Literature on the steemit platform is quite popular and diverse. In fact, there are steemians who had never considered writing literature to be within their range of skills, who have presently turned to literature because they thought, erroneously, that those who wrote poetry, essays and fiction get more traction on their posts than other content creators on the platform. This has led to poorly written poetry and really wearisome prose being posted regularly on steemit.

Weirdly though, some of these poorly scripted literary pieces, have managed to get superb upvotes. This has gradually and sadly given lots of these pseudo-poets and fiction writers the impression that they are pretty good at what they do and as a result they are qualified to continue to spoil our eye sight and literary taste buds with poor writing.

This is not to say that some persons have not discovered talents they didn’t know they had, in the process of daring to wade into the complex waters of literary scholarship. There are steemians who have been able to surprise us all with the skill with which they delved into fiction writing despite having never written a piece of fiction in their lives before. This is the beauty of the steemit platform; the ability to encourage people to step out of their comfort zones, try something different and become better as a content creator.

The upvote system of the steemit platform has been compromised in so many ways and it can be said that the upvotes garnered by a post, in some cases, is not a suitable criteria to judge the ability of the writer or the quality of the writing. It has now fallen on curation projects like @curie, @ocd and others to identify literature on steemit that stands out and have the kind of attribute that a piece of writing found on superb literary journals outside steemit has.

This brings the question to the fore as to how does a piece of writing on the steemit platform competes with a piece of writing off the platform. Can the writings on this platform compete favorably with the writings that appear on publications like the New Yorker, Brittlepapers, The Paris Review, Granta, Transition, Praxis Magazine, etc? Do writers who have found fame on the platform as a result of curation from the curation guilds on the platform, get as much fame off the steemit platform?

It is always a great feeling to find that people appreciate your writing for its quality. That appreciation goes a long way to make a writer feel that he or she is growing and slowly becoming better at the craft. Notwithstanding, the steemit platform has become for writers an exclusive space that does not allow for the interaction and exchange of ideas across platforms. It would seem that the general literary public does not take the content of the steemit literary community serious, despite the enormous wealth of talents that put their creativity to use on the platform every day. Maybe it is so because of the fact that only users of the platform can fully utilize the platform, making seem like an exclusive members only club.

It would be fair to say that there is something missing in the steemit literary community. This thing is the connection with the realities of the overall literary community both off and on the platform. The steemit platform can be likened to a cocoon, to a bubble, a capsule, in which amateurs and professionals can enjoy the safety of experimenting with their skill and creating new ways of writing. But once, the experimentation evolves into a style of writing and into a school of thought, what happens next? Does the writer then write a book and self publish, hoping to find fame outside steemit or does he or she ignore the contacts and possibilities that lie outside steemit and become a steemit star only?

There has to be a way in which poets, fiction writers as well as essayists can share their developed writing skills with the general literary community. The steemit platform has to take the quality writing that is found all over the feeds to the world instead of waiting for the world to come to steemit. There are opportunities for that in the pipeline, @steem-times being one of them. Hopefully, the steemit literary community would one day create a literary journal or a contest that would enable both steemit users and non steemit users to come together and enjoy their literary endeavors.

This would be a great opportunity for those who have discovered their writing talents on the platform and have enjoyed curation rewards to compete with those who are not on the platform and in the process prove themselves to the world. It would also boost the steemit platform’s ratings, the various writing communities on discord like Writers Block, Isle of Write and so on as well as the steem blockchain in general. The literary community would see the value of the steemit platform beyond the money to be made, the blockchain revolution and the cryptocurrency market.

These are thoughts that are not clear yet but there’s someone who may have thought along these lines and it is indeed very possible to achieve. Meanwhile, the literary community remains a versatile and varied community with new voices coming out every day, telling their own stories and even though some stories are not well written, their voices haunt our dreams and keep us coming back for more.