On the motivation of writers

Christian Crumlish

Well, that little thing I blogged over the weekend about being motivated by orgasms, praise, and money (not necessarily in that order) got picked up by Dave Winer on a slow news day and drove a bunch more traffic my way. I fixed some typos but only after the first few hundred had already read what was a fairly frank and unguarded (if also somewhat silly) post.

I still haven't fixed the typos here at Bodega, though. This is one problem of my sprawling unsolved content-management apparati. I sort of envy Scot Hacker his recent move from LJ to MT, though he does miss some things about LJ. Consolidation will come but for now there's no time.

But back on the subject of motivation, I dug out a Richard Brautigan poem that was tugging on a neuron:

Hey! This is What It's All About

for Jeff Sheppard

No publication
No money
No star
No fuck

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A friend came over to the house a few days ago and read one of my poems. He came back today and asked me to read the same poem over again. After he finished reading it, he said, "It makes me want to write poetry."