What Am I Doing?

James Gallant, writer, reflects on the psychology of creativity.

I have been writing fiction, prose-poetry, and essays for a long time now, whenever the business of staying alive has allowed. I have published quite a lot, including four books -(well, three now, one having been delisted by its publisher for lack of sales). I do not self-publish.

My wife, an attentive reader of what I write, is also an excellent judge of it, for better or worse. A thumbs up from her means something, although I can't think of our relationship in this without recalling the aged lighthouse keeper and his wife in Ionesco's 1952 play The Chairs, who pass the time making up various scenarios, including arranging chairs to seat the distinguished guests coming to hear the old man present his 'message to the world'.

If I announce on Facebook that something of mine has been published, non-literary relatives and acquaintances, for whom publication seems to be something like winning the lottery, will offer their mandatory congratulations. That is not, of course, the same as their reading what I have written. However, "No prophet is taken seriously in his home town", as one translation of Jesus's remark would have it. It's even less likely that a writer of serious fiction would be taken as serious by their acquaintances. Nonreaders have always outnumbered readers, of course. But my impression at the moment is that writers outnumber readers.