More Please

The work is enough. I’ve always wanted to be one of those writers who truly live that statement. I’m not, though. For me, the work of writing is invigorating, challenging, and even all consuming at times, but I want more. I want a reader, and even more I want to please a reader. I want to know that my words work magic in a reader’s mind.

What’s the point of being a writer without a reader? I suppose expressive writing fulfills its purpose with just one side of the equation—it gives its writer a vent for expression, but the sharing of a story or a poem (which is the story of a moment or of a flicker of feeling) requires two.

So what do “they” mean by “the work should be enough?” Maybe they mean that the writing life should be rich enough on its own without praise from the outside, or maybe that the act of creating and sharing a vision should feel like a blessing on its own. Well, it is a blessing, and I can see that becoming preoccupied with applause destroys the simple beauty of that blessing. The preoccupation is false. I still want more than just the working though.

I want my work to work. It comes to me and I help it onto the page where other eyes will see it. I want more than just the satisfaction of helping it reach someone else. I’d like to know that it moves someone like it moves me—that my words and mind, the filters, play some small part in the forming of a sweet relationship.

That’s the more I want. Maybe I should become a medium. I think I’d be happy if I could just get to the séance.