But what is it about?

Peter Orner has a brilliant piece on The Millions: Under All This Noise: On Reclusion, Writing, and Social Media that I think is valuable for any writer, (or for any reader for that matter). We talk so much (so much! too much!) these days about social media – twitter, Facebook, tumblr – but less and less about what is actually in a book.  A writer tells Peter that if he doesn’t personally reach out to readers via social media, “he is DOA.”  Peter finds this alarming for many reasons and writes, “For me, the whole point of fiction has always been to forget about me.”

It seems we are talking more about who a writer is, than what a writer writes. Do we really need to know a writer to appreciate his or her writing?

You can read Peter’s essay here.  It was posted a couple weeks ago, and I still find myself thinking about it every day.