'All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain,' said Emerson. 'They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them.'This is the writer's faith. This is writing inside-out, not outside-in; not kissing the ass of an audience but having faith "the intelligent reader," that is, one interested in what you have to say, eventually will find your work.
This, of course, reminds me of Sirc finding my 1967 essay (ref), "one which I have never been able to forget since the day I first read it in the dimly-lit stacks of my university's library" and being inspired by it to write a book on the subject. I love this image: "the dimly-lit stacks" ... but accessible, not lost in an office drawer, but published, which was how you became accessible in those days. Today you can become accessible by uploading to the web. Consequently there's more crap, much more, to wade through but there also are gems that otherwise would be lost to us. We have yet to figure out an efficient way to find the gems in the crap.
But Emerson's faith is the serious writer's faith, that the work has an audience and, most importantly, the work precedes the audience. The work is not shaped for an audience, as in commercial writing, but comes from inward, from the individual soul, and is put out there with the belief, the faith, that the right reader will find it and be excited to do so.
It's a satisfying experience for the writer when this happens. When it does, writers usually don't know it. I'm delighted I inspired Sirc to write his book, and of course I'm delighted I found out about it. This is the great function of writing: to pass the baton to the reader, to keep the material alive.
This is not the way you sell anything. This is the way you try to tell the truth.
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