Friday, June 29, 2007

Well, there's joy ...

... and there's joy. How about The joys of NOT being published? (Hat tip, Vikram Johri, who says he's not sure if he agrees. Neither am I, but that may be because, as a disciple of Dr. Johnson, I tend to think, as he did, that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

2 comments:

  1. If writing, as some of us believe, is a necessary part of being a free-thinking and acting human being, in a literate democratic society, then the notion that one writes only for money is a bizarre concept indeed. (Creative fiction and poetry of course, when done right, being an expression of one's opinions and perspective in a pluralistic society.)
    p.s. A couple of my group's best writers will be at Germ Books July 18th, reading from their recently published works, for which they were not paid by the ULA. They write for the pure joy of reading and writing.

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  2. Well, there's writing and there's writing.If you seek commercial publication, then you wish to enter the world of commerce. What ever else it may be, writing in that sense is a business enterprise. If you write simply to express yourself, then upon completion of what you are writing your primary audience of one should be satisfied. There are, of course, other ways of publicizing what you write. You can pass your writings around among friends and colleagues. For me, writing is principally a craft, rather hard to do at times, involving organizing thoughts and words. I have few, if any, romantic notions regarding it. But then I have few, if any, romantic notions regarding my thoughts or feelings or experiences. So my expression of them may be of interest to others or may not. Either way. life goes on.

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