The self-publishing, epublishing, blogging, and all manner of PEOPLE DARING TO WRITE AND PUBLISH in various ways enabled by the internet have certainly produced a lot of Writing Grinches. “We don’t need all these books. Bloggers aren’t real journalists. Ebooks aren’t real books. Self-published books aren’t real books. All these books just mean more garbage for readers to wade through.”

Wow. So much hate for the written word. What’s up with these Writing Grinches? To them I say: writing teaches people to think clearly. In what way is the world worse off if more people want to spend their time training themselves to think clearly? Now imagine a world full of people freely and cheerfully reading all the trash produced by these writing upstarts. Did you know that readers make better citizens, that there is no single thing you can encourage to produce better students, better employees, better neighbors than reading? Yes, even those who read trash like comic books and online comics, romance novels and erotic romance ebooks, self-published tales of all types. Readers are better human beings, no matter what they read. Writers are better human beings, no matter what they write.

So, Writing Grinches, expand your hearts and sit down with the Writing Whos, or stick to your grinchy ways, but I say more power to all who want to read and write, and may we continue to freely do both. Yes, even if somebody calls what we read and/or write trash. Maybe especially then.