simmadmeg answered your question:Story as a living thing
I agree completely. Thatâs what I do with my stories. I may have ended my legacy as a story but I am still following the story of that family. And I do it because I am passionate about it. I get some hate for it but that doesnât mean I wonât write it
Exactly. The story is still being told, be it publicly or privately.
What I think is behind a lot of this âIâll only write it if people want to read itâ is that the current young generation--especially teens and tweens--grew up with the internet surrounding them and playing a hugely important part in their lives, from childhood onward. Theyâve never known a time when you couldnât just share things instantly with potentially hundreds of people. This is the Social Generation, which posts on Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram and Twitter... and gets instant responses to everything. Many of them are almost conditioned to need feedback, because theyâre surrounded by it and are accustomed to it. The sudden lack of it would be unsettling, so they avoid that possibility by checking first if anyone would want to read their story.
I remember writing stories in notebooks, on A4 lined pads, on any old scraps of paper I could find. Iâd get antsy if I didnât have access to plenty of paper and something to write with. I had no internet to share those stories with others. At best, maybe one of my close friends might read a bit here and there--an audience of one--but I wrote purely because I wanted to. I think that might be why I always want to (and sometimes do) ask those people if they would be willing to write that story even if nobody read it. Are they writing for the story, or are they writing for validation?
