On Writing In The Age Of New Media

On Writing In The Age Of New Media:

Writers are often asked why they write, and whether writing matters. Such simple questions belie often difficult answers, ones so deeply hidden that for as long as pens have known paper, early graves have been dug for writers who’ve suffered their bodies to ill health searching desperately to find them.

But we should be especially curious, in this the Age of Image, why writers nonetheless go on writing, why they still spend so much of their spare time conceiving ideas, nourishing them and helping them grow, and laboring to deliver them as words that few others will ever see when put to paper or screen.

Words, even the most beautifully arranged words, words that can liberate, possess, bewilder and intoxicate, are struggling in our time to compete against the ubiquity of new media. Thoughtful writing has been reduced to drops of ink in an ocean of mindless information and imagery, an ocean that every day grows wider, and more shallow. And for that, we all suffer.