The Remarkable Truth About Writing in a Monumental Transformative 21st Century

We live in a busy world on the move amid a hodge-podge of multiple cultures and different generations working together to achieve the boss’s goals. A happy boss makes a happy you. Rapidly changing technology demands that we become continuous learners, adapting to the new ways of communicating and performing work. Artificial intelligence and robots are on the horizon threatening to alter how we live, work, and play. Maybe ‘threatening’ is the wrong word. But be sure, change is coming.

How will these changes affect you as a writer? Technology has changed how we write. We are far removed from the days of feather plumes and inkwells. I recall how dramatic having a word processor instead of a ribbon typewriter was for me as a young aspiring writer. Now as an aging aspiring writer, they have apps for that.

Our multi-generational, cross-cultural world will influence the type of characters we write about and the stories we tell about them. How can they not? As a kid writer, I conjured up several aliases and pen names I could write under, since I didn’t see a bunch of books on the public library shelves written by authors with strange-sounding, odd-spelled names. In comparison, today my name doesn’t seem as out-of-place as more and more international writers are finding space on the local bookshelves.

Advancements in technology have also made publishing more accessible to more people. This is both good and bad. The publishing houses do act as a filter, working diligently to ensure a certain quality of writing is published. However, you don’t necessarily need a publisher today. You can self-publish. Of course, this means you gotta get out and hustle to sell your books since you don’t have the marketing department of a publishing house behind you. Distribution is another challenge. Go to your local bookstore and tell ‘em you wrote a book and you’d like them to sell it. Odds are that won’t happen. Plus, with everybody and their dog being able to publish, there’s a lot of junk that gets in the way of skillful writing by people who have worked hard at their craft. But hey…who am I to judge. Creativity is a good thang, right? And that’s the truth.

Keep on writing…I believe in you.

~TDG

David Bowie-Changes