The Dilettante

A real writer, a proper writer is someone who gets published. Anyone else is a dilettante. A proper writer will polish and edit four-fifths of his time, and if he expects to be published, he'll also market another four-fifths of his time. You can always tell a proper writer. Reduced to one-fifth of one-fifth, he's someone who spends 4% of his day in actual creative writing.

If I was to paint but not very well, people would tolerate me. They wouldn't demand I sell my work. Mostly harmless, I'd fill in a canvas and once it's finished, I'd store it down in my basement and no one would care. Why must writing be different? Can't it just stay on my laptop? Why insist I jump through new hoops? I did that enough at my work. For fifty years in structural steel I answered to the man. I don't need either the money or the glory, so why would I spend my retirement hunting down publishers? Leave me alone and let me write.

As for The Prose, I've always had a problem starting a story, so I find the challenges helpful. Left to myself, I tend to stall so they help to spark my creative process. After I finish, I'll exhibit the story just once on the website, and then it goes into storage. Think of it like a choir. They'll stage a concert every so often just to give them direction and target. Would you consider that lazy?

I suspect that you're much younger than me and still working on your career. I belong in a different world, and in my world, there's a place for The Prose. And by the way, in my time on this earth, I have on occasion tried to be helpful to others.