What am I doing this for? (Here I go again...)

For a while, now, I've been meaning to write something about the nature of writing these things.

In particular, as a writer—since that's how I think of myself—why should I bother? There are books and books and books in libraries, bookstores, landfills, bookshelves, and closets. The newspaper and magazine industries are constantly producing material that probably amounts to megatons of waste paper—waste writing—ever year. In that cacophony, is there any purpose in my bothering to write a single word?

Obviously, I think so. I'm not under any illusions that what I'm writing here, today, is anything more than staring at a wall talking to myself. Nevertheless, I write it. I suppose that means that I'm essentially writing for myself.

If I'm writing for myself, why bother publishing it? I have lots of hard drive space, and there's a printer in the same room. If I want to write something for myself, I can write it on my own hard drive and print it out on that printer over there. I can stick it in a box and take it out again when I want to stroke my ego and call myself a writer.

But, I put it here.

Publishing is essential to being a writer, rather than being someone who writes. Even this form of throwaway publishing. So, in order that I can write more effectively for myself, I have to consider the existence of an audience, even a generic one, and write to have some impact on them—on you. Part of this is so I can have an impact on myself, if I ever reread this. Part of this is because I want to justify to myself that there's a point in doing this. But perhaps someone will read this and decide that writing is important to them, and work to publish their work. I may be adding more to the cacophony, and even indirectly causing more to be added, but there's always a chance that it'll mean something to someone.