Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers

"To: My ungrateful students re: An inspirational letter"

For your writing to be great—I mean great, not clever, or even
brilliant, or most misleading of all, beautiful—it must be useful to the
world. And for that to happen you must form an opinion of the world.
And for that to happen you need to observe the world, closely and
steadily, with a mind open to change. And for that to happen you have to
live in the world, and not pretend that it is someone else’s world you
are writing about. A tendency of modern literature is to claim, “We must
love one another or die,” or “be true to one another,” or “only
connect.” Sweet as such sentiments may be, they give up on the world and
imply that the best way to live in it is to hide from it in one
another’s embrace. Instead, you must love the world as it is, because
the world, for all its murder and madness, is worth loving. Nothing you
write will matter unless it moves the human heart, said the poet A. D.
Hope. And the heart that you must move is corrupt, depraved, and
desperate for your love.

How can you know what is useful to the world? The world will not tell you. The world will merely let you know what it wants, which changes
from moment to moment, and is nearly always cockeyed. You cannot allow
yourself to be directed by its tastes. When a writer wonders, “Will it
sell?” he is lost, not because he is looking to make an extra buck or
two, but rather because, by dint of asking the question in the first
place, he has oriented himself toward the expectations of others. The
world is not a focus group. The world is an appetite waiting to be
defined. The greatest love you can show it is to create what it needs,
which means you must know that yourself.

I loved this excerpt from Roger Rosenblatt’s Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing. Read the whole passage here.

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Permalink Reply by scribbler on December 29, 2010 at 9:09pm

What an inspiring piece of writing! I'll look out for the book now. Thanks Kay! :)

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Permalink Reply by Sean Noonan on December 30, 2010 at 8:37pm

Feeding the appetite of the world, that sounds like a good plan and the key to recognition.

Do we feed it what it wants? Or what it needs? I wouldn't want to feed a monster so that it becomes bigger!

With luck what the world wants and needs are the same thing (even if it doesn't know it before it feeds) and when that aligns with your own perspective, all is possible. Fingers crossed...

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Permalink Reply by Kay Elizabeth on January 4, 2011 at 12:54am

Amen to that, Sean. I second that emotion. :) Glad you liked it, scribbler. Let us know how the book is please if you lay your hands on a copy. :)

Sean Noonan said:

Feeding the appetite of the world, that sounds like a good plan and the key to recognition.

Do we feed it what it wants? Or what it needs? I wouldn't want to feed a monster so that it becomes bigger!

With luck what the world wants and needs are the same thing (even if it doesn't know it before it feeds) and when that aligns with your own perspective, all is possible. Fingers crossed...