The Word Cloud

Hard to say anything, in the light of so much honesty and dignity, except to express my respect for him:

http://ianhocking.com/2010/08/20/and-in-the-end/

Emma

On the othe hand, as an (ex) schoolteacher I have always believed in lifelong learning, and one of the greatest learning processes is to write. It's active learning; it's whole brain learning; it's whole person body and soul learning. It's important not to mess up people around us too much, of course, and I can say as an imperfect (ex) schoolteacher I did give the students interest, laughs and the wherewithal to pass their exams well enough. Maybe I messed me up a bit - not in the greatest health - but would I change any of it? Of course not. The rewards have been huge, albeit somewhat inner. And that, of course, is the thing (recommended in the Bhagavad Gita, by the way, if I remember rightly from my reading several decades ago) - don't look for external rewards. It's the inner rewards that count.

Of course we do look for external rewards as well, but that's inevitable - and okay, so long as we don't take it all too seriously.

But - big emphasis - I have no doubts. Earth is the place to learn. And there's no better learning than through writing.

And what if the novels that he self-publishes via Lulu become a roaring success? Will he change his mind then? Yes, respect to the man for the honesty and intergrity inherent in the blog.

It seems to me that the crucial point in the piece is that for all the reasons he gives, the situation he's in has wrecked writing for him for now, as a thing he wants to do: he's no longer getting the internal rewards. I can well imagine that if he Lulus the others, and finds a readership, that could re-ignite his desire to write, because he would be heard again - the internal rewards would start up again, and that would fuel the drive to keep on sitting down and writing... although there would still be the cost to friends and family.

Interesting. I know I've had plenty of dark-night moments when I don't know why I keep writing when I don't know if I'll get my next book published and the financial rewards are so meagre. But it's too addictive and besides so many exciting other things have happened as a result of me failing to make a living from writing - working for Writers Workshop for a start, helping others with their writing, meeting so many interesting people, working for publishers, organising writing events including the Festival of Writing.

Every now and then I'd give up - have a go at Reiki, something like that - but in the end those other things are just fillers, in-betweeny things, before getting back to the main business.