Let’s say time travel was possible. Let’s say with the use of time travel, evil book-haters (your ‘proud non-readers’) could erase the memories of every book you’ve ever read from your brain.
If I had one book I would miss the most? It would probably be Stephen King’s On Writing. It may or may not be the best writing book out there. You may or may not even like Stephen King. But somehow this book hit me right at the beginning of a time when I seriously considered becoming a writer and it simply stuck in my head. Stories from King’s childhood blend with ideas on writing, his maturation and growth into an adult and professional writer teach valuable lessons about the realities of publishing, (as true as they were at the time, of course.) There’s also some weird, teaching moments that stick in my head.
Like how writing is telepathy.
Now, you should read the book, because King explains it better than I ever possibly could. Here’s my short version. Writing is a solitary practice where you sit alone in a room and bang away at keys, muttering to yourself, and moaning how no one understands you. But what you put on the page is telepathy. I write these words, evoking images and ideas, and somewhere, possibly on the other side of the planet, those images and ideas pop into your head. Voila! Telepathy!
I wonder how different King’s view of writings would be if he’d had the internet the whole time. (Oh, by the way, turns out he’s now ON TWITTER! If you twitter, you should follow him, because he’s kind of a brilliant crafty guy still full of great ideas.)
See, as a writer now, I’m writing alone in a room, but I’m also out in a vast network of readers, writers, and the occasional evil book-hater. Though, probably not at the same time or else I get NOTHING done. I can communicate with reviewers, agents, but most importantly, I can communicate with my readers directly. And depending on the road I’m walking, I can generate feedback immediately. I can gauge responses as I work. There’s a risk there, of course, in over exposing an audience. (That’s something I’ve addressed in other chaos fiction in different ways.) What I think is really interesting, with tools like Patreon, I can even take challenges from readers as I’m writing. In this way, the telepathy is now a two way street. I imagine a rubber ball, I hear from my readers what color they picture it as, the rubber ball becomes that color in my writing, and voila! Interactive, two way telepathy.
The Orphan Doctrine 