Naropa Essay Question #4

"What do you hope to have accomplished as a writer, five years from now?"

Ick, Naropa University. I am not feeling so well today. I was not going to answer one of your essay questions because it has rendered me icky and lazy, but I think this will be a short one.

I don't know. What do I hope to accomplish. I hope to accomplish the same exact thing that I've been accomplishing for the past few years. I want to continue to devote my life to writing. I want to have more books completed. I want to keep writing more and more, which means I will also improve more and more.

It would be nice to exclusively write for a living too, but I am realistic. I don't think this will happen within the next five years.

When I was young, I didn't want to make money off my art. I wanted to keep it "pure." I thought that money would contaminate it.

But then I got old. I had to do work that I didn't enjoy to survive. I often think to myself while I'm writing, I wish this paid enough that I didn't have to do work that I don't enjoy to survive.

Still, I would rather not have to do work that I didn't enjoy to survive and not get paid for my writing. My child-like, money contaminates art, ideal would rather have a magical bank account that never runs out of money or a magical uncle who dies and leaves me his magical chest of magical money that never runs out.

But if I cannot have magic finances, I will settle for being ability to live off my writing. Maybe this will happen in twenty years if I am lucky. If I am luckier, this will happen earlier.

Until that happens, I would like to get paid to teach writing. That would be nice.

So I'm thinking about the whole magical financial status and how I would prefer to not get paid for my writing in this case and how sales usually translates into readers.

Readers are a confusing subject.

Do I write for myself or for other people?

Both, I think.

But I do not know why I feel this urge to have people read my work. It is a mystery. Perhaps I want the approval of my peers. To feel that my existence has been authenticated. Maybe the way that I determine whether or not someone is finished is if it satisfies a reader. I think I am not doing very well in expressing why I feel an urge for people to read my work. Maybe because I am feeling unwell and lazy. Maybe it is something that is impossible to express.

I am always making the typo of writing "a" instead of "I." I do not understand it. This is also a mystery.

I actually just wrote: "a" instead of "a."

I fixed it.