: Re: If you're not a professional, what motivates you to keep writing? Writing. There comes a time in my daily routine. I get a striking idea. A topic to write in my blog. A pondering about a

@Angela458

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What motivates me to keep writing? I have something to say that other people aren't saying.

Amadeus admirably covered being motivated by the writing itself, and the love of the craft. He also mentioned setting aside time each day. (I cannot overemphasize the importance of blocking off regular time specifically to write.) That may adequately cover the entire motivation of some people.

For myself, though, I have unusual thoughts - a perspective on the world which I think is not sufficiently represented. Whether or not anyone is listening, whether I can find an audience or a market, is a matter partly outside of my control. But hashing out and getting down those thoughts and narrative twists is something I can do.

To illustrate, I long contemplated writing a story about how people getting what they yearned for could be horrible. Not like Monkey's Paw, where what the wishers got clearly wasn't what they actually wanted. Rather, an exploration of how a magical fulfillment of our real appetites can be dangerous and destructive. When I read C.J. Cherryh's Rusalka, I breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh good, somebody else wrote that story. Now I don't have to."

Back when I dreamed that publishing was easy, I liked the idea of money and fame - but more than that, I wanted to participate in the great dialogue which was and is storytelling, as well as the philosophical history of the human race. It is, in part, that desire to participate - to say something back in reply to the things I've read and watched and heard... To join the conversation, to bring a meaningful contribution to it; that desire still motivates me.

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