The Best Part About Writing, And The Worst Part

The best part about writing is when you write a story, and it goes on its own hind legs. For most of the story, you're guiding it along, like a parent has to hold up its infant so that it doesn't fall. But the best part is when the story just gradually breaks away from your grip, and walks away from you, where it wants to go, where it should go, where it is its own entity, and that is where the true insight comes from. When it's no longer you, the pathetic little writer trying desparately to hold on and make sure it keeps walking. When the story walks.

The worst part is the people afterwards.

The people afterwards are brutal. They dissect you. They rob your grave. An example - studying Virginia Woolf. We were studying her suicide note. Her most personal note, the one that tried to explain to her loved ones why she felt she had to take her life, something that she never intended to be read aloud, except to those who touched her most, was being read to a bunch of first year college students, most of who probably didn't give a flying fuck about her.

Someone was taking notes as the suicide note was being read aloud.

The author should be completely separate from its work. Especially the author's most private moments. They barred their soul to you, but you don't take away from them something they don't want to give.

Anyway, just a thought. I'm writing up a storm.