Personal Essay
Words Among Friends — Can Reading Save Online Writing?
And When All Else Fails, Who Will Rescue Us from the Edge of Extinction?
Has online writing become the opiate of the masses?
Or is it on the brink of extinction?
Is it truly one of the benchmark bastions of democracy, where practically anyone can find a platform or a soapbox, no matter how splintered, to express themselves in writing?
Or are we all done with the sheer banality of it all?
Will public apathy, algorithms or a drop in viewership lead to the end of online platforms for freelance writing? Or are there other, more integral forces and factors in play? Are we still strong enough, steadfast enough and persistent enough to weather the storms and see where they lead us? — even when we’re experiencing technical difficulties beyond our control?
Will there be a resurgence of online reading?
I, for one, certainly hope so.
Maybe there are those of us, sitting on the sharp picket end of the fence, that cannot live without reading our daily dose of content or literature, even poetry.
Online viewership is something I often think about. In fact, it is the subject of many of my gentle rants with members of the online writing community. If you’re an online writer, you realize how much time goes into your process, from preliminary written draft to final published product.
But, do you stop to realize how much or how little you read online?
To me, there is nothing as sad or wasteful as a piece of quality writing that sits on a dusty shelf or gets lost in the void. Honestly, I have encountered magnificent gems of wordplay or soul searching or exquisite writing, that just sit there in the shadows, relatively unread, and I wonder why.
The next question I ponder concerns the so-called influencers of freelance writing. When all else fails, can the social media footprints and tutorials of these successful, popular online contributors, like Tim Denning, Zulie Rane, Ayo, the Writer, or some unmasked blogger or editor, throw a lifeline to resuscitate or inspire online writing? Cue the phoenix rising from the ashes. Or an ushered cloned zombie apocalypse.
But I know, it will take much more than that. It will take all of us. Unless the cards have already been dealt and the deck is stacked, it will take a renaissance. A renaissance of reading — I like the sound of that. Only time will tell. Long live the written word.*
© Connie Song 2021. All Rights Reserved.
- Editing gratitude to Richard Baxter and Tina L. Smith
