Yes, you. You, with the pen in hand, the laptop atop your lap. You, with the scribbles and the scrawls. You with the tappity-taps and clickity-clicks. You, with the eraser marks. You, with the red and green squiggles. You, who knows a piece of written paper equals a little more than half a typed page. You, who knows 50,000 words is about 100 regular pages. You, who doesn’t know how to spell a word because you’ve only heard it spoken, but never seen it written. You, who stuffed your work in the attic drawer. You, who saved your story inside a chain of files so nobody would read it by accident.
Your writing is important. Don’t give up.
Your writing is important even if you’re not one of those who has the energy and social skills to make yourself popular.
Your writing is important even if you’re shy and can’t really introduce yourself well, or broadcast your achievements to the world so people know how to find you.
Your writing is important even if you accidentally offended that one really popular person and now nobody who likes them will read your stuff, let alone comment.
Your writing is important even if you aren’t good at writing to fic prompts, and never make half of a ficlet bingo card, and are afraid to join Big Bangs or gift exchanges.
Your writing is important even if there’s only a handful of people who like your ship/fandom/angle on such and such a character, and they’re always the only ones who talk to you about it.
Your writing is important even if the people you read never bother to read your work, and they never say why.
Your writing is important because You. Are. Writing! Not because you are shilling it everywhere and tapdancing to win the attention of readers who might possibly leave you a comment but only if they think you’re cute.
Your writing is important because it brings something into the world that was not previously there. Because it gives you a voice that outlasts you. Because someone, somewhere, needs to read what you are writing, even if they never scratch up the courage to say so. Your writing is important because every time you do it, even if you don’t publish a word of what you write, you are learning something new. Something that will make the next thing you write even better.
Your writing, my darlings, is important.
Because.
The things that have been said are all more important than my addition, but as a librarian and English major I feel the need to point out that readership size has no relation to the importance of a work of art (literary or otherwise):
- Many, if not most, of the works we consider to be iconic classics nowadays weren’t seen as such when they were first written, or even during the artists’ lifetimes (the same is true for visual and auditory art – Van Gogh, for example, was so unappreciated in his time that pretty much the only person who’d buy his works was his brother; now his art is one of the most beloved and well-recognized in the world).
Some literary examples of books that didn’t do well at first include Moby Dick, The Lord of the Rings, Brave New World, Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Additionally, it took a LOT of tries before J.K. Rowling found someone willing to publish the Harry Potter series.
- Then there’s the issue that works that works that aren’t famous or popular can unwittingly become priceless to future generations. This has largely to do with the fact that stories, whether non-fiction, realistic, or fantastical ones, are treasure troves for understanding generations past; their beliefs, morals, fears, clothing, daily life, language, relationships with members of their own culture vs outsiders, etc can all be gleaned from things people write and how they write it.
There are tons of writers that few people are even aware exist (let alone have taken the time to read their work) whose impact on modern society and/or what we know about the past can’t be understated.
In fact, the works that make historians everywhere weep with joy are the ones that definitely had little to no audience, such as stories/letters/diary entries/memoirs with tons of description (which to a contemporary person would’ve been a snore fest), law books, dictionaries, manuals, and the list goes on.
-And in equal turns, many works which were once wildly popular are now largely ignored if not outright forgotten by the general public.
For example, The Life of Olaudah Equiano: Or Gustavus Vassa, the African was instrumental in helping abolish slavery in the UK, but unless you study the history of abolitionism/slavery or are a historian who studies the late 1700s, you’ve likely never heard about it, and if you have, you probably haven’t read it.
Like, the only reason I’ve read it was that we were required to for one of my classes when we were looking at memoirs and personal accounts from the late 1700s. And even then the only reason that particular book was chosen was because my prof was a total “sjw” hippie who took every opportunity to bring intersectionality into his classes (I miss his classes, they were great).
On Amazon it’s #181,844 on their best-sellers e-book list at the moment I’m writing this, despite having sold like hotcakes when it was first published and having a gigantic social impact.
And you know all those nonsense poems by Lewis Carrol? They were all based on popular songs and rhymes from the time they were written (around the 1860s ish). They’re not nearly as nonsensical as people think they are – they’re basically pop culture spoofs used for satire.
“How Doth the Little Crocodile”, for example, was a spoof of a moralistic poem 1860s kids were required to memorize at school called “Against Idleness and Mischief”, which begins with the line “How doth the little busy bee”.
People think the dude was just writing stuff while high as a kite because all those popular references which everyone knew and instantly recognized are now largely forgotten by the public and no one cares about them anymore other than for the fact they’re the source for Carrol’s work.
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