How Much Thread Can I Share Before I Quit Spinning?

Recently, I joined several colleagues for a day of listening, talking, and thinking about writing. We were privileged to hear an outstanding researcher offer her insights and impressions of the more recent trends in student composition. Many things she said were noteworthy. I jotted quotes on my session program, I made comments on the handout, and I thought about using the inside cover of a publisher's copy of "They Say, I Say." It never came to that, although it would have been ironic if it had.

One of the more thought-provoking comments that our speaker made was that students growing up in the age of the internet are much more likely to see texts--any texts, written, spoken, sung--as part of a great commons of intellectual thought to be added to and borrowed from at will with little, if any, credit given to sources.

She used the metaphor of a weaver as he takes a little of this material and a little of that to weave a fabric of story or thought together. In the students' minds, the finished product belongs to no one and everyone.

It all sounded so warm somehow, all that wool, one big blanket, covering so many people. Then I remembered the last time the temperature dropped unexpectedly overnight. A blanket that was always shared was suddenly spoken of over breakfast with copious personal pronouns.

And I thought about the days of Chaucer, when writers wrote, and printers, storytellers, and book sellers reaped the profits.

As a writer of both fiction and critical essays, I began to wonder how many words I would be willing to share before I started using personal pronouns to describe my writing, backed up with copyright certificates from the United States Government.

When writers began to receive just compensation for their efforts and toils, all of us were rewarded with more stories, more entertainment, and more world-changing thought. If the reverse happens, if music downloads are free and photographs can be reproduced with no regard for ownership, I'll still tell my stories. But I might not write them down.

Your Story

Over the Christmas break, one of my children sat me down in front of a DVD of The Office. She was filling in time otherwise spent in front of fresh television episodes, no longer available with the writers on strike. This particular story line involved a visit to a graduate class where the demise of service orientated businesses was predicted in the face of warehouse bulk pricing. The episode ends with an indignant office manager of a small company saying something to the effect that business is people, and people will never go out of business.

I enjoyed the show and wondered when a new episode would air. I asked my newspaper editor husband. He's in charge of current affairs in our household, while I grapple with concepts and literature that prevailed a hundred years or more ago. After hearing all about the writers' strike, I started thinking.

As a writing tutor and once and future composition teacher, I have heard many comments concerning the effect of television, film, and cell phones on student writing. Someone, somewhere, is always ready to predict the demise of writing, deploring technological advancements and the lessening need for written communication. It took me a few minutes, but I realized that the writers' strike is just one more proof that those predictions won't come true. Although some movies I have seen appeared to have no writer behind whatever passed for a script, I realized that writing was behind all the story lines on all film screens, television shows, and laugh-out-loud commercials. I realized that writing is first and foremost telling a story. And stories, if distributed to the masses, will always need writers.

People love stories, I love stories, and everyone I've met has one. So, write your story. I'd love to read it. What better time? There's nothing new on TV anyway.