Content Creators

Recently, my wife found on YouTube and subsequently binge-watched old black and white episodes of the game show “What’s My Line?” These were from the late fifties and early sixties, when men all wore skinny black ties, and women wore pearls, and public figures still sometimes spoke with a strange, refined accent that seemed to have just finished being British. Americans weren’t a bunch of rubes anymore. We lived in cities, cut our hair, spoke in complete sentences, and drank martinis at lunch.

Also, apparently, we read, because one of the judges on the panel was none other than Bennet Alfred Cerf. Who is that, you wonder? Why, the publisher of Random House. That’s right, a book editor was a celebrity. He was a professional Smart Person. I had very mixed emotions when I first heard him introduced at the start of the show. I could not imagine any scenario where I would see this kind of person on television today. I found myself becoming nostalgic for a world I’d barely known. Oh, how publishing had changed.

Then again, so had television, film, music – and, well, everything. People don’t use that half-British accent anymore nor have so many three-martini lunches. Writers are also, with advent of digital publishing, joining the burgeoning ranks of “content creators.” I admit, I don’t think of myself as such, even though I really am, what with these blogs and my podcasts and YouTube page. I create “content” all the time.

So do a lot of people. If one thing has really, really changed over the last fifty years, it’s that more and more of us understand that we’re creative. This realization was certainly helped along by technology, but it was a development that was, I believe, inevitable. People, after all, are creative by nature. Hard to believe sometimes, but it’s true. Sometimes we writers sit at our desk and can feel like the creativity has left us. Oh, we used to have good ideas, just like the publishers used to be celebrities. Don’t worry. All that’s really changed are your ideas. The old ones don’t serve you now, but a new is on its way. They’ll never stop coming, any more than the world will stop changing.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com