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This is a bit awkward to admit, but here goes. Five titles sit beside my bed, all incompletely read. On my smartphone, I'm partway through 36 audiobooks, which looks minor compared to the forty-six Kindle titles I've abandoned on my Kindle. This doesn't count the growing stack of early copies beside my coffee table, vying for endorsements, now that I am a professional author personally.

Beginning with Dogged Finishing to Purposeful Setting Aside

Initially, these figures might seem to support recently expressed thoughts about today's attention spans. One novelist commented recently how easy it is to break a individual's attention when it is divided by social media and the news cycle. The author remarked: “It could be as people's concentration evolve the literature will have to change with them.” Yet as someone who previously would stubbornly finish every book I started, I now regard it a individual choice to stop reading a story that I'm not connecting with.

Life's Short Span and the Glut of Possibilities

I do not believe that this practice is caused by a short focus – rather more it comes from the feeling of existence moving swiftly. I've often been impressed by the spiritual maxim: “Hold death daily in mind.” Another reminder that we each have a just finite period on this world was as horrifying to me as to everyone. However at what different time in history have we ever had such direct entry to so many amazing creative works, whenever we choose? A glut of treasures meets me in any bookstore and on every digital platform, and I aim to be purposeful about where I focus my energy. Could “DNF-ing” a book (shorthand in the book world for Did Not Finish) be not just a indication of a poor focus, but a discerning one?

Choosing for Connection and Self-awareness

Especially at a period when publishing (and thus, commissioning) is still led by a particular group and its quandaries. Although exploring about characters unlike us can help to strengthen the capacity for understanding, we also select stories to consider our individual lives and role in the world. Until the works on the racks more fully represent the backgrounds, lives and concerns of prospective readers, it might be extremely challenging to maintain their attention.

Contemporary Authorship and Audience Interest

Of course, some novelists are actually skillfully crafting for the “today's focus”: the tweet-length style of some recent works, the focused fragments of different authors, and the quick sections of numerous modern titles are all a impressive showcase for a more concise form and technique. Additionally there is plenty of craft tips aimed at securing a audience: hone that opening line, polish that opening chapter, increase the stakes (higher! higher!) and, if writing crime, introduce a victim on the first page. That advice is all good – a prospective agent, house or reader will use only a a handful of valuable moments choosing whether or not to continue. It is little reason in being contrary, like the writer on a writing course I attended who, when challenged about the narrative of their manuscript, stated that “the meaning emerges about three-quarters of the into the story”. Not a single writer should put their audience through a set of difficult tasks in order to be grasped.

Writing to Be Understood and Allowing Time

Yet I do write to be comprehended, as to the extent as that is achievable. Sometimes that requires leading the reader's attention, directing them through the story point by succinct point. Sometimes, I've realised, comprehension requires time – and I must grant me (along with other writers) the freedom of wandering, of layering, of digressing, until I find something authentic. One author makes the case for the fiction finding fresh structures and that, instead of the standard plot structure, “different forms might help us imagine innovative approaches to create our stories vital and authentic, keep making our novels original”.

Transformation of the Book and Modern Platforms

In that sense, each opinions align – the story may have to adapt to suit the today's reader, as it has constantly done since it first emerged in the 1700s (in the form today). Perhaps, like earlier writers, tomorrow's authors will go back to serialising their novels in newspapers. The next these authors may currently be sharing their writing, section by section, on digital sites including those visited by countless of regular visitors. Art forms shift with the era and we should permit them.

Beyond Limited Focus

Yet let us not say that any changes are all because of shorter concentration. If that were the case, brief fiction compilations and very short stories would be viewed considerably more {commercial|profitable|marketable