From an interview with Clay Shirky over at the Barnes and Noble Review:
I’ve always adopted the Bill Burroughs mantra, which is, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” Which is to say that if there is any intrinsic value in writing or expressing yourself or taking a photo, it’s worth doing even if the results are mediocre. Whenever the production maw has opened more widely, whether it’s cheap photography or it’s weblogs, the average quality falls. The average quality of a piece of writing is now lower because the denominator has exploded. The question becomes how do you find the good stuff in this much larger group. I am not somebody who believes everyone is equally talented; talent remains unequally distributed. What’s interesting now is that the old gatekeepers for identifying, anointing, and promoting talent are different in this generation than they were previously.
About Jane Friedman
Jane Friedman is a full-time assistant professor of e-media at the University of Cincinnati, and the former publisher of Writer's Digest. She has spoken on writing, publishing, and the future of media at more than 200 events since 2001, including South by Southwest, BookExpo America, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
