I am signing off of this forum today. It's been a pleasure an I have learned a lot, but I have decided that I want to focus exclusively on writing non-fiction. The decision wasn't a very hard one. I just listed all of my fiction ideas along side all of my non-fiction ideas, and saw that the ratio between fiction and non-fiction ideas was about 1 to 20. And now that I have a lot of work I want to do, I no longer have time to participate in this forum. Perhaps I'll try my hand at fiction again another time, but right now my heart is in non-fiction.
I wish all of you the best. I know a lot of you love to write and would love to make a living by writing. But frankly, I've noticed that a lot of silliness--which is simply a waste of time--takes place in this forum. Thus, I leave you all with the words of Hemingway:
"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."
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For what it's worth, what I get from talking with other people who are writing is the ability to talk through theories, ideas, and strategies. Probably only a minority of it does improve my writing, but I think that minority is there.
As to facing eternity, this was not Hemingway's forte, so I don't consider him an authority on the matter. All I need to face when I write is the possibility that it will suck, and since I can always rewrite, that's not so daunting.
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