American Pie: The Scribe's Revenge
…The sad result of the declining importance attributed to writing skills in the USA, is that even supposedly well educated people have difficulty expressing themselves on paper…
John Merchant speaks up for that discounted and increasingly rare species, the writer.
To read more of John’s accomplished and entertaining words please click on American Pie in the menu on this page.
With the exception of the top novelists and a few celebrated journalists, writers are, more often than not, discounted. That old saying “The pen is mightier than the sword,” has a hollow ring to it nowadays. If you happen to be a writer and it comes up in conversation, you may be asked politely what you write, and then have your response greeted by a glazed look and a dearth of any follow-up questions. The fact that most people do not, or cannot write creatively doesn’t seem to add luster to the scribes that can and do.
As a writer, I say this with no feelings of acrimony – I long ago determined that I write because I can and want to, and not to please anyone other than myself. If others get pleasure or stimulation from what I write then that’s a bonus. The subject of this column came about as the result of the recent writers strike in the US, organized by the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America, west (WGAW).
The WGAE and WGAW labor unions represent film, television and radio writers working in the United States. More than 12,000 writers joined the strike, which started on November 5, 2007, and concluded on February 12, 2008. The strike was against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Negotiators for the striking writers reached a tentative agreement on February 8, 2008, and the boards of both guilds unanimously approved the deal on February 10, 2008. Striking writers voted on February 12, 2008, on whether to lift the restraining order, with 92.5% voting to end the strike.
Union members argued that a writer's residuals, or profits made from subsequent airings or purchases of a program, are a necessary part of a writer's income that typically is relied upon during periods of unemployment common in the writing industry. The WGA requested a doubling of the residual rate for DVD sales, which would result in a residual of 0.6% (up from 0.3%) per DVD sold.
I’m not qualified to comment on the rights or wrongs of this dispute, since I don’t write for TV or the movie industry, but what struck me forcibly was the extent of the strike’s impact. It wasn’t just that movie production was halted, some radio strations silenced, and that TV sit-coms went into reruns or hibernation, but that even chat-show hosts were muzzled, and such award shows as the Grammys and the Oscars were threatened. Suddenly I realized that hardly any “front people” in the film or TV industry are able to write for themselves anymore. Ain’t that something?
I’m not much of a TV watcher; I tend to watch it for information rather than entertainment. That’s not to say that there aren’t some very entertaining shows available. But one thing I’ll allow is that even though the sit-com plots with staying power get more and more banale, the writing gets better and better; and the sit-coms that get pulled after even just part of a season have really excellent writing. So good luck to the entertainment industry writers who are a talented, hard working and hard worked bunch.
It also dawned on me that us other writers who serve, even though we only stand in line, are potentially a really powerful bunch of people. Just supposing the speech writers and the scribes that create advertisement copy and corporate blather of one sort or another, organised and went on strike. A man I know writes manuals for the US military. Imagine if he and his counterparts withheld their services. What then?
The contemporary status of writers is in sad contrast to days of yore, when the village scribe held sway over everyone’s life. If you wanted to send a love letter, he was the one to go to. If you needed to petition your local baron, the resident scribe was your only option. Strange though it may seem now, there was a time in America’s recent history when, if you happened to be a slave, you could be severely punished if you tried to learn to write, or even if you were caught with pen and paper. Such was the fear of the scrivener’s power.
The sad result of the declining importance attributed to writing skills in the USA, is that even supposedly well educated people have difficulty expressing themselves on paper. Until she retired, my wife taught education to teachers at the post graduate level, and required more written work that most other professors at her institution. Before she could even begin to grade her students’ papers, she would have to edit them, and many times insist that they were re-written to correct all the grammatical and spelling errors.
The advent of computer-based speech recognition software will likely deal another blow to the talent of creative writing. As of now, spelling and grammar are automatically corrected, and I suppose it’s only a matter of time before you will be able to enter a “style,” if that feature isn’t already available. So one day you can write as Thomas Hardy, and on another day, Earnest Hemingway. Since it’s unlikely that either author could get published in today’s market, I think I’ll just hang on as me.
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