Writers Are Like Tribbles

Tribble taken from Wikipedia

There was a time when you could tell writers apart from normal humanoids. Frequently they'd look like college professors. Tweed jackets with elbow patches. Slicked back hair. The smell of cherry tobacco and leather wafting about them.

Not anymore. Writers are less than a dime a dozen. See that blue-haired old lady over there, the one that reeks of cheap perfume? She's writing a memoir. That tattooed, lip-nose-and-achilles-tendon-pierced teenager? Blogger. The three-piece fifty-shades-of-pinstripe suited businessman? Tweeter. Preschoolers who can barely put together two letters? Facebooker hooligans.

Everyone is a writer these days. Every-freaking-one. Cluttering up cyberspace, bookshelf space and even the bulletin boards at the neighborhood coffeeshop. Writers are reproducing faster than tribbles on Star Trek, and that, my friends, is bad news.

But -- and I've always got a big but -- there is a flip side to this coin.

People have access to read in a variety of ways now more than ever. iPads. iPhones. Kindles. Nooks. Half price bookstores. And in my neighborhood, the trend is to put up cute little free libraries that are kind of like large birdhouses on a post. All you do is open up the little door and take a book. Return it when you get around to it or replace it with something different.

My point is that yes, there are tons of people clamoring to be read, but there are also readers clamoring for more to read. Win, win, I say!