I agree with most of this. People used to entertain themselves more. But there are still local performers doing music, theater, poetry, etc. for the love of performing. With no aim of becoming famous. I am one of them. We are just harder to find. Open mics are still a thing also (at least they were before COVID.)
I would also add that it was printing (and novels) that actually killed the storyteller role in the community. Instead of people telling stories to their local neighbors, we transitioned to people writing books for the masses. Except, that limited the printed "storytellers" to those the publishers, newspapers, and journals deemed worthy.
The internet has allowed anyone to be a storyteller again. And while the social aspect is different, I think it is a good thing.
Yes, there are still those local performance opportunities, though they attract a pretty small crowd these days. But even there, the old sing around the piano is gone. The local performer is a performer -- a person set apart. Performance isn't a normal part of everyone's life the way it used to be for much of human history.
The home sing-along is pretty much dead. True. Church is the only place many people sing together anymore. Although, Europeans still do pub sing-alongs occasionally (I think/hope.) And at football (soccer) stadiums. But you are correct, there is little small-scale performance in most people's lives. People think they have to be great/stars to perform now, which is a shame.
But there is no way I am watching someone write a novel on YouTube. Could anything be more boring? 🤣
As a counter-argument, I'd point out that there have been tons of folks wanting to be a writer even before the Age of Social Media... internet (for good or bad) has just made the process so much easier.
That said, the *intent* for wanting to be a writer has likely evolved and I agree that, today, there are likely many who seek that form of affirmation of which you speak. Platforms such as Wattpad, Royal Road, or even Substack make it an attainable goal.
And now I'll go further than you by mentioning what the title of your post made me think of right off the bat... *literally* performing the art of novel writing. Yes, yes, it's a thing. Here are two extreme examples of this:
1) Michael Levin wrote a novel in 24 hours, sitting in a bookstore. He talks a little bit about it in this article (though it's not its main focus):
2) The second case that comes to mind was a self-published author (can't remember his name) who wrote a novel in 24 hours in a hotel room and recorded the process live on YouTube. This happened earlier this year, though I can't find the video for this anymore... I'm guessing he might have taken it down. I'd watched bits of it while it was happening, but it wasn't very appealing, as you can imagine LMAO.
The way he'd set it up, he had his Scrivener manuscript on the screen with a thumbnail on the side showing his face, and underneath that a counter counting down the remaining time. There was also a chat window where he could see what people were saying and he'd sometimes respond live while he wrote. I remember Chris Fox showing up in the chat at one point haha.
And then... there's this third case I just found now... it's a little bit different, since you have here 8 writers sharing the work, but it's still an interesting variant on 'performing arts':
It is a fair point that the glut of novelists seems to predate the internet. I don't know if anyone kept stats on the growth of the tide, but it does seem that in the first half of the last century, at least, editors of major publishing houses still had time to correspond with aspiring novelists and write them complex critical rejection letters. At a certain point, as the volume grew, this task was handed off to agents, who then had to resort to pitching stuff into the recycling bin wholesale to keep ahead of the tsunami of manuscripts. But I think is is fair to say that there is some coincidence in time between this and the growth of ubiquitous broadcasting and recording. The dying of the old forms of popular performance, then, predates, the development of the new forms. But perhaps it created the conditions that gave rise to YouTube and it myriad imitators.
Given how many reality shows have been made out of essentially dull jobs (truck driving, for instance) maybe it is time for the history channel to do a series on novelists on submission.
Interesting angle . . . especially since you are going to join the novelists' ranks! I wonder if part of the popularity of venues like substack, etc., where you can publish a chapter a week, is that it mimics the serialized-novel format of the nineteenth century. People like Dickens, Thackeray, and Dostoevsky would write their novels a few chapters at a time, which would be published bit by bit in magazines and newspapers. Writers would be up against a deadline every time the new issue of the magazine was about to come out. I don't know why this practice faded away, but I heard that Tom Wolfe followed in when he was writing "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in Rolling Stone.
It's a good question. I think the motivations are somewhat different, even if the forms are the similar. Dickens was borrowing the audience of Blackwoods magazine to build his own audience. Someone publishing on Substack is more or less on their own to build an audience. Blackwoods was a gatekeeper. Substack is not, and that makes a huge difference.
In another respect, though, they are similar. Publishing a magazine was much cheaper than publishing a book, and more people could afford the magazine than could afford books. Substack makes it similarly cheap to publish, though if someone subscribes to a serial they will end up paying far more for the book than they would have done if they just bought the ebook. So in that sense, it is different again.
I think a combination of radio/tv and raising delivery costs killed the popular magazine.
Interesting post! I'd not really thought about my own writing from a performative angle, but engaging directly with readers is absolutely why I publish this way (and the subsequent feedback loop that helps me keep writing consistently).
One aspect I don't think you touched upon in terms of performative, group storytelling is roleplaying. Whether's it's Dungeons & Dragons (still going strong), Warhammer, DIY stuff, quirky new things like Night of the Hogmen, or the excellent kid-friendly Hero Kids, tabletop roleplaying seems like a direct replacement of those group storytelling sessions, in which everyone taking part gets to perform.
Hi, Mark! Your blog post made me think of Jack Kerouac. He bragged in the 1940s, when he was about 20, that he had already written over a million words. Of course, Truman Capote famously quipped later that what Kerouac was doing was "typing, not writing." Nevertheless, Kerouac found success as a paid writer until his death in 1969.
I think Kerouac was a performance artist, although his performances were alone. He wrote On the Road in about 3 weeks, high on benzedrine, in a bathroom in an apartment. This was after his initial million words. If those million words are considered practice, then his "performance" in the bathroom that yielded On the Road was indeed the product of his practice. And regardless of anybody's opinion of the literary value of OTR, if there is any, it made his career.
I don't think this is what you were referring to exactly in your post, but it is what it made me think of. In my mind, the stamina and constitution of writers, which is important for survival and success, is the direct result of their practice and performance.
Sorry, I don't really have a point here. I just wanted to share this with you since I was excited to read your post. I'm raptly following your journey. I have never considered reading a novel about the topic you describe, but your journey to novelist interests me as a fellow writer. I look forward to reading more from you.
I find Kerouac fascinating. He is a Catholic author who confounds what both Catholics and non-Catholics expect a Catholic author to be. I, in a minor way, fit that description, though I as a writer I am unlike Kerouac in every possible way -- the mildest and most middle class of social and cultural malcontents.
The foundation of loneliness lies in the superficiality of it all. Like you said, the local geographic element is entirely removed, especially now with all the restrictions, though it’s been like this long before COVID. It’s sad, really. And everything is exaggerated by the feeling that we ARE being social, even if that means simply scrolling through instagram. Being “social” has never been so easy, yet through the seeming simplicity of it all, it is also so, so difficult. We can have a screen time of 10 h a day and still not respond to a text message until days later. No wonder depression and anxiety rates have never been higher!
I agree with most of this. People used to entertain themselves more. But there are still local performers doing music, theater, poetry, etc. for the love of performing. With no aim of becoming famous. I am one of them. We are just harder to find. Open mics are still a thing also (at least they were before COVID.)
I would also add that it was printing (and novels) that actually killed the storyteller role in the community. Instead of people telling stories to their local neighbors, we transitioned to people writing books for the masses. Except, that limited the printed "storytellers" to those the publishers, newspapers, and journals deemed worthy.
The internet has allowed anyone to be a storyteller again. And while the social aspect is different, I think it is a good thing.
Yes, there are still those local performance opportunities, though they attract a pretty small crowd these days. But even there, the old sing around the piano is gone. The local performer is a performer -- a person set apart. Performance isn't a normal part of everyone's life the way it used to be for much of human history.
The home sing-along is pretty much dead. True. Church is the only place many people sing together anymore. Although, Europeans still do pub sing-alongs occasionally (I think/hope.) And at football (soccer) stadiums. But you are correct, there is little small-scale performance in most people's lives. People think they have to be great/stars to perform now, which is a shame.
But there is no way I am watching someone write a novel on YouTube. Could anything be more boring? 🤣
As a counter-argument, I'd point out that there have been tons of folks wanting to be a writer even before the Age of Social Media... internet (for good or bad) has just made the process so much easier.
That said, the *intent* for wanting to be a writer has likely evolved and I agree that, today, there are likely many who seek that form of affirmation of which you speak. Platforms such as Wattpad, Royal Road, or even Substack make it an attainable goal.
And now I'll go further than you by mentioning what the title of your post made me think of right off the bat... *literally* performing the art of novel writing. Yes, yes, it's a thing. Here are two extreme examples of this:
1) Michael Levin wrote a novel in 24 hours, sitting in a bookstore. He talks a little bit about it in this article (though it's not its main focus):
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/if-i-can-write-a-novel-in-a-day-you-can-surely-write-a-book-in-the-next-six-months-heres-how
2) The second case that comes to mind was a self-published author (can't remember his name) who wrote a novel in 24 hours in a hotel room and recorded the process live on YouTube. This happened earlier this year, though I can't find the video for this anymore... I'm guessing he might have taken it down. I'd watched bits of it while it was happening, but it wasn't very appealing, as you can imagine LMAO.
The way he'd set it up, he had his Scrivener manuscript on the screen with a thumbnail on the side showing his face, and underneath that a counter counting down the remaining time. There was also a chat window where he could see what people were saying and he'd sometimes respond live while he wrote. I remember Chris Fox showing up in the chat at one point haha.
And then... there's this third case I just found now... it's a little bit different, since you have here 8 writers sharing the work, but it's still an interesting variant on 'performing arts':
http://www.pmnewton.com/2012/06/how-to-write-book-in-24-hours-aka-how.html
Fascinating stuff.
Oh, and in other news, we now know Mark is a secret admirer of Taylor Swift :D
It is a fair point that the glut of novelists seems to predate the internet. I don't know if anyone kept stats on the growth of the tide, but it does seem that in the first half of the last century, at least, editors of major publishing houses still had time to correspond with aspiring novelists and write them complex critical rejection letters. At a certain point, as the volume grew, this task was handed off to agents, who then had to resort to pitching stuff into the recycling bin wholesale to keep ahead of the tsunami of manuscripts. But I think is is fair to say that there is some coincidence in time between this and the growth of ubiquitous broadcasting and recording. The dying of the old forms of popular performance, then, predates, the development of the new forms. But perhaps it created the conditions that gave rise to YouTube and it myriad imitators.
Given how many reality shows have been made out of essentially dull jobs (truck driving, for instance) maybe it is time for the history channel to do a series on novelists on submission.
Interesting angle . . . especially since you are going to join the novelists' ranks! I wonder if part of the popularity of venues like substack, etc., where you can publish a chapter a week, is that it mimics the serialized-novel format of the nineteenth century. People like Dickens, Thackeray, and Dostoevsky would write their novels a few chapters at a time, which would be published bit by bit in magazines and newspapers. Writers would be up against a deadline every time the new issue of the magazine was about to come out. I don't know why this practice faded away, but I heard that Tom Wolfe followed in when he was writing "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in Rolling Stone.
It's a good question. I think the motivations are somewhat different, even if the forms are the similar. Dickens was borrowing the audience of Blackwoods magazine to build his own audience. Someone publishing on Substack is more or less on their own to build an audience. Blackwoods was a gatekeeper. Substack is not, and that makes a huge difference.
In another respect, though, they are similar. Publishing a magazine was much cheaper than publishing a book, and more people could afford the magazine than could afford books. Substack makes it similarly cheap to publish, though if someone subscribes to a serial they will end up paying far more for the book than they would have done if they just bought the ebook. So in that sense, it is different again.
I think a combination of radio/tv and raising delivery costs killed the popular magazine.
Interesting post! I'd not really thought about my own writing from a performative angle, but engaging directly with readers is absolutely why I publish this way (and the subsequent feedback loop that helps me keep writing consistently).
One aspect I don't think you touched upon in terms of performative, group storytelling is roleplaying. Whether's it's Dungeons & Dragons (still going strong), Warhammer, DIY stuff, quirky new things like Night of the Hogmen, or the excellent kid-friendly Hero Kids, tabletop roleplaying seems like a direct replacement of those group storytelling sessions, in which everyone taking part gets to perform.
Great writeup! I fully support artists having the opportunity to directly engage with audiences.
My aspiration is to catalog the creative writers and give them a portfolio as a showroom alongside the stage.
Hi, Mark! Your blog post made me think of Jack Kerouac. He bragged in the 1940s, when he was about 20, that he had already written over a million words. Of course, Truman Capote famously quipped later that what Kerouac was doing was "typing, not writing." Nevertheless, Kerouac found success as a paid writer until his death in 1969.
I think Kerouac was a performance artist, although his performances were alone. He wrote On the Road in about 3 weeks, high on benzedrine, in a bathroom in an apartment. This was after his initial million words. If those million words are considered practice, then his "performance" in the bathroom that yielded On the Road was indeed the product of his practice. And regardless of anybody's opinion of the literary value of OTR, if there is any, it made his career.
I don't think this is what you were referring to exactly in your post, but it is what it made me think of. In my mind, the stamina and constitution of writers, which is important for survival and success, is the direct result of their practice and performance.
Sorry, I don't really have a point here. I just wanted to share this with you since I was excited to read your post. I'm raptly following your journey. I have never considered reading a novel about the topic you describe, but your journey to novelist interests me as a fellow writer. I look forward to reading more from you.
Thanks, Mike.
I find Kerouac fascinating. He is a Catholic author who confounds what both Catholics and non-Catholics expect a Catholic author to be. I, in a minor way, fit that description, though I as a writer I am unlike Kerouac in every possible way -- the mildest and most middle class of social and cultural malcontents.
LOL!
The foundation of loneliness lies in the superficiality of it all. Like you said, the local geographic element is entirely removed, especially now with all the restrictions, though it’s been like this long before COVID. It’s sad, really. And everything is exaggerated by the feeling that we ARE being social, even if that means simply scrolling through instagram. Being “social” has never been so easy, yet through the seeming simplicity of it all, it is also so, so difficult. We can have a screen time of 10 h a day and still not respond to a text message until days later. No wonder depression and anxiety rates have never been higher!