And No One Heard Not Even the Chair

 

 

[image error]

Someone in my graduate school zoom group recently remarked that we will all publish into obscurity but we do it anyway. Why? I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I certainly know that my deepest satisfaction comes from working on books that are in print 20 years later and are still beloved. Or  when someone meets me and it’s revealed that I edited a certain book, and the person is suddenly impressed as if I’ve transformed from a mildly interesting girl in glasses to a goddess. I’ve always felt the real reason to write was to score chicks. Everything else is gravy. Money, fame, adoration, it’s all ephemeral. Most writers feel like shit about themselves and complain about how hard their work is even if they’re rich and famous.  Huge ego, low self-esteem is the writer’s cocktail. But the real reason we write is as individual as who we are, and it changes over time. But I suspect one of the more universal reasons we write is because we are unhappy. We need to remake the world, tell our version, dig our grave.

Why do you do it?