PORTSMOUTH – In his essay, “Getting Good,” author Richard Russo describes a writer’s life that today is on the brink – a brink of self-publishing where craft often takes a back seat to swift scripts and swift economic returns, a brink where there is less room for the slowly-emerging novel that goes through a rewrite, and then another rewrite, and perhaps a rewrite again.
It’s a situation that nags at him, and he’s not sure the increasingly technologically-minded world will always accommodate the satisfying read of a good book.
“The writer’s life is a life that is changing right before our eyes. I was so fortunate. I had the best of the writer’s life. But it’s harder for young writers coming up,” Russo told the Herald in a recent interview. “I’ve been mulling over what it means to be a writer now, what new things young writers have to contend with, with stories coming from so many different angles like TV, podcasts, movies – still, video games.
“There’s different kinds of writing out there that didn’t exist when I was breaking in. And at the same time, newspaper book pages that I have been used to are drying up,” he said.
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