Do You NEED To Be A Writer?
No, you need to shut the fuck up and do something worthwhile.
Everyone who does not NEED to be a writer ought to do something else.” -George Simenon http://t.co/UsSkyn5A2A
Yeah, about that: Nobody needs to be a writer. Nobody. I can certainly understand the appeal of not doing physical labor or toiling in a field in which your brain is not fully engaged but there is no human need to be a writer. I get it, you have thoughts, you feel the world should share them, you like attention, you don’t want to do something else that is probably harder and less affirming of how special your sensitivities are, but you know what? The world will somehow get along without your deep and knowing interpretations of what we mean when we say something or what is conveyed when we stare into the middle distance or how our titanic struggles with existence are often played out in the smallest and most quotidian of ways. Someone else will eventually say it, and probably better. What the world needs, frankly, is for everyone who needs to be a writer to shut the fuck up for a while (I ask for a year but I would settle for six months) and do some real fucking work and maybe look around and realize just how worthless their insights into our sad doomed lives really are. If you have somehow managed to pull off being a writer I congratulate you on a successful scam, but you more than anyone should know how little need comes into play. Need to not do real work is more like it, am I right? Anyway, Georges Simenon turned out 200 books and was born at the beginning of the last century, so he had more of an excuse for trying to peddle this line of crap than most. The rest of you, born more recently, whose writing is mostly anger-blogging episodes of “America’s Next Top Model” or sweary steak recipes, should know better, so let’s all try to keep this bundle of self-romanticizing bullshit to a minimum, okay? Thanks.