Is Writing is a Thankless Profession?
It seems to me that writing really is a thankless profession, unless you’re someone like J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, selling millions of books translated into multiple languages. Who gets the most recognition for a blockbuster movie? The actors, the directors – hell, even the cinematographers. How many people remember who wrote the script – you know, that little minor thing that was only the essence of the whole damned film? I’d say not many, unless the director and writer happened to be the same person.
Authors, again with the exception of a few big names, are almost never celebrities. Even many of the most famous writers of high literature and poetry and other stuff heralded in Western culture are not really famous. Beyond the people who study them directly, or amongst the generally well-educated, these people are obscure. People may know their names, but may not be able to name a single piece written by them. But is this a reflection of the anti-intellectualism and rampant ignorance prevalent throughout American society, or of some inherent distance between the writer and his audience?
But I’m not writing any of this because I want to be famous. I’d just as soon write under a pseudonym. Oh, wait, I do – and I have gone through great lengths at times to conceal my true identity, although by now it would take the bare minimum of research to discover it. The point is that I don’t care about personal recognition, but I do care about recognition of my work, which I guess you could say is an emanation of me – an extended phenotype, if you will. Whatever you want to call it, I feel that for all the writing I do, for all the purportedly great ideas I have, for all that I feel that I have to contribute to the world – there is hardly anyone around to appreciate it.
I mean, seriously, who reads this bullshit, anyway? Who are the 420 people who visited my site last month? I’d really like to know. Some are undoubtedly friends who I have linked to articles. Some are me, accessing my own site from different computers. Some are people who randomly stumbled upon one of my videos on YouTube. But for all of those 420 people, how many of them provided me with any real substantial feedback? None – perhaps with the exception of one friend, who I sometimes have conversations with as I write the stuff.
Writing is a thankless profession. Why couldn’t I have been born a musician? And no, fuckers, don’t you dare email me NOW. This is not a cry for attention.