Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, consumed by this precious illusion of service to the pen: priceless time that might have been used to benefit others, from which I might even have derived pleasure. And what have I received in return for this self-serving – if that – satisfaction of having actualized myself? Poverty and solitude have been the chief rewards. And what, actually, am I actualizing? Do I have anything to say that is worth saying at all or that hasn’t been said better before, that might justify this massive investment of time and energy, this insistence on keeping going, this unflagging commitment to a lost cause, as if it were a sacred act and not a sickness born of vanity? What would happen if I didn’t do it? Nothing. Nobody would notice. It wouldn’t make any difference to anybody… other than myself. And I would probably be a lot better off without it. As a compensatory last resort there’s always the myth of posthumous glory. But to receive that one has to die first. How inconvenient. I must put that on my to-do list. It would completely validate the work, of course. The only problem is that I haven’t done the work. I must also put that on my to-do list.
John Tottenham 