One writer friend once told me, seeing we were both living in the last century together, that authors had to compete with a whole lot o' distracted people. Those people went to the moving pictures. Those people watched the TeeVee. Those people listened to the gramophone. And none of this touched upon those people living their actual lives. Work and play and meals and travel and - nowadays - going to the Wal Mart.

Still, writers continue to flourish. Worried about eBooks - well, guess who writes them. The Flickers and the Teevee - well, guess who writes them. Songs and promotions and magazines and blogs and tweets and absurd descriptions of cute cat pictures on FaceBook - well, guess who writes them.

Sharpen up those computer key boards.

And ... WalMart sells a whole pile o' books. [DE]

(image) James Victore

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The Golden Age for Writers

...is right now

By Stephen Marche

Writers have always been whiners. For nearly a hundred years, since at least the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the death of the novel has been presaged. And now, egged on by BuzzFeed and video games and just general hypercaffeinated, e-mail-all-the-time ADHD, the book is apparently, finally, about to die. At least we'll have good stuff to read while we wait. This fall alone, the number of big books published by major writers is astounding: Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, Junot Díaz, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and about a half dozen others. Not that the list has stopped anyone from complaining. Literary circles have been so full of pity for so long that they can't accept the optimistic truth: We're living in a golden age for writers and writing.

Read more:

 Writing Careers in 2012 - Stephen Marche on the Golden Age of Writers - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/features/thousand-words-on-culture/writing-careers-1212#ixzz2ILwNjSKt