A month ago on the Insecure Writers Support Group blog there was a post misleadingly titled, "If I Knew Then What I Know Now." The thing is, that's not really what it was about. It was actually about how technology has changed the writing world. Knowing back in the 70s or early 80s about MS Word, the World Wide Web, Kindles, etc wouldn't have done you any good--except maybe you could have bought stock in Microsoft or Apple or Amazon in the late 90s. The example I used is it'd be like going back in time to the Middle Ages or even the Old West. You'd know about cars, radios, TV, and all that but you'd have no way to reproduce them yourself because you wouldn't have the technical expertise and in many cases the processes to create even the components wouldn't exist yet. (This was actually a Twilight Zone episode where a guy sells his soul to the devil to go back to when he was young, thinking he'll make a lot of money. Except the minerals he knows about can't be mined with the time period's equipment and he doesn't have the technical knowledge or blueprints to make radios or TV or anything like that. Knowing the future doesn't mean it would actually benefit you in the past.)
Despite the misleading title, there were some good points. A lot of people want to think things were so much better in the old days, but really in the writing world they weren't that great. As the author points out, you had to use typewriters or notebooks (and then probably a typewriter) and if you made a mistake you'd have to correct it with Wite-Out. If you decided to change something you'd have to retype pages and pages. You couldn't just hit Control-H and Replace All if you decided to change a character's name.
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It was a bulkier system to be sure. I wasn't really around until it was almost over since by the time I came of age the Web was in its infancy and personal computers and word processors were much easier to get. I wrote some stuff in notebooks and sent some queries by snail mail and stuff. It was pretty annoying.
There were some good things about the old days, mostly from what I've read from older authors like Lawrence Block and Robert Silverberg. There were a lot more legitimate markets then, magazines and such that would take amateur work and give you a little something for it. None of that "exposure" bullshit on an online journal only three people will ever see. Guys like Block, Silverberg, or even Raymond Chandler got their start in magazines (in Chandler's day especially they had "the pulps" that predated comic books) getting some credits and working on their craft. There were also "the paperbacks" that were cheaper, oftentimes smuttier books.
A good thing back then was authors could actually work with editors. Editors actually, you know, edited your book instead of expecting you to make it perfect yourself while they just basically sell it to the publisher. An editor could actually make you a better writer instead of just existing as a middleman.
Something Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware could probably attest to, you had fewer scams in the old days. There were of course vanity publishers and scam agents and stuff, but not nearly as many. Email and websites and now social media have made it so easy to create scams (often multiples by the same person(s)) and recruit victims. In the old days the only way a scammer could reach you is by snail mail or phone (or an ad in Writer's Digest or something) but now it's really easy for them to hit you up on email or Facebook, X, TikTok, or wherever. And so easy to get money through PayPal or Venmo, whereas in the old days they'd have to get you to send a paper check or money order.
And obviously you didn't have "AI" generating a glut of short, incoherent crap to dump onto the market.
So there were definitely some good things. Personally I think it was better for me about 10 years ago when I was just getting the Eric Filler thing started. Back when there weren't so many authors in the market that I could make 2-3 times what I make now. If I knew then what I know now...it still wouldn't have mattered. Really I just wish I'd gotten into the Eric Filler thing a few years earlier when I might have made even more money. That's the real disappointment.
What do you think is better now than the old days about writing? What's worse?
2 comments:
Certainly it's easier with the Internet to do research and contact others. I wouldn't want to be typing my manuscripts though. My first book would've killed at least fifty trees.
I'd say twelve or so years ago was a really good time for my writing.
Your question is a good one. Here's my answer:
1) If you are concerned about the business side. If you are concerned about making money. If you are concerned about having status. Then categorically, 2024 is extremely bad. You've got to compete with a.i. garbage which has so flooded everything, that there's an actual reddit with the title "a.i. is everywhere so I think we can safely say that we lost." Yes, artists everywhere lost. They lost the war and the battle over visibility, marketing, and talent. I could write one paragraph and a.i. could write another about the same thing, and both would be indistinguishable to an untrained eye. That stings, considering I spent years and years taking English courses and training to put a sentence together. But I know that no one will ever pay a living wage to me to do this kind of work. So yeah...the business-end of writing has cratered as has much of the art world.
2) If you don't care and just want to churn out an excellent product with no errors and wonderful descriptions and character development that no one will read or ever pay for, then writing has never been better. You can produce high quality stuff. The editors are fantastic, and a.i. can do whole passages for you that you might find boring, leaving you to write the good stuff. You can produce characters so hot with a.i. now that they look perfect. I mean...I've got tons of a.i. pictures that make my own art that I labored years to do look like it was done by a kindergartner. All those paints I bought, the easels, the airbrush air compressor...all of it...is useless and honestly depressing. Obsolescence. Or in other words, "it ain't worth crap." But I can pat myself on the back and say, "hey, painting was fun, right?" Sure. But I think part of the fun was being able to do something well and get a little praise for it. Now you can just punch a button, and something better comes out in ten seconds. The weird catch is that the better stuff doesn't garner any praise because it's part of a tsunami that's inundated everything. But the stuff I draw doesn't get any praise either because it's also part of the tsunami that's inundated everything. It's like there's a huge firehose on that's on full blast and there's no one left to appreciate a single drop of water.
Those are my feelings regarding your question. So, the ultimate answer is that it is both better and worse. Definitely worse if you wanted to make any money. That's a fool's game very few can win who are not 1) part of a cult already slavering for any content you might drop, 2) already famous, or 3) be a nepo baby.
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