten Reasons why Sarah Palin Quit - and yet another writer is born....at www.liamsgrandma.typepad.com
Writing cycles. We're all Homer now
July 8, 2009 - 18:13 — Dan Holloway (not verified)Thank you for this wonderful post. It is true that a democratisation of writing is to be celebrated. What the literary stuckists (largely those whose salary depends upon literature NOT changing, who seem very unwilling to support or even allow for those who might benefit from the change, claiming that "all writers lose out" when writing is free and democratised, when they clearly mean themselves) forget is that new technology has lead also to an increase in READING.
As a writer, one of the things that excites me about new technology is its potential for allowing readers and writers to converse (I am writing a novel interactively on Facebook - The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes). For me culture IS conversation. It's teh back and forth between writers and readers, artists and viewers, musicians adn listeners. Traditional writers tell me I must be losing my "voice" in the conversation, but that's just not true. What this new instantly interactive technology has done is exposed the myth that the person who locks themselves in their study at a typewriter is the sole model of the writer.
We are returning to the days of the campfire (Patti DeLois, a writer I greatly respect, called my site her "virtual campfire") and the storyteller who tells a slightly differentversion of the story each night depending on the audience (it's an art only the comedian has really perpetuated until now). It strikes me, as an ex-classicist, that actually what happens in these interactions provides a unique insight for those who study "form criticism" - the way oral narratives were influenced by their communities. My experience of classicists, howver, tells me they are even less liely to embrace such an idea than writers. Which would be a shame.
It's a wnerful, exciting time to be writing - and learning about one's craft (and, ironically, about its ancienthistory) from the new media.
Best
Dan
www.danholloway.wordpress.com
Fact Checking
July 13, 2009 - 12:41 — Sarah (not verified)I agree that we have all become writers with the Facebook/Twitter/Myspace age. I also agree that the fact checking with emails and messages that are being sent is absolutely non-existent. I get 20 plus email/facebook messages a day that are politically related and who knows what to believe. I am sure that none of these have been validated, so bad information is being repeated.
Sarah
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Gab
July 24, 2009 - 16:24 — Old_School (not verified)Transfering the mindless gab of the masses from talking to typing doesnt make it meaningful.
And while there may be more writing available because more people now think they are "writers", little of it si of any quality.
That is the drux of this problem. Quality VS Quantity. In the end though, a society gets the culture it deserves. You are choosing a plebian lowest-common-denominator culture over rigorous traditional culture. The infantile desire for community rather than the austere school of artistic solitude. Good luck. Some of us are leaving, and trading our works among ourselves alone.
We are all writers, but who is the reader?
July 29, 2009 - 07:27 — NYC (not verified)It's an excellent piece on our changing habits. I fought for years trying to persuade my mother to start using email, and now that she is using it, I can't find enough time to reply to all the messages!
On a more public scale, things like Twitter generate tons of content, but are there enough readers to consume it? The stats show that 90% of Twitter content is supplied by approximately 10% of its users.
There are millions of abandoned Twitter accounts and Blogspot / Wordpress blogs. Who is going to clean up all the clutter that nobody ever read once? It all remains a mystery.
The Downside
July 29, 2009 - 08:29 — Visitor (not verified)While it is good that more people are improving their writing skills, it is bad that truly bright, thoughtful people will not be able to make a living as journalists or writers, so public thought, knowledge, and even democracy as a whole will suffer.
Great Piece
July 29, 2009 - 08:35 — Judith Baumel (not verified)So glad to have found this essay (however late via the NYTimes link). I agree completely that the popularity of these writing-based media is a good thing for readers and writers. I, too, have seen wonderful changes in my undergraduate students' skills.
Happy to know someone still
July 29, 2009 - 12:16 — Visitor (not verified)Happy to know someone still has his sensibilities. Nick, my hat's off to you.
last night's post
July 31, 2009 - 10:45 — Dan Holloway (not verified)apologies, did last night's post get eaten? I only ask because once before it landed in your spam :-) Thank you
We are all Writers? Where is Faulkner? Where is Austen?
August 1, 2009 - 01:21 — Visitor (not verified)As a professor of Freshman English, I applaud writing in many forms; however, email, Twitter and Facebook do not prepare a student for writing in the business world. Reports cannot be abreviated, or punctuated with emoticons, and short, choppy unorganized sentences will not give the career email clarity.
While the art of daily letter writing thrived in the nineteenth century, the letters written in that era had something that electronic mail today lacks - content! Witness the famous letters that authors wrote to one another. Their letters were literary gems as great as many of their novels (and sometimes as long).
While many write, few can win Pulitzer prizes, and the content, the signification, the symbolism, along with just a darn good story is hard to come by. No matter how many adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs you utilize, one may never be a Faulkner, Dickens, or an Austen. Most will not win the Nobel Prize for Literature, even if they try.
Words are meaningless, unless there is content behind them, and electronic words, while they possess that possibility, rarely transcend the colloquial and abbreviated emoticons that go along with it. While writing in any form may seem to be practice, we must practice formal essay or creative writing - good writing, that will lead us to an ideal, and maintain traditional forms.
Language is what bring us to the heights of civilization, and separates us from the animal kingdom. If we lose that ability to retain the meaning, we "signify nothing."
communities and meaning
August 1, 2009 - 04:27 — Dan Holloway (not verified)At the risk of coming over all Wittgenstein, as new communities evolve through the net, so, surely, meanings and symbolic content evolve with it?
writing
August 2, 2009 - 15:55 — Rochelle Spencer (not verified)Great column--and I agree with most of it! Certainly, FB & Twitter have made us more comfortable writing and more aware of audience than we've ever been.
Still, because so much of writing is re-writing--going back & reconsidering our ideas and the way that we've phrased them--I wonder if perhaps we're losing sight of this important step in the writing process: our tweets & Facebook posts usually aren't revised.
writing & revising
August 2, 2009 - 15:56 — Rochelle Spencer (not verified)Great column--and I agree with most of it! Certainly, FB & Twitter have made us more comfortable writing and more aware of audience than we've ever been.
Still, because so much of writing is re-writing--going back & reconsidering our ideas and the way that we've phrased them--I wonder if perhaps we're losing sight of this important step in the writing process: our tweets & Facebook posts usually aren't revised.
Blogging is not reporting
August 20, 2009 - 00:45 — Kenneth Ross (not verified)I heard an excellent interview this week on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Jones, who talked about why people need to care about the death of print journalism. He talked about the difference between opinion-based journalism and impartial, fact-based journalism. Blogs are filled with people's thoughts about various topics. But the topics these people spout off about are often the result of fact-based newspaper articles written by a paid, professional reporter who spent hours researching and writing the story. As newspapers die, these stories will disappear and bloggers will have nothing to blog about.
And for those who believe on-line web sites will take the place of newspapers, you're dreaming. Web sites do not have enough money to pay journalists - especially the vast majority of journalists who report on local news events such as school boards or city councils or the ramifications of a possible housing development - to spend the time needed to research and write such stories. And if you expect journalists to do such work for free, why don't you work for nothing as well? Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? So is expecting highly trained, well educated reporters to work for nothing!
Progress!
September 8, 2009 - 23:43 — Faye (not verified)Look about you, and embrace progress! We ARE all writers now. Compare and contrast (if you've enough miles on you to do so) a teen from the 1970's to a teen today. While some of us did write, it was typically only for our teachers' eyes to see. While some of us did read, the challenge was to find any breathing person to discuss the amazing new ideas and discoveries. Those precious few of us who daily wrote five- and six-page longhand notes to each other as a diversion from high school curriculum were the predecessors of bloggers! Well, perhaps there was not that level of quality, but certainly we were the forerunners of the Facebook crowd.
I am proud to have bucked the parenting group-think prevalent ten years ago which insisted on severe limitations on childhood exposure to technology of any sort. "This is their future," I argued. "You are performing a disservice by holding them back. Besides, what are they doing? Reading! Writing!" Even the video games, with their wealth of fine hand-eye-coordination, were packed with opportunities to read and comprehend instructions.
Now, if I could just get my mom to text . . . she's 83, and in response to the "frustration" of texting, she simply hits the dial button on her cell phone and calls me in reply to one of my brief little quests to score daughter points. But a phone conversation is the last thing I want. As Ms. Trubek's sophomore student observed, "No one really talks to each other anymore."
Our cutting-edge technology has granted the opportunity for each member of society to be a writer, more or less. And a movie producer. And a passionate (if not spectacular) vocalist, belting out a heart-felt tune on a karaoke stage. Observe the night sky – do the brightest stars shine less so because of the quantity of their modest company?
We are all writers now.
I agree
October 31, 2009 - 16:03 — new balance 991 (not verified)It seems this day in age everyone can consider themselves writers just because they have a simple blog online. Oh well....
Re: writers
November 2, 2009 - 16:23 — Brian S (not verified)I dont think people on twitter would be considered "writers" really.
Yes, indeed, we started to
November 20, 2009 - 11:16 — Tim Scipio (not verified)Yes, indeed, we started to read and write really much more than in the past century. However, we do not have to use less oral speech. Reading and writing can not affect the overall development of the language, it will give momentum to this development. In addition, over time, we can eliminate the obvious gaps between the written and oral speech.
I'm glad to know that
December 20, 2009 - 03:18 — Visitor (not verified)I'm glad to know that someone still has his sensibilities. Nick, my hat's off to you.
Writing, Speaking, and Communication
January 3, 2010 - 00:56 — B Buehler (not verified)While I agree that having more people write, even if it's ephemeral content, can be seen as an improvement - if it isn't making you communicate better, what's the point? I have loved reading all my life, fashionable or unfashionable, no matter the medium, but IM's and Tweets and time on FB doesn't really make someone a writer in the same way that having a book, a magazine, a newspaper, or any other piece of information written on PAPER does. People's words may live forever on the internet, embarassing or not, but it will never mean the same or be as accessible to me as something I can hold in my hand that doesn't need batteries or electricity for me to enjoy it. To add to it, everyone may write, but can they write well? thoughtfully? meaningfully? with purpose? Translating all our conversations to writing instead of speaking may make us writers and readers by default but results in less communication of ideas, expansion of our personal universe's biases, and less time well spent than either picking up a book or having a meaningful conversation face to face with another human being. Write all you want online, I may read it - but in the end, give me something I can hold onto when the power goes out, or the electricity is shut-off.
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