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This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but let me explain. A handful of titles sit beside my bed, all partially finished. Inside my smartphone, I'm partway through 36 listening titles, which pales alongside the forty-six Kindle titles I've left unfinished on my e-reader. This does not account for the growing pile of advance versions beside my living room table, competing for blurbs, now that I work as a professional author in my own right.

Starting with Determined Completion to Purposeful Abandonment

Initially, these numbers might appear to support recently expressed comments about today's attention spans. One novelist commented recently how easy it is to lose a reader's focus when it is scattered by social media and the 24-hour news. He stated: “Maybe as people's attention spans shift the fiction will have to adapt with them.” However as someone who used to persistently get through any novel I started, I now regard it a individual choice to put down a novel that I'm not connecting with.

Our Limited Time and the Glut of Possibilities

I don't think that this practice is a result of a brief attention span – more accurately it comes from the sense of time passing quickly. I've often been struck by the spiritual maxim: “Hold mortality daily in mind.” Another reminder that we each have a only finite period on this planet was as horrifying to me as to others. However at what other point in history have we ever had such immediate availability to so many incredible creative works, at any moment we desire? A surplus of options greets me in every bookshop and behind every digital platform, and I want to be intentional about where I direct my energy. Might “not finishing” a story (shorthand in the literary community for Did Not Finish) be not just a sign of a weak mind, but a discerning one?

Selecting for Understanding and Reflection

Especially at a period when publishing (and thus, commissioning) is still controlled by a certain social class and its quandaries. While engaging with about characters different from ourselves can help to strengthen the ability for compassion, we also read to think about our own lives and position in the universe. Before the books on the displays better represent the backgrounds, realities and issues of potential individuals, it might be quite challenging to maintain their focus.

Contemporary Writing and Audience Interest

Of course, some authors are indeed skillfully creating for the “today's attention span”: the short style of some current works, the tight fragments of different authors, and the brief sections of several contemporary titles are all a excellent demonstration for a shorter approach and method. Additionally there is no shortage of writing advice aimed at grabbing a audience: hone that opening line, enhance that beginning section, elevate the drama (further! further!) and, if writing thriller, place a mystery on the opening. Such guidance is entirely good – a potential agent, house or buyer will spend only a few precious minutes deciding whether or not to continue. There's no benefit in being difficult, like the writer on a workshop I attended who, when confronted about the narrative of their book, declared that “everything makes sense about three-quarters of the into the story”. No novelist should subject their audience through a sequence of challenges in order to be understood.

Writing to Be Accessible and Allowing Time

And I absolutely write to be comprehended, as to the extent as that is feasible. On occasion that requires holding the consumer's interest, guiding them through the plot beat by economical step. At other times, I've discovered, insight takes time – and I must allow me (along with other authors) the grace of exploring, of building, of digressing, until I discover something meaningful. An influential thinker makes the case for the story finding fresh structures and that, instead of the traditional narrative arc, “other structures might assist us envision new approaches to create our narratives dynamic and authentic, persist in making our works fresh”.

Evolution of the Novel and Current Formats

From that perspective, each opinions converge – the story may have to adapt to suit the modern audience, as it has constantly achieved since it originated in the 18th century (as we know it today). Perhaps, like past authors, future authors will go back to releasing in parts their novels in periodicals. The next such writers may currently be releasing their work, chapter by chapter, on web-based sites such as those visited by many of monthly readers. Creative mediums evolve with the period and we should allow them.

More Than Limited Attention Spans

Yet we should not say that all evolutions are all because of limited attention spans. Were that true, concise narrative collections and micro tales would be regarded far more {commercial|profitable|marketable