Dynamic Woman — Changing Times
I’m always up for a discussion about reader’s taste. On August 4, 2018 literary critic Adam Kirsch wrote a thoughtful piece titled “The Way We Read Now” in the Wall Street Journal. There he posits that we can educate our literary taste.
Disaster is the worst kind of distraction. Disasters upend daily routine and reset expectations to a default, anything-could-happen mode. I dumped a drink on my MacBook Air. I tried every resuscitation method I could think of, but machine did not respond. Off to the Genius Bar we went. Then the real drama started.
At a recent author reading, stepping into Nellie’s persona freed me to be more expressive. I felt like a kid in a Halloween costume emboldened to ask for candy from complete strangers! It was so much easier for me as Nellie to ask for an audience’s attention for her story than for me as an author to ask for attention for my book.
We live in an age of distractions. Like germs in the air we breathe, we can tolerate few disturbances with no ill effect. But the constant battle for our attention can trigger an I-just-don’t-care-anymore numbness that leads to anxiety, apathy, and burnout.
If you have a story to tell, you might want to consider attending a writers’ conference. Not everyone wants to write or publish their stories, but if you dream of seeing your byline on a story in a magazine or holding your hot-off-the-presses book with your name printed across a knockout cover, what should you do?
