On writing, wanting, and not wanting to want what we want

[shereads]

By Garrison Keillor, aka Mr. Blue, for Salon.com:

Dear Mr. Blue,

After years of writing short stories and getting rejection form letters, I recently gave up on the publication game and all that heartbreak and started writing for the simple pleasure of it. The result is that writing has become far more enjoyable and I feel I have been freed from something that was holding me back. My recent work is immeasurably improved, and I think some of it is of publishable quality. I'm worried, though, that if I go back to submitting for publication, writing will again become a means to an end instead of an enjoyable end in itself. How do I maintain the joy of writing with no pressure while at the same time seeking publication?

Stuck in Illinois

Dear Stuck,

There's a story here somewhere, about a guy who wants something and doesn't want to want it, who hopes for his heart's desire to burst into the room one day when he isn't looking and take him for a ride. He is hungry and he hopes to be waited on, he is lonely and wishes that 14 close friends would arrive with a case of beer. Writers have always tried to understand themselves by writing metaphorically about their own condition. You should try writing about this. But unless you are a saint, your writing is intended for a reader, and without her, you can't be satisfied.

I read.

Thank me.

 

[CharleyH]

By Garrison Keillor, aka Mr. Blue, for Salon.com:

I read.

Thank me.

lol THANK YOU! Bow and courtsey, massage and ...

 

[AchtungNight]

Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.

 

[Seattle Zack]

The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.
--Alfred Kazin

I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
--Elmore Leonard

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
--Truman Capote

Frankly, I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
--Hunter S. Thompson

A metaphor is like a simile.
--Author Unknown

 

[shereads]

Frankly, I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
--Hunter S. Thompson

A lot of these: