It takes about an hour for me to compose what I consider a decent page of prose ... and it seems to always have taken that long, for as far back as I can remember. (But perhaps my standards of decency have changed?) It takes less than a minute on the average to read a page of prose. So do there have to be ~100 readers for a writer to break even in terms of time invested?

Maybe not. Writing often pays for itself; the act of sorting out thoughts and putting them into words clarifies ideas immensely. And many members of the target audience can be your own future selves, especially when you're recording memories in a journal for later reverie and enjoyment. Finally, even if a note is only seen a handful of times, one of those viewings could be a crucial event that literally saves the world. (At least I can dream!) So perhaps it's OK not to demand throngs of readers for every product of one's pen.

(See DearDiary, ^zhurnal 19 March 2001)

Saturday, June 09, 2001 at 19:05:27 (EDT) = 2001-06-09

TopicJournalizing - TopicWriting

(correlates: WomenSpeak, Peter Neumann, ThatWhichIsNotSeen, ...)