There are lots of people writing for money now and even more just writing that novel. The problem with writing in English is that 300 million or more people can do it too. So there's some competition, zall I'm sayn.
I recently read a Saturday Evening Post from 1972 with a fantastic short story by Kurt Vonnegut in it. Which current magazines let you read fantastic short stories by the best writers of the day? I can't think of even one.
And now with the death of print...
But here's How It Will Be:
People will slowly begin to be creeped out by social media. It has to do with all social media being commandeered by companies. Then extremists on both sides. Pretty soon you're gonna feel like you spilled Pepsi on yourself and stepped in Taco Bell when you roam the social landscape.
Then something cooler than facebook will come. People you know who are cooler than you have already joined this movement -- it's not a social networking sight, it's a movement. That's how cool it is.
And they aren't telling you about it yet because you're so, well, facebook.
All the photo- and video-sharing sights will be replaced with software that can etch images onto the retinas of people who sign up online. That and a message about "the real thing". Yes, talk about branding. Your cornea will momentarily become a billboard for one. You. You are that cool.
But then something strange will happen. All those odd people who work at sandwich shops and coffee carts who support the Steam Punk movement will become incredibly cool. It all has to do with Brad Pitt playing someone with a handlebar mustache, a bowler and lots of girlfriends. And, get this! He reads.
Books.
The best part? The film comes out not in 3d, not in HD, not in Dolby but... in Nickelodeon. Not the TV network, the actual early film experiment where thousands of pictures are strapped to a wheel and you pay a nickle to crank it once. You have to view literally hundreds of these to get the whole story: Brad trimming his mustache, Brad driving his Pennyfarthing (you know, the bike with the big front wheel) to work, Brad working some infernal machine, and, finally, Brad rollerskating with a beautiful actress with cupie-bow lips and bid doe-y eyes. The experience is so radical, so far fetched that it's months before everyone figures out that they've spent one hundred nickels for a production that cost just over 100 thousand dollars.
Soon Sean Penn is directing Nickelodeon films. Nickelodeons are found in every store in every building in every city on Earth. There is a run in American nickels. Canada makes them cheaper.
There is a whole trend backward.
And then? And then? And then!
People read again. Not just the subtitles in Nickelodeons, either. People discover they want newspapers back. Books too. And! Finally! Magazines that you can get great short stories in. And then, I'll become a published short story writer and, because short stories are all anyone can think of, because each Nickelodeon film is about five minutes long, I'll become rich and famous.
But I will resist growing a handlebar mustache.
And this is how it will be!
