I stopped writing for a while, not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because it seemed pointless. Why bother writing if I couldn’t get anything published? And I couldn’t. I probably still can’t. Years ago, I finished a manuscript I love but have been unable to launch into the world. I have two unfinished manuscripts as well, one maybe 80% complete and the other about 60% along. I care about the characters. I want to know what happens to them. But every time I came face to face with them, all I could see was an insurmountable wall of failure.
A friend once asked if something could be considered art if nobody saw it. It’s an interesting question, one easily transferred to writing. Is writing “legit” only if it transmits an idea to someone else? If so, how many readers are necessary to support that definition? Is there a threshold number of readers needed to validate a work?
The word “validate” brings up another nagging question. For most writers, writing seldom yields financial compensation equal to the time and focus it requires. Sometimes, it’s hard to justify diverting so much attention away from other “useful” endeavors. At what point does taking time to write become self-indulgent?
I want people to read what I write. Writing is meant to communicate. It longs to communicate. Ultimately, though, I believe there’s value in the birth of the idea, that moment where thought is given tangible form through solid word. It’s the creation that counts rather than what happens next.
I need to write for other reasons as well. Writing helps me navigate the world. It’s how I interpret what I experience. NOT writing is like blocking one of my senses. We all have a super-power like this, a filter that helps us process information. It can be music, art, even math. Whatever it is, it’s inherent to who we are and how we deal with our surroundings. That can mean everything from helping us understand to giving us a way to blow off steam or cut through anxiety. (You do not want to meet me in the wild when I’ve truncated my blow-off-steam safety valve by not writing.)
I’ve given myself permission to write again not only because of what it brings to me but because of what it helps me pour back into the world. I learned a long time ago that I’m hardly unusual–if I’m thinking something, there are other people out there who are thinking it, too. If my writing touches even one person at the right time, that can be enough incentive to keep going.
Of course, nothing can happen at all unless a thought is given expression. Fortunately, that’s the one part of writing I can control.
It’s WAY too easy for me to get up on my high idealistic horse here and gallop off into the sunset. But the current state of the publishing industry is hopelessly distorted. Gerard Manley Hopkins was forbidden to publish by his Jesuit superiors. Emily Dickinson ‘published’ hand-sewn packets of her poems for friends. Renaissance poets like John Donne circulated their stuff in manuscripts exchanged among associates (Gutenberg’s baby was scarcely out of its cradle back then). The mass-production, profit-driven dynamic of late capitalism propels everything towards mass-market, lowest-common-denominator sludge. Honourable exceptions? Sure. But they’re exceptions, few and far between.
I’ve published six books now that have sold in their dozens 🙂 in print-on-demand formats. I’ve chosen my hill: the writing’s worth doing for its own sake (or it’s not worth doing at all). If no one comes to the party, it’s still (I hope) a well-set table. Pointless? Oscar Wilde insisted all great art must serve no practical purpose. Okay, look where that got him . . .
But I will insist the writing’s worth doing, for its own sake, in the ultimate scheme of things and sub specie aeternitatis, however vain and pointless it may seem to an accountant.
Phew . . . you need a good vent now and again . . .
Glad to supply the outlet, Robert! And, of course, I agree that the writing’s worth doing. Thanks for the input!
Yes, I will always write, regardless of whether anyone reads it, because it has its own benefits, for me mentally and also just by simply existing, I believe. But ultimately I’m writing to communicate, and someone else has to be on the other end of that line. The perennial dilemma of the writer, especially in the modern age when there is so much (ugh) content, it’s hard to connect.
So glad you’re back at it, still at it, whatever. Keep it coming.
So with you on this, Kristina. Your comment also makes me wonder if the general definition of “communication” has changed. When does it stop becoming “connection” and devolve into “noise”? But that’s a blog post for somebody else to write.
I was just thinking about this as I stood in a mid-sized independent bookshop in Asheville. There were so many books, and so many by authors I actually knew on the shelves that I wondered how any author can ever find an audience of more than just a few. The questioning of life choices is real.
~Sherry
Sherry, it does feel noisy out there in the publishing world. And for all those books you saw by all those authors, there are so many, many more … I guess the real question is how do readers choose what they like to read?