brianrayfiction.com Blog

The SC Book Festival was great fun this year despite cold rain and recession. Not too often can you catch so many writers in one place and spend all day browsing books.

Not that I want to turn this into a post just for aspiring writers, but the keynote speaker, Scott Turow, gave some great advice: You become a writer by writing–not by thinking about it, or talking about it in cafes and bars. His address hit all the right notes: funny, inspiring, informative. In his stories, professors whacked their students with pencils and famous right fielders chased down authors for autographs.

The festival took place only a short time after the NEH released its sobering report on reading in the U.S. The report shows that only 22 percent of 17-year-olds and 43 percent of those 18-24 read for fun or read literature. Here’s a link to a story about the report in the AWP Chronicle: http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/mburriesci01.htm

You might think popular books like Harry Potter and the Twilight Series work against these trends, but studies have shown these books don’t necessarily push their fans to read beyond the series. Personally, I think we should do all we can to promote reading in all genres – literature or popular fiction. We should resist the pessimism that often comes with these kinds of reports. I’ll echo what’s been said in the NY Times and elsewhere: we have to work harder to justify reading and what people can get out of it. Gone are the days when the intrinsic values of reading and writing were self-apparent and obvious. In fact, a close look at history might say those values were never all that obvious in the first place.