[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 1: Dreams]

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 02:02:49PM -0400, Sheryl wrote:
> You also want to express your creativity, write and "create beauty". 
> That's  seeking honor/distinction/honor/fame.  You have to have some of
> that or nobody will read your stories.  Stories which stay in a desk
> drawer and are never read don't change anybody.

True, but my aims in this direction are still modest, and don't fit in
to what society expects of me in this area.  I'm not "ambitious" because
I'm not conforming to the "correct" kind of ambition that a writer is
supposed to have: getting published by a publisher.  I've lost count of
the times when people have said to me, meaning to be encouraging but
actually being the opposite: "You can write well, you should write
*real* fiction and get published."  That's like saying to an actor "you
can act well, you should stop wasting your time doing theatre, and get
into movies."

I picked this analogy because, for an actor, the rewards of theatre are
not the fame or the money, because the fame and the money in theatre are
modest, and miniscule compared to what could be done in movies.
The rewards of doing theatre are a closeness to the audience and
immediate feedback on your performance.  It's the same kind of thing
that attracts me to putting fiction on the web -- my audience may not be
very large, but it's much closer.

For me, trying to get published is not worth the cost.  But, somehow,
the idea of having writing as a *hobby* isn't considered valid by
society.  That's very discouraging.

Kathryn Andersen
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