How the 21st century ruined literature
In a young age, I am well convinced that I was born in the wrong timeline. I am certain of it. Because in this world, poetry is fighting for its survival, books is being turned into audios. It feels like literature have regressed for over 20 years. When I said to myself, that I am a writer, what I mean is I am a writer with purpose, with ideas, with the urge to write history. To ba a part of history and yet when I look around, when I stare at my kind, my fellow writers, I did not see Dostevesky, or Dickens among them. Keats was nowhere to be found, Jose Corazon de Hesus is missing and what was left of the writer of this generation where a bunch of amatures who did not know what they are writing for. And I belong to this generation, I am one of them.
I am so tired of being a part of something shallow. It is funny how when things get accessible, when books and poetry where all around, and then its meaning started to ceased. I am so tired of opening a book knowing what type of formula they used, it is funny how when we have more accessed to training and techniques, is also when we ran out of oruginality and ideas. I firmly believe that a structure, 3 act bullshit is not what make a book a masterpiece but rather it is the emotion, it was the soul speaking. If you are going to read most literature, you will notice that the best ones are those who are abstract. Because the lack of structure and knowledges is being filled by creatitivy and ideas. What I observed is the more we know about something, the less we think creatively about it and — maybe that’s the flaw of our generation — we never had the opportunity to just think and ponder and get lost to the wonders of our imagination. Mark this our generation will die, and most of us will be forgotten. Most of us will just fade away, our soul will never linger in this world, because we are never really inside it, our generation only live in the surface of things.
This generation spend a lot of time interpretating art, analysing it as if it is a set of date needed to be chart. This generation spent a lot of time in mundane details to the point they miss out the whole picture. See, art and literature doesn’t need to be analysed or interpret — it needs to be felt. It needs a soul to touch, a heart to feel, and a mind that appreciateds the sole beauty of it. I am very sorry to live in this timeline, where the world is run by profits and numbers and not by purpose or by life. It is just being a writer today means, being skimmed a lot, being scrolled down and up. It is scary to put up the effort to write a book for readers to only turn it to a shorter version of an audiobook. It is scary to be a writer of this generation knowing that what ever you put out there will not be thorougly understand or felt.
When I write, I want to be read. I want to be heard, I want to make my world their worlds. I want to make them an haven, a means to escape however, the sanctuary I built was ruined by the constant stimulation and fast culturfe. the content I work hard for where reduced into a check in a book list, in your 52-books a year challenge. It is degrading for an artist to write with this kind of audience.
One day, I stumble upon an online course, teaching people the fundamentals of writing and I thought how absurb it was. Teaching someone how to write is like teaching someone how to think. Teaching someone how to write a story deprived the students of the freedom to expressed. Nowadays, we reduce art into skills. Skills that someone can learn and master, skill that you can just add to your arsenal without knowning how it fully function. You can teach them the fundamentals but you cannot teach them how to use their words.We learn the skills but not the art. Because art cannot be taught. Because art exist before the education system can start to categories them, to reduce them by genre. Stories were present years before books and scholars were invented. So don’t ever reach for me, and hand-out your cheap formulas, your 3 act plays, and structures. Don’t reach out for me to teach me how to tell my story. It is my story in the first place.
But, despite everything, Istill want to write. I don’t want for my craft to die like this, Idon’t want it to end because my art sustain my soul and my heart. It made my heart beat and sank and stop all at once. Even though, it is a great inconvinince to be a writer in this type of world, I will continue to write. Because my soul searches for it. Because someday, my words will reach people beyong the noise of this sorry world. because someday, my name will be etched in history. I will be glad that I kept on writing.
