Golden Age Ends when we're Bored

Before computers novelists had to pass a stringent test in order to get published. Namely they had to press a set of keys in the correct order with the correct strength and they had to do this around half a million times. I talk of typing.

These days you can cut and paste your emails together to form a book. You can be good at football and have people write books for you. You can even get a computer programme to generate prose for you or you can even outsource your writing to China.

Of course those that used the pen were probably saying the same about the typists. Yet there seems to be a sweet spot, an optimum that was the typewriter. No great literature came from scratching on cave walls with a bloody mammoth bone. At the other extreme how can you find the gems when they're covered by the landfill.

Stop writing now

There is so much writing out there. A recent important survey showed that a certain percentage of people were writing a lot. It was a true. The idea is that society will reward you with money for what you write. Money buys things like food, kitchen implements and non essential operations.

How about if we were rewarded for how little we wrote? Writing grants seem to suffer from a fundamental problem. You can fund a writer to write his weird book about llamas wearing hats but it doesn't mean anyone will read it. It's not like funding art that people will see. What use are books unread? The solution is not to encourage writers but to discourage bad writers. The next time some dullard celebrity inflicts his memoirs the funding bodies should pay off the publishers and have them burn the manuscripts or make sure that each one has at least 10 pages of proper writing.