Forum / Even if someone wanted to post here in the Forum...

James Lloyd Davis
May 20, 04:12am

...what would be the point? It's not public anymore... is it? Hijacked as it is, it's lost any functional relevance it might have possessed in another time.

Darryl Price
May 21, 06:58pm

Hey, James, I'm starting a new thread for people like us: quotes from famous writers; here's the first one:

" Listen only to your imagination."--Mark Twain

David Ackley
May 21, 08:32pm

Item: Some months--or maybe years--ago, absent better, I was watching a tv sort of talk show with comedic pretensions which emanates from Britain. Guests included a retired Football(soccer, this was Britain, remember)coach; a well-known American movie actor; a British comic actor/comedian or two; and one actual professional writer. After the usual frothy banter, the host turned the conversation to literary matters, for it turned out that each of the guests had written?Authored? At any rate recently published a book, a memoir, typically.Except for the actual writer, who might have been working some other scam.

I was struck by the proportions: 1 Writer 4 well, Others. All avidly pursued to present their immortal thoughts to a presumably salivating public.

Item 2. A popular singer, recently publishing a collection of short stories reviewed--tolerantly, I suppose you'd say--in the Sunday Times Book Review. I was struck by the reviewer's noting that the stories had been "co-written," by six (6!) other people.
This seems a good gig in every respect, including that you could get six other people to do the heavy lifting of actual writing, which has always, in my view, been the worst aspect of the trade, much less fun than say, having Inspiration.

So, with the main thoroughfares of publishing clogged with people with vaguely familiar names, and no more training or practice in producing prose than your average butcher, one has occasion once again to ask, Why write?

Any takers?

Dianne McKnight-Warren
May 22, 03:08pm

This made me think of all the rich people paying poor women to have babies for them. I think in part I write to instruct.

Chris Okum
May 22, 03:26pm

America, where women are forced to have babies so that the babies can starve to death. This country is rapidly turning into the kind of Third World shithole we like to make fun of. The reason to write is to record what is happening for posterity. There is no other reason.

Dianne McKnight-Warren
May 22, 03:28pm

I know I read to be instructed, a tiny lesson maybe (like an image) or a new way of seeing or thinking about something larger. "Know" used to be the past tense of "see."

Darryl Price
May 23, 09:45pm

When I was a kid, I lived in books--literally. My imagination placed me there. I could feel it, smell it, touch it, experience it--all through the writing. This gave me a great education and also a lot of emotional release. I gained many new insights and perspectives from reading which opened my heart and kept my mind open. As a kid, and even today, reading books, to me, is a magical, wonderful experience like no other. And I thank all those writers for the gifts they gave to so many of us. It worked. My favorite books kept me alive and kept me going.

Erika Byrne-Ludwig
May 24, 12:05am

I see us as builders, playing with words, piling them up like legos to build little cathedrals. Never mind if a storm or war destroys them. At least they would have been there.

eamon byrne
May 24, 09:31pm

For me it's the journey, not the destination.

David Ackley
May 27, 01:43pm

I could say I'm still working on it, which is partly true, but I also think it has something to do with trying to find out what I really know, and then coming up with the best way to say it.
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