Greatness in The Age Of The Internet

The greatest fear for writers is producing inconsequential work. A writer sits down To Write and the end result doesn’t seem pertinent, important, noteworthy. There is so much pressure to be the Next Great Writer and barring that, to Write Something Good. We want to be the next Hemingway, the next Shakespeare, the next Homer. We write and we slave and we obsess over words and nuances and where to place a comma or perhaps we should just forget it all?

There is pressure to be Great. This doesn’t just go for writers; it goes for everyone. In The Age Of The Internet, anyone can be a star, and therefore you should be a star. Here is your soap box, sir, please step out to the street corner of your choice.

Before The Internet, there were Informed People who made the decision as to what was Good and what was Not Good Enough. Music producers and movie directors, publishers and studio executives decided who had Talent and should be paraded forth as The Next Big Thing and who needed to go home and look for a new career. Mediocrity was not tolerated; only Greatness was allowed.

Then came The Internet. Lo and behold, a new decider in the midst, a new standard against which to measure success. “Yes!” came the cries from the masses. “At last, it is my turn! No longer will I be oppressed by the limited opinions of the Rich-And-In-Charge. I will go straight to the public and my long-held beliefs in my own personal greatness will be upheld!” The internet gave us a new scale. It allowed anyone to shine through; we are in charge of determining greatness.

The problem is the internet, instead of bringing out the best in us, often brings out our self-obsession. The internet is our Tool To Express Ourselves. The platform for our new performance, the means by which the world will be introduced to us, the Great Writers. We write and we post and we blog, and we comment on others blogs and leave notes like “Hm, I don’t know if I quite agree with your point of view. See my blog post here for my thoughts on the matter” and “Yes, my thoughts exactly! I wrote about this last week. Click here to read my blog post on it.” Everything relates back to us, the Great Writers.

But there remains a question: who determines that we are Great Writers? Is it a self-imposed crown, or is it the readers who laud our writing and shout for more? Can we be Great Writers if no one reads our work? What if no one reads it now, but future generations relate to our astoundingly astute, ahead-of-our-time social commentary? If no one reads our work, should we still write?

Yesterday, a blog post criticized the idea of the “contract” a writer has with his readers: the writer is obligated to please the reader, and the reader demands changes when they are unhappy with the writer's work. There is no contract, the blog claimed. A reader does not have the right to demand anything of a writer. A writer is obligated to write what is on his heart, what he needs to write. If a reader isn’t happy with that, too bad. He should go write himself.

By this merit, a Great Writer is any writer, and every writer is a Great Writer. Anyone who wants to write should and will; the audience is irrelevant.

It is necessary to go further than this. A writer doesn’t write for himself. A writer writes for the reader and the writer. A writer writes what is on his heart because of what he has witnessed and these are things that have also affected other people. No man exists in a vacuum. A writer’s job is to inspire people, to reach out and connect with people and to make them question their assumptions and opinions. A writer’s job is to ask questions, to explore different perspectives. The reader should expect the writer to challenge him. Nothing more.