[sericmarr]

Tim Love and I had an interesting exchange on the Fiction Forum. Tim suggested writing stories rather than writing for self interest or self awareness. This points to the deeper motivations of writing. At a recent reading, Michael Cunningham said that he did not have an agenda when writing. Question: What are your motivations for writing and do you think you should have an agenda when writing?

[E. Shaun Russell]

I write for a few reasons. First of all, to get it out of my head. It's sort of an exorcism. Second, because I'm good at it. I can't draw or dance, so I simply don't do those, but I CAN write, and that's the form the aforementioned "exorcism" takes. And finally, there is always that desire for recognition for being good at doing something...though that's more a reason for sending out submissions, rather than writing in the first place.

[sericmarr]

Hmm...Gaining psychoanalytic or personal insight isn't one of your motivations? (Thanks for your response).

[Richard Meyer]

One could argue, I suppose, that any self-awareness comes after the writing is finished. Sort of what Frost meant, perhaps, when he said a poem begins with delight and ends in wisdom.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Richard Meyer

One could argue, I suppose, that any self-awareness comes after the writing is finished. Sort of what Frost meant, perhaps, when he said a poem begins with delight and ends in wisdom.

Richard, I always read that bit of Frost as referring to the reader's delight and wisdom. I don't deny that it can work the other way, but I've been thinking for a couple of days about my first impulse on reading Steve's question: Shouldn't one write to be read? The goal of catharsis or expression or self-discovery is all very well, but shouldn't the pleasure of the reader govern, in the end?

[E. Shaun Russell]

Originally Posted by sericmarr

Hmm...Gaining psychoanalytic or personal insight isn't one of your motivations? (Thanks for your response).

Actually, it's not. It's probably the height of hubris, but I think I've got myself figured out pretty well...and come to think about it, most (though not all) of what I write about is about things outside of myself, whether it's the human condition, mortality, morality or other external things. Those tropes are colored by my own perspectives, of course, but those perspectives are rarely a surprise to me. The poem just translates my thoughts into words.

As for Steve's (and Maryann's) question about whether or not one writes to be read...I'm a bit torn on that one. Wanting to be read is a part of why I write, like I mentioned above, but if I happened to know definitively that everyone else in the world was dead and gone, I'm pretty sure I'd still write, much in the same way that I still play piano when there's no one around. Self-gratification plays the larger part for me, at least.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Shouldn't one write to be read?

I certainly agree with Maryann. I would go a step further. Ultimately the only reason one writes is the hope of being read.

One can keep a diary and perhaps glean insights, though the entries are read only by the author. This is a private act presuming no other reader. That is why many diarists code their entries, or at least have a lock on it or hide it away where no one will stumble over it. It is a gross breach of privacy to make public the diary of a living person who wrote solely for himself and death came before he could destroy the evidence.

On the other hand diaries (and letters) of statesmen and other public figures are usually written (and edited) with an eye to favorably influencing the opinion of anticipated future readers.

But whenever someone writes with the intention of making the text public in any form--even as a letter to a close friend, in a literary publication or workshop--any self-searching, real or supposed, is subordinate to the narcissitic goal of publication (in the sense "to make public").

Crossposted with Shaun.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Shaun said

but if I happened to know definitively that everyone else in the world was dead and gone, I'm pretty sure I'd still write

I don't claim to know your mindset better than you do, Shaun, but my immediate thought is that anyone who believes themselves to be the last creature alive and continues to write, nourishes a hope and belief that someone else will in fact show up one day to read what he has written.

Literature is full of this kind of "last man alive" or "castaway cut off from civilization" who keeps a diary and a reader always turns up, even if it is the reader in his easy chair enjoying the novel.

A real-life reader might not appear in every catastrophic situation--who knows what skeleton bleaches in the desert with jottings in the pockets of a ragged pair of pants--but the hope is/was there that someone would pass that way and read.

[Richard Meyer]

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

but I've been thinking for a couple of days about my first impulse on reading Steve's question: Shouldn't one write to be read? The goal of catharsis or expression or self-discovery is all very well, but shouldn't the pleasure of the reader govern, in the end?

I think it's fair to say there are many reasons people write. The point about audience or reader often holds a central position is this discussion. But I would ask, who's the first reader? I think most serious writers and poets write to please their own sensibilities and hope, secondarily, that others will find what they've written worthwhile as well.

Richard

[Roger Slater]

I am ambitious of doing the world some good: if I should be spared that may be the work of maturer years - in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of Poems to come brings the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs - that the solitary indifference I feel for applause even from the finest Spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will - I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.

Keats Letter to Woodhouse, October 27, 1818

However nice it may be to have an audience, surely the activity of writing is enough of a habit and a need in most of us that we would write without the realistic hope of obtaining one, as so many of us have done for years as a practical matter. Ultimately, for me and I suspect for most of us, what we really want to do is make up poems. We did not choose poetry writing as a means to an end, be it fame or fortune or adulation, but because we discovered poetry and got excited at the possibility that we could make some of our own.