RSS

What American Writers Can Learn from Writers Abroad

17 Sep

quotes-writing-william-h-gass-600x411

I have been doing a lot of world exploring lately and I have been doing it from my desk. I ran across an app for the Samsung Galaxy called Flipbook and decided to give it a whirl. As it turns out, this is one of the best apps ever but not for what I originally downloaded it for. It was supposed to keep me informed but instead it’s allowed me to explore and that, my fellow writers, is wonderful.

Flipbook is a handy little app that pulls together resources from all over the planet for news, fashion and culture tidbits. The articles within each section aren’t huge but there is a bevy of them. As a news junkie I thought the app was cool because I could pull news from all over the world. But then I began to explore other sections and discovered that there are several writers’ sections as well. Because Flipbook is set up like a magazine rack you can download whatever content you’d like to the homepage thus allowing you to keep up on your favs. I was exploring this aspect when I tripped over the writer’s sections.

There are sections on blogs, books in every category and even personal sections from specific writers. But the one section that stood out for me was by a writer named Michael Haridy. Haridy pulls info for writers from all over the world and has an enormous number of submissions from overseas. It was here that I discovered that we writers in America have a whole lot to learn about being writers.

In England for instance their writers are respected more than their celebrities. The writer is a special member of their society but it isn’t just because the regular folk are in awe. It’s mostly because the writers themselves demand the respect. Writing takes center stage in England because people are still encouraged to read. (Imagine that) I think that in America we need to take a note from their book and live our lives as writers instead of hiding in the closet and pretending that what we do is embarrassing unless we are Stephen King famous.

In India the writers take chances. Chances…can you imagine? India seeks out writers who know that there really “is no box” and so they don’t try and write inside one. Sure a few of the writers from India have had their lives threatened for what they have written but at least they are following their passion. We are so worried about being politically correct in American society that we no longer take the chance to really break out and write the truth. In India writers are considered radical thinkers…how cool is that?

In the Middle East writers have a different side mission…they are the only ones telling the truth in times of strife. Our writers here in America for the most part sit behind our comfortable desks and see the world through the internet. In the Middle East (pick a country) the writers are out in the world writing about real life, experiencing their world along with the regular folks. Writers in Iraq for instance are telling the stories of the people who lived through invasion, death and rebirth but not in the way one might think. These folks have lived the truth and are now stepping forward to tell it. There are stories about how people looked for writers during the war in order to get the story out. Being a writer was important and useful.

These are just a few examples of how writers from around the world are taking charge of who they are and not making any excuses to what they do. Many of my writer friends here in the United States say that they are a writer in a voice that sounds apologetic. I know… I’ve done it too.

So take a page from the writers of the world and step up. I challenge you to not only write but to “be the writer”…live the life proudly and make no excuses for who you are and what you do. You are a writer and that is something pretty damn special.

© The Writer’s Advice, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

 
1 Comment

Posted by on September 17, 2022 in Inspiration, Writing

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One Response to What American Writers Can Learn from Writers Abroad

  1. September 18, 2022 at 1:13 am

     

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

 
%d bloggers like this: