NONFICTION
I Will Write No More Forever
About writing that is
You’ve probably noticed that a large percentage of the creative writing published on Medium is about…writing. I often find this quite disappointing.
I like to read Medium these days for some of the same reasons I once enjoyed traveling in the time before the great pandemic — to learn about how real people think and feel about the world, themselves, and sometimes, how they feel about people like me. I do understand that when a writer sits down to write, they often think first about, you know, writing. But those types of pieces don’t scratch the particular itch I’m feeling just now.
What if you traveled to Italy, say, and everyone you met there just wanted to talk about their own vacation trips to Spain, or Germany, or Cleveland, or Disney World? Interesting, perhaps, for the first couple of stories, but it gets really old after a hundred or so. The same is true for reading stories about writing stories.
When I first came to this realization (over coffee this morning, TBH) I immediately began to think about writing an article scolding all you Medium writers out there. Yes, I decided to write a story about writing stories about writing stories. That should fix everything, I thought. But then, I checked my own story list and found (you guessed it) about 1 in every 4 stories I’ve published have been about writing, or writers, or storytelling in some way or another.
So, I decided to spare you all the sternly written scold I had intended to write today, and instead make a pledge concerning my own personal choice of topics in the future.
No more meta on Medium for me.
This is my final article about writing, the writing process, or anything to do with telling or reading stories. Furthermore, while I can’t tell you guys what to write about, I will also cease reading and applauding any other such reflective pieces I see here (except responses, of course).
Life is too short to waste time contemplating our own navels.
Jim Dutton © 2021