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It's a bit uncomfortable to admit, but I'll say it. Five titles rest by my bed, each only partly read. On my phone, I'm midway through thirty-six audiobooks, which pales next to the 46 digital books I've set aside on my digital device. The situation fails to include the growing stack of advance copies next to my side table, vying for praises, now that I have become a professional author in my own right.

From Dogged Finishing to Deliberate Letting Go

At first glance, these numbers might seem to confirm contemporary thoughts about current focus. One novelist observed recently how simple it is to distract a individual's focus when it is scattered by social media and the 24-hour news. The author suggested: “Maybe as individuals' focus periods evolve the literature will have to adapt with them.” However as someone who used to doggedly get through whatever novel I started, I now regard it a personal freedom to put down a book that I'm not enjoying.

Our Finite Duration and the Abundance of Choices

I don't think that this habit is due to a limited focus – more accurately it relates to the feeling of time slipping through my fingers. I've always been impressed by the spiritual maxim: “Keep the end each day in view.” One point that we each have a just 4,000 weeks on this Earth was as shocking to me as to everyone. And yet at what different point in human history have we ever had such immediate entry to so many amazing creative works, whenever we want? A glut of treasures awaits me in every bookshop and on every digital platform, and I aim to be intentional about where I focus my time. Could “not finishing” a novel (term in the book world for Did Not Finish) be not just a mark of a poor intellect, but a discerning one?

Reading for Empathy and Insight

Especially at a period when book production (and therefore, acquisition) is still dominated by a particular group and its issues. While reading about characters unlike ourselves can help to build the muscle for understanding, we also select stories to consider our personal experiences and place in the world. Unless the titles on the shelves more fully depict the backgrounds, stories and issues of prospective audiences, it might be very hard to hold their focus.

Contemporary Authorship and Reader Engagement

Certainly, some writers are effectively crafting for the “contemporary interest”: the concise prose of certain modern works, the compact sections of different authors, and the brief sections of several modern books are all a excellent example for a briefer style and technique. And there is plenty of craft advice designed for capturing a reader: hone that first sentence, improve that start, raise the tension (higher! further!) and, if creating thriller, put a victim on the opening. That suggestions is completely sound – a possible representative, house or audience will use only a few limited moments determining whether or not to forge ahead. There is little reason in being contrary, like the person on a class I participated in who, when questioned about the storyline of their manuscript, declared that “it all becomes clear about three-fourths of the way through”. Not a single novelist should put their audience through a sequence of difficult tasks in order to be understood.

Crafting to Be Understood and Giving Patience

Yet I do compose to be comprehended, as to the extent as that is possible. On occasion that needs leading the audience's interest, directing them through the narrative point by economical point. Sometimes, I've discovered, understanding requires patience – and I must allow me (as well as other authors) the grace of meandering, of layering, of digressing, until I discover something meaningful. An influential author contends for the novel discovering innovative patterns and that, as opposed to the conventional narrative arc, “other forms might enable us imagine innovative methods to craft our stories vital and true, keep creating our books fresh”.

Change of the Novel and Current Mediums

Accordingly, the two viewpoints agree – the novel may have to adapt to accommodate the modern audience, as it has continually done since it originated in the historical period (as we know it today). Maybe, like earlier novelists, coming creators will revert to publishing incrementally their books in periodicals. The next these writers may already be sharing their content, section by section, on web-based services including those used by countless of regular visitors. Art forms evolve with the era and we should permit them.

Not Just Limited Focus

However we should not say that any changes are entirely because of limited concentration. Were that true, short story anthologies and flash fiction would be regarded much more {commercial|profitable|marketable