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we're doing? For, make no mistake, there is no such thing as a humble writer; the humble don't stick their thoughts under other people's noses unasked and expect them to be read and "appreciated." So what makes us so stubborn and proud? So sure of ourselves? . . . Pace Samuel Johnson (of the famous putdown: "Only a blockhead writes for anything but money"~and who had contempt for the other motive he recognized driving writers: vanity; as if writers were not vain by nature and as if all publishing were not at heart vanity publishing): every writer worth his salt knows he doesn't write for either money or fame, even to be published, even to communicate. Although even vanity can be a more laudable motive than pay: vanity at least presupposes some belief in our worth besides our price. 
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. . . One rational motive for writing even if you never communicate a word, make a sale, or have any hope for fame, present or posthumous: to tell yourself the truth, thereby cleansing yourself of the lies social life often requires. One motive for a diary, the most private form of writing. . . . Another motive is revenge: the daily assassin you have at your beck and call, with dagger in hand hidden by day behind the cloak of politeness, to be buried in the back in the middle of the night. To write something down is almost to perform it~every writer has probably had this queasy feeling at one time or another, as if to write were to hallucinate an action. It has a similar psychological effect  |
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