Q: Did you make up a pamphlet, 40-Year Run?
A: Yes. It’s my 243rd pamphlet, chapbook, flier, or four-page sheet.
I’m going to hand it out at the writers conference.
Q: What’s the topic of your speech?
A: Writing as its own reward, or writing as an end in itself, or writing as a closed system, with no feedback loop, from outside.
Writing as a self-contained activity.
If you get joy out of the writing that’s enough, because that’s all you’re going to get.
On the other hand, you didn’t waste your life, working for wages.
Q: Or a salary.
A: You can call yourself a writer.
If you write, you are a writer.
If you publish and sell books, or give them away.
Attend writers conferences and speak on writing and publishing.
Q: You produced a body of work, your stack, invented a form to present it in, daily typewriting, and found a medium to get it out to the reader through, self-published pamphlets and a web site on the worldwide web.
You also speak at trade shows.
A: Yes. That’s research, teaching, advancement of the discipline, and contributing to the community.
I am a professor of Cracker Studies without portfolio emeritus.
Soon be 39 years. Then 40. Coming up.
If I only made it 39 years, that would be something.
Q: Writing, publishing, speaking in public.
A: Testifying.
I don’t give advice. I share my experience, strength, and hope.
Experience, strength, and hope: writing as its own reward. Or, to keep it you have to give it away.
Q: Henry Miller said it’s no insuperable burden to pay the reader to read your work.
A: He ought to know.