Value in Writing

When you choose something to read, what role does its value play? How important is it that something be meaningful and useful beyond the time it takes to read it? Do you always seek reading materials that will have the greatest impact on your life and understanding? Or do you read the literary equivalent of Us magazine?

My father used to read this to me when I was little. Or just yell it from the basement, I don't remember. They gave me a lot of NyQuil.

In most cases you probably evaluate what you read before you read it, using tricks like genre, cover design, sampling, and more to estimate the significance of a piece of writing before investing the time in it. You probably are doing so with this blog post right now and, if so, know that I am preemptively full of shame and regret should you choose to continue.

The question of what role ‘value’ plays in writing is fascinating to me. Each time I sit down to write, I wonder: am I wasting my time? Am I wasting yours? It seems crucial that the author grasp some notion of their work’s usefulness and universality. I wonder what role does value play in our satisfaction with written material? And also: do authors create value, or is it the reader?

Readers are subjective. As we approach new materials we know we have a limited amount of time and a specific goal: entertainment, enlightenment, enragement, etc. This places an immediate handicap on certain lengths of writing for that reader because each modern medium contains a ‘value’ based on its function or purpose.

    • Books are assigned great value, because they (may) contain insight into what the hell others, like you, are doing with their lives and (may) remain valid for many years.
    • Newspaper articles are assigned less value, not only because they limit their perspective to documenting a single event, observation, or idea. Still, these can be valid later on.
    • A cereal box has little value as it should contain just enough information to to keep one entertained while chewing through 500 calories of degerminated yellow corn flour and red number 40. These are immediately useless once the cereal has been eaten out of them, and usually make one regret not doing something more valuable with their time, or at least eating something healthier.

Why was it okay to have cereal and dog food made by the same company?

This does not mean that all books are inherently valuable, or that certain less-valuable writing cannot be absolute gold. Most experienced readers know that part of the fun of reading is being surprised to find insight or wisdom where one does not expect it. Some sources of found wisdom include:
 

• Bathroom Stalls
• Old postcards
• Doodles
• Post-it notes
• Roadside Historical Markers
• Photograph backs
• Textbook graffiti
• Notes in catalogs
• Cassette and videotape spines
• Sidewalk chalk
• Abandoned blog postings

I often stop and peruse these items far longer than I should. These sources pulse with authenticity, the author making notes for no one than themselves. I imagine that the culmination of our civilization will be a barely intelligible notes found by puzzled aliens after our departure or extinction:

“It says ‘Lorna will be--’”
“That’s it? ‘Lorna will be’ what? ...Late? ...Dead? ...Santa? Were they finished?”
“I don’t know but I’m glad they’re dead.”

As much enjoyment one can get from reading, we do have a limited amount of time. So readers seek out what fascinates us. We even re-read comics, poems, and educational texts if we like them enough. At the same time we avoid what is uninteresting.

"And we're going to make our movie true to the text: no smut, none of the steamy romance, no... no... AAGGH!! I can't do it! It's just too boring! It's like erotica for necrophiliacs!

Do you enjoy reading assembly instructions that sound like a second-grader’s English homework? No, and you try and speed through because your goal is an end-table, not entertainment. Do you enjoy reading To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf? Yes, and moreover you want people to know you enjoy it which is why you need the bloody end table to #@$!% stay together to display it on.

But what if the instructions are entertaining to read, or beautiful, or make you happier with your purchase?  Why is it not worthwhile for the author to take time and make the instructions entertaining? Would you pay more for an end table with interesting (or simply understandable) instructions? Consider this example:

“Step one: prepare yourself for a journey from pre-end table to one where your end-table needs are fulfilled and you will move with confident anticipation to your new future.”
“Step two: grasp your phillips head screwdriver as you would the hand of a friend, for she will be yours; a partner in this construction.”
“Step three: Take up the 2 centimeter screws and place in them your trust and faith that these little soldiers will provide dutiful service working in conjunction to hold fast and secure the shelves to their stolid counterparts – the side panels marked C and D.”

 

These words feel odd as they place a lot of emphasis where it traditionally is not. We don’t buy an end table for literary value, we buy it because it is cheap and resistant to wine stains.

Why don’t we want more or expect more? Why shouldn’t we have poetic cereal boxes and furniture assembly instructions and politicians? Part of this is an economic choice. Copywriters and speechwriters are expensive, and often initiate lawsuits if locked in cages. Peering deeper, the effort in a piece of writing is determined by the reader’s needs. That effort, that artistry creates value as the writing becomes more resonant and survives in mind of the reader.

In this way, the value in a piece of writing is dictated by its readers. The audience creates value by deciding to assign time to reading it and by reposting an excerpt on Instagram with a demonstration of how they missed the point. But authors add value to a piece of work, too. So which is the greater contributor?

When examined, it appears to be the latter; authors contributing value. Consumers, read a lot of crap and become selective as they seek to limit those experiences. They employ “no-more-credible-than-telepathy” abilities to judge books by their covers, articles by their titles, and textbook graffiti wisdom by the angst in the handwriting. Since turning down more than we select, readers tend to stockpile value in what we have already experienced. At best, this creates exclusivity and at worst, fanaticism.

Authors, meanwhile, spill out page after page of thoughts, ideas, wisdom, and idiocy. Much of it is crap, however; the possibility of a single impactful piece is enough to coerce readers to suppress their own cynicism and try something new. This is why there is so much more cache in being a writer, than a librarian. (There: I said it. What are you going to do, now Ms. Twombley? Ban me from Kindle? That’s right, I’ve got all the books I want right here and my .85 cents. Stuff it.)

 

 

Regardless whether you read mindless pulp, magazines, or pornography for the articles, or if you read classic literature, politically-charged poetry, or art books for the naked people, there is a value to that work. Although the writer is a greater and more direct contributor upon the significance of a piece of writing, both the audience and author are an essential influence. Without that relationship and the value it creates, we may as well all read and discuss the latest shampoo bottle instructions, awarding Pushcarts for Pantene.

Arise from the mantle of tangled hair that floats about you. The night has fled, its cloak tattered on the anvil of dawn!
In the embrace of warmth or the shock of icy moisture, immerse your hair feeling wet fingers trace lines through your scalp.
Massage gently into your locks, curls, and twists until they are wrapped in a silken lather.
Indulge, regardless of who you were before daybreak or in your dreams.
In a splash of scent and sensation, rinse thoroughly the last vestige of yesterday.
Dry or swaddle your mane gently. Your day has begun.