The Winters, Springs, Summers, and Falls of My Discontent in The Age of Online Writing

My reading and writing life began long before anyone had ever imagined this thing we now know as, "The Internet".

My entire first year in elementary school was spent waiting for the next piece of phonics, which would move me that much closer to being able to read whatever I wanted to read. Even without having gone through all the sounds, I was delighted to discover that learning to recognize even some consonants, vowels, and blends allowed me to sound out photo captions in the daily newspaper my parents always left out on the table. Reading was, to me, one of the greatest pleasures in life.

Like most little kids, I "made books" as a young child. Like only the verbally-inclined among us, I would later become a kid who thrived on things like essay questions and any homework that involved writing.

My sister is four years older than I, and I longed for the day when I could read "grown-up" books, like those she brought home from school. When I was in third- or fourth-grade I'd seek out the biggest, fattest, books (with as few pictures as possible) and enjoy hours of being engrossed in reading. All through my childhood I gravitated toward reference books, but it was once I'd finished school that I had the time and freedom to begin reading whatever text/reference books I wanted to read (rather than reading what someone else told me I had to read).

I grew up to be an avid reader (sort of compulsive reader), reading everything from shampoo-bottle labels to text/reference works intended mostly for people in specific professional fields (or aiming to work in them). Magazines were something I really enjoyed, and I only read the ones that offered articles that had substance. I can probably count the number of times I've ever looked at Vogue. To me, that was "nothing but pictures". I read Redbook (with its 3000-word articles AND other material that interested young women. Psychology Today, Mademoiselle, Working Woman, Cosmopolitan, MS, and any number of others that had "real" articles in them were among my magazine-reading.

As far as I writing goes, from the time I saw what struck me as the "brilliance" and the "science" of being able to put together a couple of simple letters and have them mean something; to the time I saw the power in putting together a few simple words and having them move someone; I've loved writing - any kind of writing whatsoever.

And such is the history I brought with me into my first explorations of what, not so long ago, was "this new thing, the Internet".

It wasn't long before Internet writing sites and blogs came along. Coincidentally, this was around the time when tv programs and commercials began speeding up the rate at which viewers heard things; as well as "zipping up" and "speeding up" the general presentation because of the general consensus that "people have short attention spans".

As someone who likes to write, I, of course, began looking at blogs and writing sites to see if there was some outlet for my own writing. Although blogs have since become part of many businesses, the first were mostly written by individuals as daily journals. Since I don't happen to be very interested in the day-to-day doings of strangers who aren't doing anything all the Earth-shattering, I kept looking, to see if I could find more interesting blogs. What I discovered was that not all blogs are journals (which at least do have real writing with at least someone else's version of substance/a story). What I noticed was that a whole lot of blogs seem to be nothing but pictures, single-lines, links to other stuff (or other non-stuff) and anything else that the creator dreamed up to throw into the mix. Most blogs like this have an impressively polished appearance, to the point where my own inadequacy in creating something so visually impressive scream at me. " Still, with each impressively polished looking blog, most often I'd just find myself asking, "What on Earth is all this crap?" - and move on. I wasn't looking for "flashes" of words and links and images. I was hoping to find writing - real writing, complete with substance, words strung together to form grammatically correct sentences, sentences carefully crafted to present a larger pictures, writing that taught me something, helped me to understand someone else, made me laugh, maybe even made me cry.

While I understand that one teenager's potpourri of words and pictures associated with an ever-exciting life will appeal to any number of other teenagers, I'm not a teenager. Teens and the under-25 set are, of course, welcome to the Internet with which they've pretty much grown up; but the world is made up of a whole lot of people who aren't under 25. Maybe it's not considered "standard" these days, but I happen to be someone with a very long attention span. What's worse (for me or others, I'm not sure which) is that I'm someone who processes information through auditory means, which means I've never been one to really appreciate pictures. Even as a kid I despised comic strips. I didn't automatically see what was happening without having to slowly figure out what each character was doing in each frame; and the whole process was just aggravating. I once read that only 20% of people take in information through auditory processing, and 20% process information kinesthetically. The remaining 60% processes information visually (if the numbers I read are accurate), which means, of course, that the person who doesn't appreciate impressive graphics is in the minority.

Since, apparently, the long attention span (which served me so well when I was a kid in school; or, for that matter, in all other situations in life) has become out-of-fashion, I've become acutely aware that in the world of the Internet I'm pretty much a misfit. For everyone who seems absolutely content with finding a 400-word summary (and pretty much the same one as what 8 billion other sites offer) on any topic, when I search I want to find substance. When I'm looking for any kind of reading at all I'm looking for substance. While some people say they find "long writing" boring, I'm bored by other people's quickie notes, flashes of words and pictures, and ability to fill a most impressive appearing page with a bunch of nothing.

Anyone who as spent any time at all on writing sites has probably discovered the frequency with which remarks about how "nobody wants to read long stuff" are made. In over three years of writing online, I can't say I've ever heard anyone say, "I'm looking for substance." I've been shocked to discover that in debates about the importance of using proper grammar, it is usually a minority of people who think grammar matters in writing. The general online majority seems to agree that "nobody cares about grammar; all anybody cares about is what someone says."

The same division is there between people who "don't want to read some big, long, thing" when searching for an article; and those who don't want yet another carbon copy of every other 400-word blip that's online about any subject. Recently, I had something fairly important I was looking up; and I felt like I'd tear out my hair if I ran into yet one more quickie paragraph about a subject on which I needed real information.

It's not for me to question the wisdom of people who say, "nobody wants some big, long, thing". On writing sites it isn't just other writers who say that. It's anyone who knows what people are looking for (or at least who we trust to know what people are looking for). I can write a 400- or 500- word "blurb" of any article as well the next Internet writer can. There's no reason I can't abandon my own writing preferences and "give the people what all the other people say they want"
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Anybody who knows anything about the Internet knows that people have short attention spans - not long ones. Nobody but wants more 500 words about anything.

The thing is, though, that I don't want to write that same, condensed, 500-word, "blurb" (aka, "article") that "everyone else" has also written. As far as I'm concerned, if you've seen one quickie article on PVC piping you've pretty much seen them all. I know that for every time I've landed on some flashy, without-substance, page that causes me to think, "What the hell is all this crap?", someone probably lands on my pages of wordy text and thinks the very same thing.

In a few years of always feeling somewhat torn about what I "should be" putting online, what most people seem to do, and what I want to put online; I've so often felt inferior; because my writing is often neither a great piece of fiction nor a short-and-to-the-point, carbon copy, of every other searchable article out there. My blogs don't look like other people's blogs. They're not business blogs, but they're not cool, flashes of color, images, and quickie blips of words that will presumably grab someone's (although most likely not an adult's) attention. Instead of flashy pictures I've actually placed "introductions to what this is" on blogs I started as a way to create a home for some of my writing. I've haven't yet gotten past the stage of "include the starter-stuff first and make things more polished and 'bloggish' later".

I know I could be earning a lot more online that I do, if only I'd abandon what I really want to write and write what "everyone else" says makes the best money. Then again, if I abandon the kind of writing I think may offer "substance" (to anyone who has the patience to get through it), what's the point of writing at all? I can make money doing any number of things. Why settle for the low, Internet-writer, pay most people get?

And what, exactly, is the "kind of writing" I want to do? Any kind (or at least most kinds that don't involve writing yet another 400-word blurb of an article that looks like a million others online). I suppose there's a part of me that hopes to write something that will help someone else understand something about any given experience/situation in life; or else (as many writers hope) to let someone else know he is not alone in some situation.

While I leave most of the marketing to the marketing-inclined; and while I usually leave the science and medicine to the professionals; I usually write as someone who has spent time just being a person, and who sometimes hopes that others may benefit, learn, understand more, or be touched by something I've written. It takes a certain amount of bravery, and a definite need to set aside a little pride, to keep on posting material that will never be what "professional Internet people" say is what people want; or material aimed at capturing the short attention spans of, apparently, most of the Internet world. There's probably not a moment when I'm writing online that I don't have in the back of my head that what I'm writing isn't really what anyone wants. After all, this is the Internet. People don't want serious. They don't want long. They don't "lacking-in-colorful-pictures". Don't forget, most don't even (apparently) want good use of grammar.

The fact is, in this Internet age, people don't always particularly appreciate the kind of writing that was the kind that pulled many of us into a passion for writing and reading. Hey, Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte were "then". Heck, even Erma Bombeck was "then". This is "now". This is the Internet age. People have short attention spans (well, at least everyone other than I; and I still say I kind of resent being made to feel out-of-fashion over that).

Still, when all is said and done, most of us do write what we want to write. It's fine that a teen somewhere wants to express a little artistic creativity, while also entertaining his/her friends. It's fine that people who care nothing about writing will put together a quickie article in the hopes of earning some part-time income from it. Variety is the spice of life, and it's fine that the Internet is the Internet - and expecting more is usually expecting too much.

Here's the thing, though. For everyone who only wants to find the quickie article or the flashy blog, there are people who are looking for something more. Not long ago, a lady commented on one of my "big, long, serious" Hubs, which she found "by accident", as she searched. Out of respect for her (and the very sobering situation she's in), I won't share details; but I was incredibly moved and humbled when she said I had put into words exactly what she has been trying to express to people around her, as she tries to help them understand "where she is" at this stage in her situation.

Back when I was in my teens and expressed my interest in writing with my closest two girlfriends, they would joke about how I would one day write a bestseller, get to go on "The Johnny Carson Show", and have to select a great dress to wear. We didn't take any of it all that seriously, as we talked about what kind of dress each of us would choose in such a situation. When I wasn't engaged in lighthearted talk about my wishes to one day write; and when, instead, I was asking myself what it was about writing that I found so appealing, I would imagine how a person could spend a lifetime writing and only make a difference in the life (or even the day) of one person. I was never sure how practical it was to imagine spending all those years writing only to have an impact on one person, but I guess imagining the potential of the same words reaching any number of people was appealing.

Having outgrown seeing any appeal in going on The Tonight Show in a great dress (not to mention that Mr. Carson has passed away, and it wouldn't be quite the same with Conan O'Brien hosting); and having even outgrown the thinking that a lifetime of writing would be worth it if my words could be helpful to one person; I still see "the writer in me" not so much as the author of a bestseller - but, instead, as simply a person who knows the potential power of the written.

I often wonder whether the Internet will eventually drive the people who like to read substance back to the shelves at their public library and local Barnes and Noble; and whether it will drive writers who generally aim for substance (even if they don't always succeed) back to query letters, file boxes, and hat boxes on the top shelf of the closet. Then, again, I sometimes imagine an Internet-revolution-revolution, where the "favor-ers" of substance may eventually drive the "favor-ers" of "fluff, quick, and color" are driven to their own corner of the Internet world; and where the general consensus changes from "nobody wants long writing" to "everybody demands at least a certain amount of substance".

As I said at the very beginning here, I have always loved all kinds of writing and reading. I have to say I more value, say,. Charles Dickens over the label on a shampoo bottle; and I'd like to say, too, that I don't particularly think the kind of writing I do ought to be the only kind on the Internet.

What bothers me, though, is that the Internet community so often sends the message that nobody wants anything that isn't one of those 500-word, condensed, articles that can found all over the 'Net; nobody wants "in-depth", and truly nobody wants "long". Between traffic concerns, attention-span concerns, and general impatience; most writing that doesn't fall into the narrow definition of "what people want" isn't all that valued. One thing I often think, though, is that sometimes it isn't about what people want, as much as it is what they discover they didn't know they wanted.

I'll never be the next Charles Dickens, but sh/e is out there somewhere. Chances are there are lots of them out there somewhere. I'll never be the next Internet marketing guru either. I have nothing to splash onto MySpace or Facebook, and I really don't care about anything anyone Tweets in so few characters. I guess I'll just keep writing whatever I feel like writing when the mood strikes me, looking over my collection on online writing and thinking, "What a pile of crap. Nobody wants that kind of writing on the Internet or these days;" and generally not feeling all that great about the kind of writing I do.

Then again, though, every once in a while there is that occasional e.mail that tells me that something I wrote was found worthwhile by someone who read it. Maybe there is still redeeming value in writing that isn't particularly aimed at page-views or fleeting attention spans after all.