Following Up – Thanks for the Owl
Valuable reader-input is now guiding the way
If you know the Harry Potter books or movies, you’ll know how messages are sent by owls. A great idea, and Rowling put this way a thought into her books that can’t escape my mind. Thinking of that beautiful animal whenever someone tells me important news makes me automatically feel humble – how could I ever disagree with anything told by such a clear-sighted creature?
What the owl brought me, through the survey of and the overall interest in last week’s Between Us, was a message of declining interest for my posts and a general wish to reduce the amount of them. To speed down a bit.
I guess, the owl prefers to watch for the fat and juicy mouse of the night, then catch that one to have a feast on it, rather than hunting all night for one after another of the meagre ones.
It makes sense, but it takes some serious turns of thoughts in my head to find that gear, rather than moving on at full speed non-stop.
There was a time in my young days when I wanted to be a sailor – steer a ship around the world. When doing that, there is no time ever where you are not a sailor – you cannot just sail a bit, then leave the boat on its own for a while, and then come back to steer it again. You must be there and pay attention to it day and night, somehow.
Steering through a writer’s career could be something similar, but it isn’t. It is not expected. Even in today’s attention economy where we all want to be seen all the time, we must, when we are writers, make pauses in the outflow. Writing unseen for a while, being unheard of, and then, pang!, shoot off the new success novel or whatever we have been working on. That is expected.
Another thing is the website. I cannot see, but I can sense, from the rather limited number of replies that there is limited interest in the shape of the website, and the added links and other stuff that I have put there – because, when using the mobile app, all this is invisible, and half of the responders use that app. It has a strict focus on the articles and not even in any kind of order I may try to arrange for them, simply just all articles lined up with the latest first.
I’m old-fashioned. I grew up with the Internet in a time when it was obvious that whatever you would do on it, you would also need to pay attention to the design, not just the text. But today, media apps take care of presenting things the way the programmers have decided, not the way you, as a writer and publisher, would have liked it. It’s a pity, I think, since much is lost this way. It is also a pity that a platform like Substack pretends to the writer that there are options for designing the reading experience, when this experience is, in fact, not there at all for that large group of readers who use the much promoted mobile app.
I’m old. Not just old-fashioned. I’m saying that because it has often been mentioned that the young people of today do not care. Simply. They get so much input that they do not care about any of it to a very high degree. It all just flows quickly over the mobile screen, to be forgotten the next moment. If they miss something, or a technical error occurs that will hide some of the text, they may not even notice. So little do they care. But I do care. I try to find the missing parts of the text, try to reload, try to enlarge pictures if they are difficult to see… I care too much about the details to fit into this new paradigm of “young”.
That all, being old-fashioned and old, means that even being strongly empathetic, understanding the drivers and the wishes, the dreams and motivations of people in general, doesn’t bring me enough of a clue to what to write and how to present it, how to bring it to the readers.
I do have the book by Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. It has been read by every young person in the world, I guess. It fits the bill, so to speak: “not caring” is exactly what the book is about, and the young people who do not care, like to hear that they are entitled to be like that.
I haven’t read all of the book, because, to be honest, I don’t see the point in using the word “fuck” ten times on each page, throughout a book. Like if the writer tries to get into the Guiness Book of World Records or something. Nevertheless, I get the message: Pick your battles. Don’t pay attention to everything in a world that offers too much to pay attention to. Say no a lot.
While I agree on saying no now and then, I don’t agree on the idea to never dive deeply into anything. Mark is not saying that, to be clear, but I feel that many people think this way. Living on the surface, surfing the waves without ever seeing what is inside of the ocean, under the surface – the fishes, clams, plants. Going home from a day on the beach with absolutely nothing but the memory of the adrenalin kicks, and a sunburn.
There is so much to dive into, so much to see for the one spending part of the time away from the surface. Even just sitting still on the beach, watching, can bring a lot of new experiences.
The owl, of course, didn’t say much about all that. I guess there are no owls on the beach? They have a different expectation to life, a different life altogether, a different world to live in. The world as described by an owl would be unrecognisable for a fish, I guess. And vice versa.
What I am trying to tell with all this is that in a world with 8 billion people of all ages, all levels of experience in various areas of life, all kinds of interestes, all kinds of needs, it is probably difficult for a writer to hit the buttons of joyful reading moments and life recognition, relatable situations, and interesting topics, in all readers.
Despite the few responses to the surveys, I still got a clear message – of the world not being clear. The world, just as I would have expected, is a bit blurry and doesn’t provide a way to see what will be popular, what will be enjoyable. In oter words: I cannot make a good plan for how and what to write and publish.
I just have to walk my way, the way I can. Seeing what is there. Writing about what makes sense to me. Putting mental images into words, and doing this as rarely or as often as I feel for it. And then everyone else on the planet can decide to read it or not.
Everyone can say no, can decide to not give a f*ck, and so can I. Or, when the conditions are right, we can take a dive together, exploring the oceans and find treasures there, knowledge and beauty. Or sit on the beach and monitor others doing it, letting them tell about their observations when they step out of the water. Or we can go to the forest, checking every now and then what news the owls may have for us.
That was the message I got. Beatiful owls bring wise messages that provide great insight, thought out and sent by valuable readers. Thank you!