Why Bother #3

No one's reading it now, and likely no one ever will

This one held me back for years. My husband wasn't that interested. I was shy about sharing with anyone else -even my parents. How could I give them proof that their only child wasn't the next Virginia Woolf?

And I most assuredly am not that. My tastes - you might even call them proclivities - run to a shelf far from Virginia's, at the back of the bookstore. Browsers there make furtive selections. They ask for bags.

More on that tomorrow.

You can write a novel without an audience, but it won't be as good as it could be. Why? Think about it. You clean up your house for guests. You dress up for a date.

Writing improves if it will be read. It will be better still if someone reads it thoughtfully. And comments, gently but firmly.

A very intimate assignment.

How do you satisfy intimate desires, absent willing volunteers? You pay for services rendered. You could hire a reader. That's straight-up prostitution, of course. With the attendant pit-falls.

I put down (a good deal of) hard-earned money to join a script-writing workshop. The authors' equivalent of a singles dance. I was prepared to bail if it was in an way a downer.

I'm lucky. Its just a few other souls, sitting in mis-matched chairs around a battered table. But it works. I'm a regular now, class after class.

Never again will I dance without a partner.