Quick question
and, yeah, it's been a hard weekend and I'm two glasses in...
Answer this question truthfully:
If you knew that absolutely no one would ever read a word that you wrote, that your stories would molder and be consumed by silverfish until some poor bastard stumbled upon the moldy pile, scream EWWWW and tossed the whole goddamn thing into a fire…..if you knew that everything you are working on would never, ever, be read by another human being, would you keep on writing?
And why?
I met a guy this weekend who was holding down a table a few feet away from mine at this waste of space writer con and I asked him that question. And he said, “What else would I do? I gotta get these stories out of my head somehow.”
And I guess that works.
I’m just so tired.
K’bye.
Nikki, this may mean nothing to you, but I've been where you are and I feel what you're saying with all my being.
I think that guy was trying to tell you that he needs to write, that it makes him a writer and gives him an identity. That identity is part of why we do this, but we're not robots transcribing the things that come to us in dreams. I suspect he's not as good as you are, yet, and he wasn't able to communicate what he truly feels. You were already frustrated. I'm sorry.
Of course I would write, and you would write, even if nobody read it, but we write to connect with people, to express ourselves and to be seen. It's so hard to tell if we've made that connection and it's so easy to feel we haven't. But you are already seen and respected, and the fact that you care so much about your work elevates that work. And elevates you. Please keep writing. It matters, you matter, and one lousy weekend can't change that.
Carry on the good work.
Actually, I think that is the case. My work might not be read. Querying has gotten me nowhere, and I don't have the energy to self publish. I put my sales energy into my enamelwork.
I brought a fun story-in-verse to the writers meetup, which everyone loved and said I should illustrate. Then someone asked what I was going to do with it. The answer, at least for now, is "nothing." My friends and family will be the only ones to read it, unless short silly Seussian writing is really my ticket, and not novels.