This past Sunday, Garrison Keillor’s column presented an interesting take (his are always interesting takes, let’s face it) on the state of (newspaper) writers in the age of “new media”. When I read the following, I felt like cheering out loud:

“I’m an old media guy and I love newspapers, but they were brought down by a long period of gluttonous profits when they were run as monopolies by large, phlegmatic, semiliterate men who endowed schools of journalism that labored mightily to stamp out any style or originality and to create a cadre of reliable transcribers. That was their role, crushing writers and rolling them into cookie dough. Nobody who compares newspaper writing to the swashbuckling world of blogging can have any doubt where the future lies. Bloggers are writers who’ve been liberated from editors, and some of them take you back to the thrilling days of frontier journalism, before the colleges squashed the profession.”

Woo-hoo! Semiliterate gluttons! Writer-crushing editors! Profession-squashing journalism professors! I felt like standing up and cheering–still do, actually, so excuse me for a moment…there! I’m back, and I feel refreshed, although my neighbors across the street are hurriedly gathering their young children back into the house. Sorry.

“Crushed” is a term I believe applies to most of us poor souls afflicted by the profession of writing. We are crushed by insecurity, crushed by rejection letters, crushed by editors, crushed by readers who don’t “get” us, crushed by the plots barreling around in our minds, trying to escape (the inside of my head, at this moment, resembles nothing more than a demolition derby. I keep waiting for the short story I’m working on to collide with the novel and article I’m trying to finish in a terrible, mental Malachi Crunch. I think, if you start seeing steam spouting from my ears, it’s too late to save me.) It begs the honest question, to be sure–why do it then? Honest answer: I must. There’s too much in there that needs to come out. Just what would that be, you ask?

A fellow blogger (who also happens to be my brother and the person responsible for infecting me with this condition-johnchagerwrt.blogspot.com) asked his readers what they want to read. For me, I guess, the answer would be inextricable from what I want to write–they would be one and the same.

I want to read something that surprises me, catches me off guard, whether it’s a plot twist, an ending, or the unusual twist of a character’s development.

I want to read something that teaches me something I didn’t know before, whether it’s a bit of history, biology, geography, or something more complicated, like the intricacies of the human spirit. Anything calculus-related, however, need not apply.

I want to read something that makes me think (but not too hard–see above.)

I want to read something that moves me emotionally. I don’t care if it makes me angry, makes me squirm, makes me cry, or scares the living daylights out of me–just move me, damn it.

I want to read something that transports me, makes me ignore my family and forget to eat, drink, or sleep. (The family’s not too happy when I stumble across those rare books, but I am ecstatic–plus, I lose weight.)

I want to read something that, when I turn the last page, I feel bereft, at a loss for what to do with myself now that I’ve finished it.

In a nutshell, that’s what I want to read.

Now to set to work writing it…