As books crumble

Disturbing news has reached my ears, for not the first time, but this news has shaken me to my very core.  With the upcoming implementation—if it has not already happened—of iPads being introduced in a classroom setting, people are starting to take a long, hard look at books.  Since E-readers and the various tablets on the market allow for people on the go to forever have a wide variety of books on them at all times, without the bulky weight, more and more people are wondering why authors are not making use of the technology that is so important in this day and age.  I can assure those people that there are indeed books on the way that will be interactive and colourful and filled with all the vastness of the worlds, that offer in depth character creations and allow the reader a powerful control over the story…wait a minute…that sounds suspiciously like a video game, doesn’t it?

Of course it does, but it’s also what people are looking for in books these days.  What child, who has grown up with a healthy diet of Facebook and Skyrim, would ever want to sit down before the soft crackling warmth cast off by the flickering flames of a fire with a book in hand?  Few enough, as it turns out.  The startling statistic is that women 35+ are the most common readers, that’s not very good for us men, it means we spend too much either in front of the television with a beer, or in front of the television playing a video game with a beer.  To combat this, authors are struggling to find newer ways to write, ways that will engage audiences as never before imagined by a book…but imagined daily by Bethesda.

Do not mistake me, I hold a great reverence for video games, having played Everquest for…longer than I care to admit in public, and Oblivion for…yes, anyway.  However, my love for video games does not actually interfere with my obsession with books.  I often find myself sitting on the couch and reading, not for ten minutes for homework, not a one-hundred page book, but because I find it enjoyable and the books tend to revolve around a minimum of six-hundred pages.  Who would not want to read about a devious Assassin who is so cunning that he can stroll the city with only a single poisoned-tipped needle and manage to kill a King with nobody the wiser?  Or how about a Merchant-Prince cast into shame, and in order to survive he uses his knowledge of trade routes to become a pirate the likes of which have never before been seen?  Perhaps you would enjoy something a little more realistic?  How about when England, before it was called such, being invaded by the Danes and the struggles therein?  Mayhaps the American Civil War is more to the tastes?  Try Bernard Cornwells Starbuck series.

I remember when there were people in this world with imagination, when they could vividly picture every single word on a page as though it were an actual movie or video game.  Have we so lost these people that we are left with nothing more than children who stare slack-jawed at moving pictures, a line of drool spilling from their mouths as one eye is always pulled towards the tacky blue and white on their computer screens?  I, for one, weep for what will happen to books when, at last, the imagination of mankind finally fails and we take another step towards destroying something as beautiful as books.  Enjoy your pointless chats on social media pages that tell you that you’re important; I’m going to read how a King was used as a pincushion of arrows by Vikings because he thought God would protect him from harm.

Writing

I have often been asked about my writing, considering that it so often differs from not only the way that I speak in person, but also from the written work of my peers.  The questions are varied, but tend to circle around a central theme of how I manage to sit down and write approximately four-hundred pages of a book.  For most people, this seems to be a nearly impossible feat, considering so many struggle to simply write a short blog numbering at three-hundred words.  There is no one thing that I do in order to write 2,800 words every day.  Rather, I simply settle myself into my favourite chair, with a steaming cup of coffee—or a cold beer—and simply let the words flow.  There is no secret to writing, the same way that there is no real secret to any form of art.  If you care about it, then it becomes the easiest thing in the world.

I suppose my most common answer to those who wish to know how to sit before the screen of a computer and tap away at a keyboard for hours on end, is to lightly plan what it is you want to write.  I have never been good with organization, and over the last year I cannot remember a third of the books that I planned out in detail greater than some of the written works that have been published recently.  Cities were brought to life with a humming downtown core, filled with merchants and vendors of various foods.  Stores lining the simple cobble-stone streets, windows of glass sparkling in the rays of golden sunlight that lit upon them.  However, not a one of those stories were even put to paper.  Perhaps, in my own way, I am simply saving them for a time when I feel that they will be fully evolved, but more likely I became bored of all the detail as it left nothing for my imagination to do.

When sitting down to write, to do anything, the imagination is an exceptionally vital part of the process, it powers so much of the world around us that to leave it with naught to do but slumber is to steal the very breath of life from our written works.  Rather than planning an upcoming blog post or written material in full, I encourage those who so often complain that writing is hard, to just relax and allow their imaginations to take control of their fingers.  Instead of writing about a simple city and how the voices of the thousands of citizens create an ungodly cacophony of noise, perhaps something beautiful will take place.

The sun rose over the silent, still sea, stretching forth fingers of red-gold light to shimmer across the blue surface of the water.  In the distance, the calling of birds could be heard faintly, and a breeze drifted gently over the sea, stirring forth small waves and wrapping about the woman like a lovers caress as she stood, with feet warmed by the sand, at the edge of the water. 

The Written Word

Writing, no matter what your fourth grade teacher told you, is an art that speaks levels of difficulty beyond what any simple picture can hope to capture.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it not simpler, then, to turn from the difficult and seek solace in the easy?  Paintings, although beautifully mastered and rendered in the greatest of detail still fail in one vital aspect, they can be altered depending on how they are viewed.  What the artist has given, has painted, is all there is.  Although people search for the deeper meanings, the pain and the anguish that must be the signature of all great artists, debating about the gender of some, they miss the simple beauty that lies within.

With writing, however, one can create an entire world as unique as the individual themselves, bring light to a kingdom shrouded in darkness, give voices to those who fought and died bravely in wars long since faded to memories.  Yet I fear that the beauty that can be created by the written word is fading, authors becoming a dying breed as their words become mangled corpses, and simple wraiths as the younger generations begin to butcher the world around them.

Where once words could be used to twist and weave a type of magic that could leave the reader dazed and filled with a euphoric feeling, they are being mutilated into short-hand by applications, turning what could have been a beautiful symphony of words into simple trash.  A recent posting to a certain website, with both the poster and the website remaining anonymous, read thusly to his significant other; Sup bb, gud 2 see dat ur lukin so gud!  Wud h8 2 thnk u eva lukd bad.  It tears my soul, rending it from my body, to read such words, reduced to such a form.  People exclaim in wonder that the literacy rate in the world is fading fast, yet when such writings are becoming commonplace, how can they be surprised?

Taking it upon myself to aid this clearly failed post, I lent a helping hand to the man by rewriting it into what it should have read for one’s significant other.  The writing was simple, albeit a little flowery, but read; The golden-red light of dawns soft glow flickers across the ocean that is your beautiful cerulean-blue eyes, sending its golden waves through the tresses of woven wheat that frame a face as flawless as the marble carvings of ancient Rome.  To think, to but fathom, a day when the light of love fades from thine eyes is too much for my soul to bear, for the light would have left my very world, plunging me forth into the darkness of the abyss. 

Mistake me not, for I claim no mastery over writing, but I fear for what the world will become as the generations that write with the inability to complete, or fully form, thoughts comes into power.  Writing is a form of art, as surely as painting or acting, and yet it so often goes unnoticed in the daily lives of people.  Put down the controller of a video game, tear your eyes away from the glow of your computer screen and read a book, learn the language and delve into what the world once was or could one day be.