أدب «الفسيخ»!

Professor Dr. Noura Al-Qahtani considered that we are living in a time of writing wonders, where the lowest has become a measure of writing quality. She cited the example of a writer who has only written a single, orphaned novel in her life, and that novel was not free from (terrible) artistic weakness, yet that writer becomes a trainer in a workshop for novel writing!

What regulatory body would accept this, unless the organizing body has a lower understanding of presenting trainers to teach the youth the arts of novel writing? This is what happens in training workshops, where the trainer has a lower level of understanding and creativity than what they are training on.

I attended a training workshop where the trainer was explaining to the attendees the art of writing, using her own writings as a model for application on the art of writing, and her writing was very weak. Is it the trainer's job to present herself through the (meagerness) of her writing experience to produce trainees who are even more meager than the trainer herself?

I worked for many years in the cultural section of Okaz newspaper, and I was entrusted with evaluating reader contributions. Over time, I created a page called (Pens) whose mission was to present artistic experiences of young people. Many contributions would arrive, but only those that achieved the minimum standard of writing aesthetics, whether in story or critical article, were published. That page brought forth many literary names, who strengthened their experiences until they became notable literary figures.

What I want to say is that the means of publication through cultural pages was a (passport) for young writers. Cultural pages do not present meager experiences; they publish the good among the messages they receive and respond to the author of the weak experience with a respectful reply that they need to intensify their reading and try again. With the emergence of forums, there is no longer anyone to evaluate those contributions, and everyone publishes, finding praise that makes them a prominent writer, and terms like (wonderful - well done - your tongue is correct - you excelled) become attached to that writer. In reality, what has been praised is nothing more than a flimsy text that does not reach the minimum standards of writing aesthetics. These forums have inundated us with weak talents, and publishing houses that lack the conscience of seriousness in disseminating genuine culture have contributed to this flood, allowing anyone with a thousand dollars to publish worthless material to gain the title of writer, storyteller, or novelist!

And I remain cautious about the idea of training young people to be writers of stories, novels, or poetry, as training does not create talent; writing is a talent before it is training. Those without talent will not be able to write true literature.

Once again, the decline in the quality of literary outputs in recent years occurred when ideas of writing training and writing workshops were adopted due to the weakness of the trainer and the fact that those being trained do not have talent in the first place.