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| The bookshelf of writer Meera Ganapati, who lives in Bandra, is filled with visual stories. |
A few thoughts before a visual bookshelf.
Everybody, everywhere these days say that we no longer read. They say that we do not have time to sit still, lie down, curl up in a corner or gently rock in a moving vehicle holding a book in our hands like in the good old day. Everyone believes that the flickering screens in our hands and in our homes have lured us away from the written word and the visuals they spark in our brains. The 20th Century habit of dreaming with your eyes chasing a string of words on paper is dying a quick death and we are all supposed to come together and revive it.
Spell check.
What if we are reading more than ever before. Maybe it's not books, magazines and newspapers that we are reading but can't we see that are writing, sharing and reading more letters or messages instead and more than ever before. but we see them on our flickering screens. I suspect that we are also consuming more news than ever before in the form of written words than ever before. Maybe it's a good thing that we are doing it electronically.
How we communicate keeps evolving. How we consume stories are changing too. Actually, the change is driven by people who want to express themselves in new ways and technology companies experimenting with that they can do with the technology they have. More people are writing books and publishing them if you look at online stores. A person like me would never have thought of publishing a photobook a decade ago but here I am publishing books which people buy and read (I think). People are singing, dancing, drawing, photographing and most of all thinking out of the box. They could be doing it because they want their story told, their talent recognised and some just want to be different from others. On the other hand, nations, communities and tribes are finding coming together and expressing themselves collectively usually shepherded by leaders. We can see the side effects of that mobilisation. We are seeing democracy being challenged by the speed at which we can get people together. We can see people controlling the data and channels of communication and becoming rich.
Why now is the best time to be a story teller.
Coming back to reading. We consumer stories in real life. Our friends we follow on social media are performers. We perform for them. Our short attention spans are sprinkled with hundreds of parallel stories of friends, celebrities, politics, politicians, and entertainment. We process a few of them, we reject the rest. Earlier, we would bury our noses in books and get drawn into the world woven with words and now we have services like Netflix and movies in our personal screens. We are becoming a little more visual in our consumption than ever before.
If you are creative, there hasn't been a better time to tell your story and see if the world is interested. Think, ponder, observe and ideate. After that write, draw, sing, write code, make films, shoto images, make books, or dance. Be a creator. Be a consumer of what other create. Cross polinate ideas. Build on ideas. Help each other. We are who we are because we are not islands. Harness the power of the internet.
But do not ask me how to make money telling stories, the answer is with the king and her name is content.
