So rather than write schlock, I...

Elsewhere I'm (ha-ha) "debating" why I find self-publishing a cess-pit and I popped out this post





Do you have to personalise everything?

Are you incapable of debate?

I think, very seriously, that you literally have not-a-clue about an artist's sensibility. I don't write "for personal gratification" but I do believe in being able to look at what I do and think, that's as good as I can do today.

 I am trying to write about things that matter, I am reaching inside and reaching out at the same time. I am trying to understand why we are here. If there's a God I'm working at the edge of myself hoping he'll give me, via my own efforts, small insights.

So rather than write shlock, I'll write fiction about how I took my daughter's eye-out. I'll write about carrying that in your heart for a life-time, and about forgiveness.

Or I'll write about a woman who escapes an awful marriage, finds herself, has a new life, then discovers her children are to be taken into care. I'll write how she goes back, effectively killing herself emotionally, because she feels a mother's duty.

I'll write in the voice of a woman in a mental hospital asking her mother why she left her to be raped by the father. I'll write about how this woman wants to reach inside herself and strip out her father's DNA.

If it sells, I'm ecstatic, but the writing ITSELF matters and you seem to not understand that not everything is about money and Amazon rankings and clever exposure heuristics.