WHAT IS A BOOK?

This has been on my mind for quite some time now - in fact since the middle of January when I joined and had my first 'read' on here. I have been putting it off and off. Today is the day I need to get it out.

What constitutes a book really?

In the real world, you have a cover, some technical stuff like copyright and publication dates, and then you might have a dedication page... The rest is divided into chapters, usually quite a few pages long, be it fiction or non-fiction... Sometimes these chapters have titles, sometimes they're just... chapter one, chapter two and so on...

Here's where I lose it. Today for instance, I wanted some distraction from my own writing so I thought I'd check out what's 'hot' in the non-fiction area...

Book one sounded promising, good title, and fair cover. Tens of thousands of reads so I thought why not, and I clicked on a very interesting sounding first chapter:  Two bloody sentences long! Four and a half lines! Okay... I read them. Then I clicked next, hoping the story would actually start? Next chapter was one sentence without a full stop! Eleven words. One comment below: "Yas". One reply by the author: "ikr".

I tried another book and another, sifting through the dozens of mixed-up sub-categories. Same deal, each 'Chapter' consisting of a few words or at most a handful of sentences.

I did learn a new definition in one though: 'Non-binary gender'. This is off topic, but I just had to Google right? I mean a new definition! Who wouldn't?

Oh boy. Now I wish I had listened to Dylan who was alongside me saying: "Mum, don't, just don't!" I did though.

Turns out... we don't have just two genders any more. We have like a dozen? Intergender, agender, bigender, pangender, demigender, genderfluid... among them... and my favourite, amalgagender - which I am guessing is an amalgamation of all of the rest of these genders?

Anyway, Dylan walked out in disgust - or maybe because I was yelling out these names so loud? Like "What the fuck is an amalgagender?" He doesn't like me yelling or swearing - both going together, and both most often a result of my prehistoric brain trying to adjust to the 'fluidity' of the times we live in?

No offence to anyone who identifies with any, some or all of the above. It's not an assault on you per se, it's just me trying to work out exactly how we got here, you know?

Back to the 'books'. I get that a lot of people, especially young people, read on mobile phones. I also get the shorter attention spans and the busy lives full of social media statuses and updates and tweets and whatnot occupying lives.

What I don't get is how one sentence constitutes a chapter? When did this transition happen and where was I? Busy waffling you might argue? I thought about how if I reduced one of my own 'pieces' into similar bite-size morsels, I would end up with a few thousand chapters?

I feel old. I feel left behind, abandoned. I feel like a foreigner who not only doesn't speak the language but also has no hope of ever learning it? Because see, part of me is screaming things like, "Well even if you're going to write a single sentence, can you at least add a full stop at the end? Just so I know the chapter is finished?" I mean it can't be that hard to proof-read a sentence right? Or is this too part of the new artistic trend in expression? Is this the new 'suspense', the new 'page turning' prompt - this leaving out the full stop?  

I sound judgmental sure. I sound like I am ranting. But I just can't do it! I can't turn virtual pages for the next... sentence. Thirty of those chapters are the equivalent of one of my paragraphs, and I can't cope with that thought!

Yet they have hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of 'reads'. And people like me and those writers on my current reading list; they have at best a few thousand. They write real, book-size works... So many words, so much expression, let alone time and effort in the writing of their life stories and their musings. And yet here are these bright young things who speak in shorthand and they command vast audiences, and they have these thousands and thousands of people waiting on the next... sentence update?

Am I wrong? Am I so bloody old I am unable to ingest these tiny morsels?  Not looking for platitudes or self-justification here, I just need to understand. Am I done as a writer? Must I now give way to these Nano-sized books, consumed in minute portions?

I don't get it. I don't understand how it happened and who made it happen and really, why? What makes these single-sentence chapter books 'hot'? Where is the heat? And the rest of us wallowing unread, why are we wallowing unread? Who made that happen?

A couple of days ago I spoke of the dilution of the sexes... I feel the same thing happening to literature. Leaving fiction aside here, firstly because I am done reading the same story over and over and secondly because - well because I like to read about 'real' people, I am sensing this genre (non-fiction) is disappearing.  Getting smaller and smaller, shorter and shorter until one day, I know I will stumble across the book with a single word chapter. It probably already exists somewhere in the vast space of Wattpad?

I can see the chapter title in my head: "TODAY". And I know the word I will read: "Nothing"  (without a full stop). Maybe some of you have read it already and if any of you have, how was it for you?

Did this "Nothing" speak volumes to you about the author's isolation, the loneliness, the frustration because of the lack of love and laughter; did it stir your heart and set your mind adrift resonating in response to this author's emotions? Did it?

They say it's all in the numbers. A 'book' is ranked primarily by the number of reads it receives... I am screwed - literally - and for once I can use this so-oft mispronounced word in its correct form.

Never mind the fact my work has to compete with the thousands of "How to succeed on Wattpad" books and the thousands of "How to write" books and the thousands of other random "Diet" and "Fitness" and "Success" books all lumped together under Non-Fiction, I have to somehow navigate through all those other Nano-books to find something to read. And How on God's Earth will anyone ever find my offerings?

Wattpad, you have work to do. Or maybe a decision to make regarding your identity? There is a crisis looming. Some fancy suit in an office somewhere may already be picking at your weaknesses and creating a proper writing site, you know? One where Non-Fiction is divided into categories... one where quality counts more than 'popularity', one where biographies and memoirs and other works of 'real life' are not lost in a sea of randomness... And when that happens, those who write real and those who read real might jump ship?

People like these:

TheAlvarezChronicles

rosaimee

bayaBLUE

seechelle

KevinTroxel

The_WorldBreaker

ScottGoldman

JoeCottonwood

jeshi99

SalvatoreRitondo

Anniemena

These are some writers/readers I have come across to date, and there are many, many more out there, floundering in the huge rudderless vessel called Non-Fiction... Each of the above have their own 'real' lists... Check them out!

Oh and if you want to read 'true' very short stories, try DioneiValler



Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top