I used to be pretty big into photography. For me, I took it as a challenge based on the most fundamental facet of the art (and technology): capturing light. It was always more about the composition and interplay of light and shadow than the subject for me. 

I wasn’t fond of photographing people, with the exception of pure street photography. I find the most boring pictures to be those in which people are posing, staring at the camera, trying to look good for the shot.

Portraiture, posing…meh. But there is something even worse. The selfie. 

The selfie is so indicative of the “modern audience”, in that it perfectly illustrates the ego-driven sensibilities of our time:

Composition? Doesn’t matter.

Lighting? Doesn’t matter.

Artful framing? Nah.

What does matter? My face. That’s it.

There are millions of people who think the most important part of any photograph is themselves. They have to be in every shot, because they’re the part of the shot that matters.

What does this have to do with writing?

I’m hoping you can follow context clues to get where I’m going with this.

Modern writing has become the equivalent of the selfie. It used to be considered amateurish to write stories where you’re obviously the main character with a name swap. The autobiographical character was something writers would have trained out of them — but now schools are teaching writers to do exactly this. For about fifteen years now, academia has been teaching writers to create in a way diametrically opposed to what’s been established for generations.

In short, aspiring writers are being told the lie that the writer is the most important part of the story — or more specifically, the writer’s ‘lived experience”. 

This new methodology is clearly broken.

First and foremost, there’s the part that people don’t want to hear: An individual’s lived experience is only precious to them. I’m not trying to invalidate anyone here — it’s just a fact. My lived experience is more important to me than anyone else in the world…and that’s how it should be. Anything else would be ludicrous.

To start off by putting the ephemeral notion of personal lived experience on a pedestal is to doom a writing project from the beginning.

Yes, personal experience informs our writing. As do our own ideas, feelings, and ideologies. That’s normal. But to say that the best thing we can do as a writer is rely on who we are to drive a great story is foolishness.

Fan fiction? Sure. Autobiographies? Duh. But for anything else, we should not be writing about ourselves. We shouldn’t be self-inserting to the level that’s becoming mainstream now. Not at all.

And really, this pervasive (in corporate-driven entertainment) idea that it’s all about representation is a false front. Representation is about abstracting different people, different beliefs. 

Writing about yourself and “people like me” is just about representing yourself. We can polish that concept and throw social minefields around it, but it doesn’t change the facts. Until a writer is thinking and imagining beyond the face in the mirror, they’re letting their ego do all the writing. 

People seem to be losing their ability to abstract and imagine. Our understanding and approach to something like writing has become so literal it’s frightening. 

Ultimately, this is leading to a decline in writing quality across the board. Writing about yourself is easy — even someone with no talent could do it. So if the metric for hiring a writer is whether or not they can write about their own lived experience, you’ve pretty much opened the doors to everyone on the planet.

Because writing is a skill, that means a lot of people who can’t do the job are getting hired on. 

I’m not sure why storytelling is being dropped to some low standard compared to many other artforms. If you wanted to start a band, you wouldn’t bring on someone who could sort of play an instrument — but only one song, and it’s not even a very good song. 

You wouldn’t think “their input is valid even though they can’t play, so we should bring them on board”. You would think “they can’t play, so why the hell would we want them on stage with us?”

That’s completely rational. But the opposite is what’s happening to storytelling. Corporations, Hollywood, AAA game studios are all hiring writers who can’t play their instrument. They’re hiring writers based on who they are, not what they’re capable of producing. 

And that’s why entertainment is in a sharp decline. That’s why people are flocking out of the theaters and our few remaining book stores are closing their doors forever. 

The indie wave is still rising, and for good reason. That’s why, if you want to become a writer, I recommend that you avoid a contemporary writing education. Learn from actual storytellers, not academics who want to shape you into a “modern writer”. Not schools that want to scare you into following a social track that is actively destroying good writing.

Just write. Write from yourself, but not about yourself. Focus on telling good stories first, then worry about delivering some kind of message or ideology second (if at all). Make your readers think rather than telling them what to think.