Back to the past

Mitt Romney wants us to go back to the good old days.

One thing I have noticed about people is that they really want to go back to the good old days when America was king of the hill.

And this includes Mitt Romney, who as President Barack Obama noted, "Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy you seem to want the policies of the 1980s, just like you want to import the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s." And then there was the Navy and military comment where Romney complained about the number of Navy ships we have, as well as our low number of airplanes--obviously the numbers are the only thing that matters to Romney, not the fact that current technology can blow anything from 1916 and 1947 right out of the water. As Obama noted, "We also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed."

So what does this have to do with writing, besides the fact that the Republicans are most likely to make my bread and butter writing illegal (because no one should be reading erotica)--well, it reminds me of something else.

There are a whole bunch of people who seem to think that the writing business is still the same writing business of the 1950s. I am amazed at the number of blogs and articles that I read that are focused on finding an agent or getting a legacy publishing contract.

We have moved away from paper publishing and legacy publishing. Today, writing has changed. Today, writers are writing ebooks, and are successfully making livings while being self-published.

Yet we are still getting writing advice that sounds more suitable for the 1950s. And trust me, I am going to scream the next time someone suggests that I send something to a legacy publisher...because I could get an advance on my royalities.

I have actually consider digging through some old writing magazines and books, and talking about how the advice does not necessarily hold true today; this is provided that people quit repeating the same advice on the internet (unlikely, right?).

But I am not sure that anyone would read such a series...because it involves dealing with things as they are in the present, and how they might change in the future. We are not supposed to embrace change. We are supposed to be putting the genie back into the bottle--because everything was so much better in the good old days.