B. You called it an obligation. What do you mean?
A. Well, it's not easy to explain, but in effect, what finally drove me to do it, to publish it all, was first a financial consideration. But mind you, I did not nor could not have known if any of it would sell.
B. Of course, but you thought it might.
A. Yes, again. I thought it might. But probably more so I thought none of it would. I say I've got a little Emily Dickenson in me. I don't know much about her, other than that very few of her works were published before her death. What an agony it would be to know that posthumously you will be discovered and lauded and still in the public consciousness many, many decades after you've passed.
B. But she never knew.
A. Precisely. She never knew. And neither did I, nor would I ever gave known had I continued publishing little bits and pieces of my work. The bulk of which would be discovered, maybe, after I'm gone.
B. So was it ego? Did you want to know, what if? Or were you staving off the likely result of dying anonymously and still unknown as a writer?
A. Well, yes, but as for ego I don't think you mean in the common sense of the word, but more along the idea that I thought I was this good, but I can't possibly know if I don't put my stuff out there. So I did. I'd have preferred going to the grave with my delusions of grandeur deflated than still clinging to the fantasy that I was good enough to make a living, or even more, real success, enough more to get me here at your table...
B. And yes, as far as ego is concerned, that is what I meant.
A. Right. And I know part of me kept screaming "Don't do it!" in a poor attempt to spare me the horrors of public success or failure. But I was already miserable. I had spent decades trying to not become a writer, professionally such as it is. If there is any valid, conscious indication that one is meant to do something I must say that it was me. I could not let go of the idea of writing, of becoming "The Writer". I tried. Lord, I tried. I had to relent. I had to. It was relent or die. I relented. I yielded to karma, or God, or whatever scripted outcome had been preordained. Whoever, whatever, planted this obsession in me did not provide for a way out.
B. And you must be obsessed to do something great.
A. I suppose. I suppose.
YOU ARE READING
Conversations with...
General FictionI have voices, in my head, they are talking, known only by letter, about a life I might once have had. I don't want them to stop. Not until they show me the way.
