Hi guys, good discussion here.
Thanks for gently setting me straight about Steem/steam, @improv. I went looking for an answer that helps me ask the question I was trying to ask, which I realize is this: Do communities that grow up around a particular type of content support the increase in Steem value that we are all hoping for? I think they do: https://steemit.com/steem/@taskmaster4450/steem-token-unit-stu-when-a-usd-is-not-a-usd-plus-the-damn-is-breaking-in-active-users.
I have read all of the discussion here. I hope it doesn't get any more heated than it already is. This is all great stuff to talk about, but I am personally out if discussion turns to fight. Not only am I a peacekeeper by nature, but I care deeply about everyone involved in this philosophical debate.
I have a few final thoughts before I bow out, sweetly, into that good night.
First, I just want to say that I did not weigh in here to convince anyone of my point of view, but to share an additional perspective. Philosophical discussions become fights when someone needs to win. Does anyone need to win? (Rhetorical question.)
If anyone reads my posts, you know that I care deeply about quality fiction. It is my personal value that high quality fiction matters, and that it's important for those of us who have a bit of knowledge to give some love and nurturing to those who really want to better themselves.
That said, I also think any creative endeavor/genre is going to have a vast range of ideas and values about what it is and about what is worthy. Poetry is one example. I can write Haiku in three minutes. It would take me five minutes to write a limerick. I add ellipses here to let your imagination run wild regarding value, worthiness, and whether those items I just called "poetry" measure up to others in their genre, or to sonnets, free verse, and the wildly diverse types of poetry you see here on Steemit.
In other words, we can debate all day what "poetry" is and whether all the things that are called poetry (on and off of Steemit) belong under that same umbrella, and also whether those people are doing themselves a favor or disservice by posting small or unpolished bits and calling them poetry. Is it good? Good enough? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? What would Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac have thought of all this?
I believe it's a similar thing with fiction. If someone who has no idea how to write a story spends five minutes writing "She sat down at the computer to do her first freewriting exercise... to keep her hand moving, to see if she could make something worthy of posting that day. But she felt frozen, staring at the glow of the terminal as petrified as fossilized stone," (I just made that up) and then posted that and called it "fiction"... and then the little community spawned by that type of writing welcomed her and patted her on the back for her little fledgling effort, well maybe it is a type of fiction. She wrote a mini story and shared it, fresh and hot off the press, from her heart. It's not the type of fiction I'm writing, and that person most likely isn't the next Douglas Adams or Sue Grafton, and in my imagined scenario has no desire to be. But she is working within her milieu, trying something, and being in community. And communities are the foundation of our platform.
That is all I am saying. These views are my own, and do not represent the views of any other entity or writing community. Love and hugs.
Love and hugs right back. Thanks for holding the middle position. Live and let live, I think. And love and let love.
And sometimes the things that come out of freewrites I read sound like Douglas Adams. Not often, but occasionally.
So much of building is about making welcoming spaces. Two things up. And by things, autocorrect means thumbs.
And live and let love.