Mary Sharratt on writing goals

Mary Sharratt , whose latest novel The Vanishing Point is a historical set in 17th century Maryland, has posted this interesting article on long-range writing goals. I read it expecting to look on from a reverential distance - after all, the writing goals of an established author with three novels and a literary prize to her name are liable to be of limited relevance to the likes of me. Then I came across this paragraph:

Focus on your own writing. As writers we need to take back our power. If the book market is full of variables beyond our control, we need to focus on what we can control-namely our own writing. In her excellent book, Writing Past Dark, Bonita Freedman notes that our commitment to our own writing is our best weapon for banishing inner demons. "The antidote to envy is one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself. It drives the spooks away."

And later on:

Be happy with what you do achieve. [......] Behind our house is a vast sheep pasture. I tried to imagine that pasture full of all the people who have taken time out of their busy lives to read what I wrote while labouring alone in my room. This is the big picture and encouragement that will keep me going for the next forty years. Ultimately we write for our readers, no matter what the market does.

Amen to that, say I. The writing is its own reward, or it should be. One may not aspire to a "vast sheep pasture" - unless one lives in the kind of terrain where land productivity is measured in acres to the sheep - but for me there's something magical about the idea that someone, somewhere, has read something I've written and liked it enough to write to me and say so. That's what it's all about - a connection, the sharing of a story or image or idea, just by means of words on a screen. Magic.