Writing for No Reason

Most of Emily Dickinson's poems went unpublished in her lifetime. She wrote for a box, not publication.

I was thinking of that as I read an interesting post from C.S. Harris , based on a question posed on Kate's blog.

Would you write if you never made a(nother) dime writing?

Yeah. That's the short answer.

I'm doing it right now in fact. The blog pays in sometimes intangible ways, but I don't make much direct coin for it.

I've been meditating a while about where I am as a writer, as periodically do most of the people in my circle of blog awareness, including not just Kate and C.S. but also Charles and Cliff and Stewart and Wayne (here too for Wayne). We're all on different shoals in the same stream.

The shoal on which I'm standing at the moment is, I think, a luxurious place.

My day job keeps my head under a roof and covers my cat's ophthalmologist. Said job could evaporate, I'm sure, but for now I can trial and error my writing and send it out when and if I think it's worthwhile.

I worked a while on a novel called Zoe's Missing that I decided to put in the trunk because it wasn't in toto what I wanted it to be.

I paused to write the War of the Worlds script for which I did get paid, and it was a wonderful new writing experience, challenging and exciting. And of course commissions or contracts can be a fabulous drug or a horrible curse.

Now I'm outlining and sketching portions of a different novel, sending out short stories which I had not done in a while. Getting occasional rejections. Ouch, I'd kind of forgotten that sting.

Do I get to keep the writer shingle out while the nother dimes aren't rolling? Doesn't matter. I'm proud of what I've done, and I've enjoyed the journey so far.

I'll be writing something whether it sees the light of day or stays in a box. I'll be writing just because that's what I do and I'm not sure why and I don't care why any more.

I might not leave behind the a box as brilliant as Emily's when my website shifts from Sid is Alive to Sid is Dead but I shall have kept myself busy and entertained. That's enough.