Writing in the Age of the Image

Writing in the Age of the Image – Morwenna Blackwood

Was it Ernest Hemmingway who said we are verbs not nouns? If so, I can state without hesitation that I am (and have always been) a writer. And a reader. Those who taught me to read and write, I cannot thank you enough.

My childhood held a great deal of Shade, and I retreated into stories, and somehow, that translated into looking for the Answers. Books lead to other books that lead to other books; and within them links to music, art, politics … I felt that I was picking trails to somewhere. I went to university to study literature, and when I arrived at the John Rylan’s Library on Deansgate in Manchester, I believed I had solved the labyrinth: the Answers lay within, in old, dusty books full of calligraphic handwriting that would lead to one old, dusty book and within it I would find myself.

(I realise that all sounds a bit religious. Let me say here and now that I am (and have always been, despite research) an atheist.)

And to the surprise of no one but myself, I found neither the Answers nor myself within an old, dusty book, because of the Shade. And here we are.

What, then, are the Answers? Do they exist? And if I found them, would my life change? Also: and then what?

Instagram is hard for writers. I’ve seen the odd person make a tongue-in-cheek video where they turn their computer screen around slowly, or flick through their reams of papers and notebooks and notes, sometimes throwing the whole lot in the air and cutting to a shot of the front cover … anything to pause some stranger in mid-scroll and get them interested in their novel. I’ve made videos where I read bits of my novel in segments, and posted section headings of my stories onto carefully Canva-ed images. At one point, I spent a year off work, and did more content creation than actual writing – a complaint a lot of creatives have, although, nowadays, it comes with the job title Artist.

What drew (lol) me to writing and reading, though, was the secrecy of it. It was quiet. I could take a book anywhere, and as long as there was light to see by, I could be transported to another world. Similarly, as long as I had a pen, a notebook, and light, I could create worlds anywhere, quietly, secretly. My sharp, scruffy handwriting was a code – art of itself – like the handwriting in those old, dusty books in the John Rylans Library, touched only by curators wearing soft, white gloves, watched over by gargoyles high up in the corners of the hallowed building. Truth is held within handwriting.

To get these worlds to others, though, writers must make an often Faustian bargain. My scruffy, truthful handwriting must become synthetized and standardized: Times New Roman, 12pt, 1.5 spacing. And still it seems that you can’t sell a word without image; you can’t even give away a word without an image (Dr Killerton’s Black Dog is still free to subscribers, btw.) Btw: words are redacted, sometimes even replaced with an image; and why not? You don’t have to explain yourself: you can solve everything with a smiley.

But still the writing, and still the scrolling, the flicking through movies to the best bit until the best bit becomes boring, and you go looking for something else. Because we humans are compelled to search, aren’t we? But there is no final frontier, because everyone is different. The image of the old, dusty book endures; art comes of our being lost; we leave traces for others seeking an old, dusty book; we scroll, we search, we get bored, and art touches us and gives us a path for a while, in whatever form, and off we go into the wilderness, be it literal, digital or metaphorical, always searching, never finding, often longing, and sometimes we’ll seek the truth behind the artist – the handwriting, for want of a better metaphor.

When my debut novel was published, I thought I could go off and write another book, but my publisher said, you are the commodity. In that instant I disagreed. But maybe there was a grain of truth in his words.

The story I write can be edited and digitized to be commodified. It can be given an image (and I adore the covers I have made with Getcovers). It will be interpreted differently by everyone who reads it. The world I created in quiet moments, alone with my pen and paper and light, will become many worlds in this way. And if people seek me, they’ll find more of me in my blogs and books than on my socials.

I write because I love to write, and because people search. And when people search, they are not seeking an image: they are seeking a mystery. Writing will endure in the age of the image, and not because of the film version, or the spin-off series, but because of the handwriting in an old, dusty book.

#writing #writerslife #existentialism