{"id":9,"date":"2004-12-02T12:04:43","date_gmt":"2004-12-02T17:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/?p=9"},"modified":"2004-12-07T22:52:01","modified_gmt":"2004-12-08T03:52:01","slug":"harlan-ellison-speaks-out-on-writing-and-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/writing-and-the-internet\/harlan-ellison-speaks-out-on-writing-and-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Harlan Ellison Speaks Out on Writing and the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ripples.typepad.com\/ripples\/2003\/11\/blog_labelling.html\">David Lawrence<\/a> loves blogging and the Internet. He calls it ?Citizens Publishing,? which I think means (a) anybody can say anything and (b) immediately publish it on the Internet where (c) everybody can read it for free.<\/p>\n<p>I interviewed writer Harlan Ellison in the May issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.writersdigest.com\/articles\/ellison.asp\">Writer?s Digest<\/a>, and he had this to say about writing and the Internet (not specifically blogging):<\/p>\n<p>?Vast hordes of semi- or untalented amateurs festoon the Internet with their ungrammatical, puerile trash, and they think because this ?vanity? publication gets seen by a few people, that they are ?writers.? Horse puckey!<\/p>\n<p>?That isn?t being published; that?s the fanzine press. And there are fewer and fewer real venues for a professional writer nowadays to make a decent living at the craft.  Half the world is illiterate, and the other half treads water in the gravy of hubris secretly knowing they can write, if only they had the spare time. <\/p>\n<p>?The Internet has destroyed the use of the library, it has destroyed the use of the dictionary, and as a result people don?t speak as well, because when you go looking up a word in a dictionary, you pass fifty other words that stick in your head and you find other serendipitous stuff, and you just become a better, more literate, smarter and more well-rounded person.? <\/p>\n<p>Writers, publishers, bloggers &#8212; is Harlan right? Or out of touch?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Lawrence loves blogging and the Internet. He calls it ?Citizens Publishing,? which I think means (a) anybody can say anything and (b) immediately publish it on the Internet where (c) everybody can read it for free. I interviewed writer Harlan Ellison in the May issue of Writer?s Digest, and he had this to say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-the-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}