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This is slightly uncomfortable to admit, but here goes. Several books sit by my bed, all only partly consumed. On my phone, I'm some distance through thirty-six listening titles, which looks minor next to the 46 digital books I've left unfinished on my Kindle. This fails to account for the increasing collection of pre-release versions next to my living room table, competing for blurbs, now that I am a established novelist personally.

From Dogged Finishing to Intentional Setting Aside

Initially, these numbers might seem to corroborate recent thoughts about today's concentration. One novelist observed recently how effortless it is to break a reader's concentration when it is divided by social media and the news cycle. He suggested: “It could be as people's focus periods change the fiction will have to adjust with them.” Yet as someone who once would doggedly get through whatever title I started, I now regard it a human right to put down a novel that I'm not connecting with.

The Short Duration and the Glut of Possibilities

I do not believe that this tendency is due to a limited focus – more accurately it stems from the feeling of life passing quickly. I've often been affected by the spiritual principle: “Place the end daily in view.” One point that we each have a only limited time on this world was as horrifying to me as to everyone. And yet at what previous time in our past have we ever had such instant access to so many incredible works of art, anytime we want? A glut of options meets me in each bookshop and on every digital platform, and I want to be deliberate about where I focus my time. Might “DNF-ing” a book (shorthand in the publishing industry for Incomplete) be not just a mark of a weak mind, but a selective one?

Reading for Connection and Insight

Especially at a time when publishing (and thus, selection) is still led by a specific demographic and its issues. While reading about individuals different from us can help to develop the capacity for empathy, we furthermore read to think about our personal lives and role in the universe. Until the titles on the racks more fully reflect the backgrounds, lives and concerns of potential individuals, it might be quite hard to keep their focus.

Contemporary Storytelling and Audience Interest

Of course, some writers are actually successfully writing for the “modern attention span”: the short prose of certain modern works, the tight fragments of others, and the quick chapters of several modern titles are all a impressive showcase for a more concise form and style. And there is plenty of author guidance geared toward securing a consumer: hone that initial phrase, enhance that start, elevate the tension (higher! higher!) and, if writing crime, introduce a mystery on the opening. Such advice is entirely sound – a potential publisher, editor or reader will use only a several valuable seconds choosing whether or not to forge ahead. There is no benefit in being difficult, like the individual on a class I participated in who, when questioned about the narrative of their book, announced that “it all becomes clear about 75% of the way through”. Not a single novelist should put their reader through a series of difficult tasks in order to be grasped.

Writing to Be Accessible and Granting Space

But I absolutely write to be clear, as to the extent as that is possible. At times that needs guiding the consumer's attention, directing them through the plot point by succinct point. Sometimes, I've realised, comprehension requires patience – and I must allow my own self (along with other creators) the permission of meandering, of building, of straying, until I discover something authentic. One writer makes the case for the novel discovering innovative patterns and that, instead of the traditional narrative arc, “alternative structures might assist us imagine novel methods to create our stories dynamic and authentic, persist in making our books original”.

Change of the Novel and Modern Formats

Accordingly, each perspectives converge – the novel may have to change to accommodate the modern consumer, as it has constantly accomplished since it began in the 1700s (in the form currently). It could be, like past novelists, coming creators will revert to releasing in parts their works in periodicals. The future these authors may currently be publishing their writing, part by part, on online platforms like those visited by millions of frequent visitors. Art forms evolve with the era and we should allow them.

Not Just Limited Attention Spans

But do not claim that any evolutions are entirely because of reduced focus. If that was so, brief fiction compilations and flash fiction would be regarded much more {commercial|profitable|marketable