Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Role of the Writer on the Internet


A revival of the writerly variety is budding on the internet. There is a demand for writers who are caught up in this web revolution to look up and away from their curbed viewpoint and visualize a whole new way of life, an advanced plane of expressing self in art not constrained by walls of culture or ethnicity or color or nationality. A world composed of pen slingers who aim with their pen to deliver one purpose, one goal, one dream; to strip the craft of affectation and mail it to the individual internet user on a platform so personal it can walk right up to the counter for a cup of coffee.

Earlier generations of writers could not afford exclusive access to such profound resource at the fingertips of the contemporary literary clique. Rephrasing Dean Koontz, “what was science fiction a decade ago is reality today.” The thrust of responsibility on today’s writer as the internet and social media bring the world to the neck of the woods is delicately enterprising.

But is that outlook workable judging we all are part of some larger clear-cut community of people which demands our input in some form which includes but is not limited to our craft? I believe it is. We can’t lose ourselves in a world of compromise and we don’t have to. What the writer needs to understand is that this medium—the internet—is a community of itself and consequently furnishes its own peculiar culture. Individual interest is protected and respected. Yet, we are of the same color, culture, nationality, and interest. The internet is home to a synchronized diversity. The pleasure is in being different and yet pursuing a solitary refined cause.

Each one of us must adopt a style of storytelling that adds its inimitable voice to the virtual universe’s storytelling. We ought to feed the www with our unique views while trying to fit into the broader frame of collective narrative and blend the details of our prose into the complex tapestry of our invented cosmos. Writers on the internet must come to the full measure of awareness that the World Wide Web and our craft cannot be separated. We define the web and we do it with one voice without restricting creativity. We must issue a restraining order to national boundaries, ethnic diversity, cultural differences and skin color. And let the scribbles of the pen be the one solitary standard of evaluation.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan



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