Thursday, April 28, 2016

CONTENT CREATOR

     I have wanted to be a writer ever since I was a little girl who loved to read, an author of books for children.

     I never aspired to be a "content creator".

     Yet that is what writers were referred to in an article I read recently about the future of publishing. Content Creators. Something about that term annoys me, perhaps because it implies that the content is at the service of the device.

     That's not what writing is all about.

     The same article suggests that writers will need to become "personalities" to be viable and published.That's basically fine, many writers have been terrific personalities. If I could find a time machine to zap me to the past I'd like nothing better than to attend a lecture given by the wonderfully personable writer, Mark Twain.

     But other fabulous writers have been shy, reclusive, too homely or eccentric to be ready for prime
time. And that's fine too.

     Being a personality is not what writing is about either.

     It's certainly not about the device which is presenting it, or the way it is written either. Most of our best beloved books were composed with a pencil and a piece of paper. It's about what a writer has to say, not the device she chooses to say it with. The important part isn't content, it's called story.

      Story is older, has lasted and will last longer than any kind of device or content ever invented. Story is powerful, masterful, engaging, enlightening, delightful. Being a writer is about telling a story. It's about having something to say. Long after Apple and Microsoft have taken their bows from the world stage, we will still be listening and reading story.