Books I Abandoned Reading Are Stacking by My Nightstand. Is It Possible That's a Benefit?

This is a bit uncomfortable to reveal, but here goes. Five titles rest by my bed, all incompletely consumed. On my mobile device, I'm some distance through thirty-six audiobooks, which pales next to the forty-six Kindle titles I've set aside on my e-reader. The situation fails to account for the expanding collection of advance versions near my side table, vying for praises, now that I work as a professional author in my own right.

Starting with Dogged Completion to Purposeful Letting Go

Initially, these numbers might look to confirm contemporary opinions about current attention spans. One novelist noted a short while ago how easy it is to lose a individual's focus when it is divided by digital platforms and the news cycle. The author remarked: “Maybe as individuals' focus periods evolve the fiction will have to change with them.” Yet as an individual who once would stubbornly finish whatever book I picked up, I now consider it a individual choice to stop reading a story that I'm not enjoying.

The Short Span and the Glut of Choices

I do not believe that this tendency is due to a short focus – rather more it comes from the sense of existence slipping through my fingers. I've always been affected by the monastic principle: “Hold mortality every day before your eyes.” One idea that we each have a only finite period on this world was as sobering to me as to others. And yet at what previous moment in history have we ever had such direct access to so many mind-blowing works of art, at any moment we choose? A wealth of treasures greets me in each bookstore and within each screen, and I want to be intentional about where I focus my time. Might “not finishing” a story (abbreviation in the literary community for Incomplete) be rather than a mark of a limited focus, but a selective one?

Reading for Understanding and Reflection

Especially at a period when book production (and thus, commissioning) is still led by a particular social class and its issues. Although reading about individuals different from us can help to develop the capacity for understanding, we also select stories to think about our personal experiences and position in the world. Before the titles on the shelves more fully reflect the experiences, realities and issues of prospective readers, it might be very challenging to hold their focus.

Contemporary Writing and Consumer Attention

Of course, some authors are actually skillfully creating for the “modern focus”: the concise style of some recent novels, the tight fragments of different authors, and the quick chapters of several contemporary books are all a wonderful demonstration for a shorter form and method. Additionally there is no shortage of writing advice aimed at capturing a consumer: hone that first sentence, improve that beginning section, increase the drama (more! further!) and, if crafting thriller, introduce a mystery on the opening. Such advice is all sound – a prospective publisher, house or buyer will spend only a few limited minutes deciding whether or not to forge ahead. There's little reason in being difficult, like the writer on a class I attended who, when confronted about the narrative of their book, declared that “it all becomes clear about three-fourths of the into the story”. Not a single author should subject their audience through a series of 12 labours in order to be understood.

Crafting to Be Accessible and Granting Space

Yet I do write to be clear, as far as that is feasible. On occasion that needs leading the audience's hand, guiding them through the narrative step by succinct beat. Occasionally, I've discovered, comprehension demands time – and I must grant my own self (as well as other creators) the grace of exploring, of layering, of straying, until I find something meaningful. An influential author makes the case for the fiction finding fresh structures and that, rather than the traditional dramatic arc, “other patterns might help us imagine novel methods to create our narratives alive and authentic, persist in creating our novels novel”.

Change of the Story and Contemporary Formats

From that perspective, both perspectives converge – the story may have to change to accommodate the contemporary reader, as it has repeatedly achieved since it originated in the 1700s (as we know it now). It could be, like previous authors, coming authors will revert to serialising their books in periodicals. The upcoming these creators may even now be sharing their work, chapter by chapter, on online platforms including those used by millions of regular readers. Art forms change with the era and we should allow them.

More Than Brief Attention Spans

Yet let us not say that every shifts are entirely because of limited attention spans. If that was so, concise narrative anthologies and micro tales would be regarded considerably more {commercial|profitable|marketable