If you knew….

[Weird Jim]

…that nothing you write would ever ever be read, would you still write?

I mean this as a serious question, not one to be answered seriously by “If I didn’t write, I’d just die.”

Second question: Why?

[Ashe Elton Parker]

Even if I knew no one would read what I wrote, I would still write. My stories are, first and foremost, entertainment for myself. I’d still think them up and play with scenes in my head; writing everything down just puts it in a format I find easier and more convenient for revisiting later since I can’t remember everything I think up for my stories.

Ashe Elton Parker
"Just love me, fear me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." ~ David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth
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Member since 1998.
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[shanti]

I definitely would. I’ve written for long periods without anyone reading my work. I also tried to stop writing for a while. I worried I might have hypergraphia and told myself this must be a disease like alcoholism, so I tried to stop. I couldn’t do it. I still had stories developing in my head. They were still there, I just wasn’t writing them down.

I agree with Ashe in that I enjoy amusing myself too much with my stories to ever stop again. I always fall in love with my characters. They are like real people to me. Some of them are even more real to me than a lot of people.

Also, I would continue to write even if no one ever read my work because I’ve come to realize that fiction writing is the way I process my life. I hate writing diaries and journals. I hate writing blogs. I hate Facebook. The only way I can tell my own tale is by heaping a bunch of magic and pretend people and weird stuff around it. Somewhere beneath all of the smoke and flourishes is the way I see the real world, and sometimes I can’t discover my own truths until my writing reveals them to me.

In short, yes, because I write, not for accolades, but to discover my very soul.

[Wandering Author]

Yes, I’d still write. Before anything, these are my stories, thoughts and ideas I want to work out and explore. I hope other people may read them and find them worthwhile, but I write because I have something to say. At least paper never ignores me.

[zette]

I think there’s a side of this that you haven’t addressed. In today’s Indie publishing world, it’s up to the author to decide if the material will be read. Write-edit-publish. Someone will read at least part of it, and chances are that you will find your audience.

So the question is really whether a person is willing to pursue that road or not. It’s not for everyone, but it does give the author (and not a publisher) the ultimate choice on if the material is available.

Of course you can also publish on your blog, etc. Readers come in a lot of different ways.

[jschara]

I’m beginning to think the only way I’ll be able to write is if I do it as if nobody will ever read it.

[MrGrey]

I’m an indie author with only eight works out, and it sometimes feels like I am, actually, writing stories that are never read. Sign onto the dashboard, see that one of the stories you put lots of love and care into hasn’t accrued any sales for months. Even worse, you see that people have tried the sample, meaning that people HAVE read it, but didn’t want to finish it. That’s much more of a kick in the gut to me.

But I still write. And I’d still do if there was a guarantee if nobody would read it.

Why? Same reason I play video games. Same reason people do personal paintings. In fact, it’s the same reason why people write stories only they will ever read (and they do exist). It’s fun. It’s a skill I can develop. In some cases, it’s even escapism. Even if absolutely no-one reads it, so what? That puts it on-par with a lot of hobbies out there, where people do things that only they care about. It’s just that writing has the added bonus of being very shareable.

[JuneDrexler]

Honestly, I don’t think so. Oh, I would still make up stories in my head, but I don’t think I would feel the same desire to type them into a computer and make them, well, communication. I might role-play them with friends. I might talk about them. But I probably wouldn’t write them down.

I don’t think I could live without stories inside. But, the need to write them, for me, comes hand in hand with a desire to share those stories with others. And if writing had no chance of doing that, I probably wouldn’t do it.

–June

[Myrddin]

Writing (and editing/revising/polishing) is hard work. I’ll always make up stories in my head, but when the day comes that I give up the publishing dream, I’ll stop writing novel length fiction.

Maybe just an occasional short story for my kids or something.

[Author]

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