Some good words about writing for those we feel for. The last paragraph greatly represents the feeling I too hold when I think about writing and what it provides for me. Some day I also aspire to have a career more involved with one of my most important passions:
'And here I can mention that there is nothing like writing for those you love. Building something out of words, an intensely personal medium – something for someone you respect, someone for whom you care – that's both a pleasure and a properly testing exercise. I have long argued that the writer's relationship with the putative reader should probably be one of loving respect: it's a way of maintaining a correct form of address. Having a literal someone out there for whom you would like to do more than your best, someone to please, can be helpful...
If you've ever tried writing for a lover, that can be intoxicating and wonderful, but it can also lead you into self-indulgence and, should the relationship founder, your deathless lines may end up all over the kitchen wall. Still, if you want to have a go ... well, I wouldn't be able to stop you. Writing from love and for love – love of the words, love of your species, love of specific joys – that's a fine remedy for ills.
And it's a reminder – Dum-dah-dum, da dah-dum dah-dum – of a deep pleasure in being a writer: the permanent music it provides. Sometimes having the benefit of a free head full of words offers as clear and complex a melody as any track I'll ever play to cheer me. Sometimes the words are background noise, sometimes they can feel like being a kid again and simply happy, sometimes they're an excuse for nearly dancing on a railway platform, sometimes I get paid for trying to put them down on paper, sometimes they'll end up in a letter with a readership of one. And this is something we all have: it takes negative intervention – illness, fear, threat – to damage our music, muffle it. But it's still there, waiting, singing inside. Onwards.'
