OK, I guess I am stupid, but I don't really understand this LW. Why would one write for oneself? The whole point of writing is to communicate something to others and hopefully to influence them, inspire them, change the way they think--or at least teach them something, or give them a new way of seeing.

In fact you can't write well without thinking about who you are writing for. It can't be done.

Writing as a form of verbal masturbation, a spinning of the mental wheels, a form of exercise for the hands and fingers? Oh, well.

Well, writing is simply a vehicle for expressing your thoughts, and the important thing here is to think and have something interesting/unique/insightful to say. I think the term "writer" is much too overrated in this country, and the literary aspects of writing are emphasized way too much. It bugs me to see mundane news items on major news outlets being presented in flowery language - as if we really cared about the literary skills of the reporter. If we wanted literature we would read Dickens or someone else. Who is a "writer" anyway?

you think these creative questions are your best, but they are your worst.

Some days I consider myself a writer, and other days, hours, minutes, I can't stand what I wrote and consider myself very presumptious for even trying. I write all the time and it still makes me sick.Like the LW, I try to think about different things that I can do other than write. Like the LW, I am visually talentless and even though I love music and have taken various kinds of instrument lessons, do not consider myself even remotely talented. Some mornings I wake up and decide that I will never try to write another poem or continue work on my "novel." I always break down. I think that I write for myself, but I also want that audience. I also want to "get over myself" and my delusions. It is certainly a conundrum. I have just begun knitting again, but that does not answer whatever it is that leads me back into language and the various ways that it fascinates and frustrates me. Perhaps writers are simply frustrated people. I have hung out with musicians, and they seem to love what they do.

We all know these are fake, right? Advice letters are fake. Like pro wrestling. Fake. They are a neat writing exercise for the supposed "advice" columnist. We all know that, right?

It's probably just not time yet.

I have almost an identical history with writing. Wrote for my own pleasure, then to amuse and impress others, and then for reasons too fractured and stupid to quantify, and after watching some people who weren't very good (but who were remarkably able to WRITE and actually finish things without being siezed by overwhelming misgivings of some sort or another) I finished my MFA and kinda put down my pen. I was fatigued at having to confront the whole futility of what you do with your writing after it's actually done, and I was doing it every time I picked up a pen. It's been about 2 and some change years since I wrote seriously, and in that time a whole new age in my development has dawned, and when I pick up a pen lately, it is back to being for me.

I think that some people decide to write, and some people are just writers. That doesn't mean that they are published and revered. It just means that when certain chemicals in our bodies combine in the right way - we write.

Good luck. You'll get back to it - I can feel it.

I mean pretentious rather than presumptious.

I do not get it.

The Letter Writer writes well. The example, or whatever Cary means that intro to mean, is awful (keeps writing, "in regards," "in regards," and other dopinesses). And Cary, then says, "hence" five or six or a million times in a row.

If you can play "Louie, Louie" and "Gesu Joy of Man's Desiring" well, you are a musician. If you can write a few paragraphs without writing "different than," you are a writer.

It is a technical thing, a talent/experience thing, not emotional. You need practice over time, but cool it with the kookiness. Write or do not write, as you choose. But you write well enough. Maybe think about teaching writing.

I should not have hit a comma after the word "Cary" in my recent post.

I do NOT get this whole exchange. What is the point? I like it, because it is about writing, but what the heck?

Are we ever puritanical about solitary pleasures!

I'm one of those people who write novels for myself with no intention ever of publishing them. I do it because it gives me intense pleasure. It's like being infatuated - when things flow, I live more intensely. Music moves me more deeply and I'm content with my life.

Sharing the novels with others used to be more important to me, but as I've grown older, I find I don't need validation and I don't need praise. All I need is to WRITE. I don't like finishing a novel, either. Even as I work to bring things to a satisfying close, I am not looking forward to being finished - it means I'll need to build up an entirely new world of characters to get myself back to that former state of creative bliss.

I would hesitate to call myself a writer only because people will naturally ask, "Oh what have you written?" and expect me to tell them a title they can find at the bookstore. Yet I spend much of my free time writing for myself and studying writing technique so that my writing will move me all the more. My day-job is entirely unrelated to this.

Now, I also play amateur chambermusic - and I've found that somehow this is more socially acceptable. Getting together with friends to play music you never intend to hone to a performance level is a social activity, and therefore worthwhile to this society that prizes sociability and mistrusts introverts. Of course, practicing one's instrument alone is *work* so that's OK.