Writing With Thorns

I am a writer, which means I’m not terribly at home with technology. When I sit down to my first draft, it’s at my 1937 Royal Portable Typewriter in all it’s key-jamming, ink-smearing glory. I have noticed of late, however, that my stubborn technological ignorance is become a drawback.

When I sat down to the Detroit News in the break room Tuesday, I read a fascinating articled titled ‘Boldly Going On’ (by Eric Henrickson) detailing the endeavors on the part of some die-hard Star Trek fans to write, direct and film their own web-based series. Apparently this sort of thing has been going on right under my nose (and just a few miles from my work). The question is, how well is this sort of thing catching on? Well, if such phenomena as You-Tube and videos of dancing gerbils are any indication, I should think its going to be all the rage. Even American Theatre magazine has recognized that audience attendance is dwindling because most Americans prefer so sit at their computers and dick around on Facebook or watch some kid lip-sinc to ‘Numa Numa Yei.’ Alright, I’ll admit, there’s not much theatres themselves can do about that. But what about us, the writers?

I’ll admit the growing industry of webisdes and web movies poses an interesting new market for today’s writers. Okay, so you still need all the equipment and computer-savvy (which I lack) required for the actual filming, but it is now so much easier to get your work out there. Who needs distribution rights and film festivals when there’s hundreds of thousand of bored couch-potatoes surfing the web looking for mindless entertainment? And who knows, maybe some looking for slightly more intelligent entertainment.

And what of formatting? Every time a new market for writing comes out the format changes. Just playwriting in itself has a dozen different ones to choose from. Screenwriting has its own format, as does telewriting. How will webwriting change our industry? I obviously don’t have the answer, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you lot. In the meantime we’ll just have to attach ourselves to some privilege children producers and computer nerds (fortunately they usually come in the same handy bespectacled package) and get our work out there. Exposure just became that much easier.

Happy hunting, all.