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This is slightly embarrassing to confess, but let me explain. Five novels sit next to my bed, each partially finished. On my smartphone, I'm some distance through 36 listening titles, which looks minor next to the forty-six ebooks I've left unfinished on my Kindle. The situation doesn't count the growing stack of advance copies beside my living room table, vying for endorsements, now that I am a published author personally.

From Persistent Reading to Purposeful Abandonment

At first glance, these numbers might appear to confirm contemporary comments about current attention spans. A writer noted not long back how easy it is to lose a person's concentration when it is divided by digital platforms and the news cycle. He remarked: “Maybe as readers' attention spans shift the literature will have to adapt with them.” However as an individual who used to persistently get through any book I began, I now view it a personal freedom to stop reading a novel that I'm not in the mood for.

Life's Short Span and the Wealth of Options

I don't feel that this practice is due to a limited attention span – more accurately it comes from the awareness of life slipping through my fingers. I've always been impressed by the Benedictine teaching: “Hold death daily before your eyes.” One point that we each have a only 4,000 weeks on this planet was as shocking to me as to anyone else. But at what other time in history have we ever had such instant access to so many incredible creative works, anytime we want? A surplus of treasures greets me in each bookstore and on every digital platform, and I strive to be deliberate about where I channel my energy. Might “DNF-ing” a story (shorthand in the book world for Incomplete) be not a indication of a poor mind, but a discerning one?

Selecting for Understanding and Reflection

Particularly at a period when book production (and thus, acquisition) is still led by a certain group and its concerns. While engaging with about characters unlike us can help to strengthen the capacity for understanding, we furthermore choose books to think about our own lives and place in the society. Before the books on the racks better depict the backgrounds, lives and concerns of prospective audiences, it might be quite challenging to hold their attention.

Modern Storytelling and Consumer Attention

Naturally, some authors are successfully crafting for the “contemporary attention span”: the short style of selected recent novels, the compact sections of different authors, and the quick parts of numerous modern books are all a impressive example for a shorter form and method. And there is an abundance of craft guidance geared toward capturing a reader: perfect that initial phrase, polish that opening chapter, increase the tension (higher! further!) and, if crafting thriller, put a mystery on the first page. That advice is all solid – a possible representative, editor or reader will spend only a a handful of valuable seconds choosing whether or not to proceed. There is no benefit in being difficult, like the individual on a class I joined who, when confronted about the narrative of their manuscript, announced that “the meaning emerges about three-fourths of the way through”. Not a single author should subject their follower through a set of difficult tasks in order to be grasped.

Writing to Be Accessible and Granting Patience

Yet I do write to be understood, as to the extent as that is achievable. On occasion that needs leading the reader's hand, steering them through the narrative point by economical step. Occasionally, I've understood, insight takes perseverance – and I must give me (and other authors) the grace of meandering, of adding depth, of digressing, until I find something authentic. One writer makes the case for the novel developing fresh structures and that, instead of the standard dramatic arc, “different forms might help us imagine new ways to make our stories vital and true, continue making our books novel”.

Evolution of the Story and Contemporary Platforms

Accordingly, both opinions align – the fiction may have to adapt to suit the today's reader, as it has repeatedly accomplished since it originated in the historical period (in its current incarnation today). It could be, like earlier novelists, coming creators will return to serialising their works in periodicals. The future those authors may currently be sharing their writing, part by part, on web-based sites like those accessed by millions of monthly visitors. Art forms change with the era and we should permit them.

Not Just Brief Concentration

However we should not say that any changes are all because of reduced concentration. If that were the case, concise narrative anthologies and very short stories would be viewed much more {commercial|profitable|marketable