I'm broken as a writer. From nearly the earliest I wrote for approval. What do you think? That's the invitation. And the cycle begins and deepens dizzingly fast. Because you show it first to friends and family and even if it's shit, which it inevitably is, they say wow, very nice. And you're addicted.
The measure of success of a writer, even the noun itself implies it, begins with being recognized as someone who can write. But most times you early on find Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." And you fail to realize that despite her selfish passage, "So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery." She was a literary critic. The bitch.
