The Internet Has Devalued Writing and It’s All Your Fault

Writing was always one of those non-skills, like cooking, where everybody who has never done it thinks that it is the easiest work in the world, and secretly view professionals as con-men who got away with something. Nobody, who has to work for a living, and does not read for enjoyment recognizes good writing. There are people for whom a straight-to-DVD movie is as good as any Spielberg or Coen Brothers masterpiece, and any local newspaper article is as enjoyable as a William Faulkner or Mark twain novel. The Internet just made all of that worse.

If the government allowed any home-cook to start a restaurant right out of their own kitchen, with no regulation or control whatsoever, what would happen? You would have every person who knew how to make toast selling toast. You would have the people who knew how to make one dish selling that one dish, and lots of microwaved TV dinners. You would still have the skilled home-cooks lost in the shuffle, along with the professionals. The person looking for more than a hot dog or a sandwich would have to hunt for it. They would have to make an effort. That is not going to happen with most people. For the most part they would settle for the grilled cheese and over time, nobody would really want anything more complex.

So what am I saying with that analogy? Does the Internet need editors? Controls?  Filters? Does everybody need to take a course in writing? No. Editing is a skill in itself, completely separate from writing, and even more difficult to cultivate. It is the skill, primarily, of the reader. Objective, and knowledgeable enough to speak for readers in general. Writers who edit tend to see the slush pile as their competition, often subconsciously, and so are not the most objective assessors of work, particularly of work better than their own. Other controls, like allowing popularity to guide what gets published, are not a means of deciding good fiction. Courses in writing are not useless, but there is no course in “imagination” or acquiring a less trite sensibility.

What Internet writers need is to take writing seriously. Seek to improve their craft. Not so that they can be taken seriously by the professionals in the media, but so that they can do it well, for the people who like good writing.