Chefs in restaurants want people to eat their food. Clothes designers want customers to wear their clothes. Writers want people to read their stuff. It's in the nature of the enterprise. You don't do these things just for yourself. You want an eating clothed reading public and if you're an author person, you want your stuff to be included in the library of that reading public.
But the reasons for craving a readership are complicated. People who write feel very differently about whose attention they want to grab and for what reason. Yes, we all imagine who is in our reading audience and we try to write in a way that "speaks to them." But I'm not certain if we, the writers out there (I include both bloggers and authors of Great Writing Projects) always feel sure about the message we want to deliver. Maybe some of us just want to have a conversation. Maybe we don't feel that we have any great wisdom on any big or small topic. Maybe we just want to take down the noise level a bit and offer a quieter back and forth on a given topic.
I'm thinking about this as I work through the proofs of my own Great Writing Project all day today. More than once I've asked myself "why am I doing this?" Each time I come to the same conclusion: because I want to offer a different perspective, so that the conversation would be broader than what I've heard so far (on the subject of the book). Nothing about my life is unusual or important. But I am that person in the crowd shouting (quietly) -- hey, this played out differently than you may think. Consider this.... And then I tell my story.
But to tell you the truth, I never thought that writing and then editing a million versions of that story could make me develop such great aversions to ever mentioning the events described in the book again. Instead of opening the doors to further conversation, I can tell you right now -- I can't wait to drop the topic and move on to something else! Cannot wait!
It's beautifully warm today and yet Ed works on taxes, I work on my book. After breakfast that is.
We do go out for a walk and it feels so good to be in the thick of the warmer days of April!
On the downside, we talk about the Ukraine. Speculative stuff. Ed often looks to me for insights about the mindset of a person making decisions about the future of Russia and indeed the rest of the world and so we fill the time with trying to make sense of what is happening now and what may happen going forward.
Nevertheless, there is that joy that comes after you've been chilled to the bone for too long: a sudden infusion of warmth is like a piece of heaven on earth. The turtles are out!
Yes, this is what peace looks like. This is what we hope will take hold in places where right now, there are no turtles lazying on a log in the pond. Yep, hoping for peace. Every single minute of the day.
And then we return to our tasks: he adds sums of various forms and schedules, I review line after line of a manuscript that will soon be done. And oh, am I glad that it will finally be done!
