I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy—once you have these in place, you are set to go. (read the rest by Joseph Epstein)

daah, this has become me, and I admit, it is kind of sick. (1) It's not that I've developed an incompetence, but rather a strong lack of motivation for profitable work. (2) I do not condem these other types of work so I'm okay. (3) This is where I make the largest error in judgment: I have this wild belief that my material is extremely profound.

I understand now the great decay chain of thought-communication-teaching. What you think you know is one thing. Then what you are able to communicate is like ten percent of that. And then what other's will understand is another 10%. So only 1% of what's inside can really get inside other ppl's heads. Even many great writers lament how poorly understood their works are, and some of them get depressed.

So maybe I will still suffer partly from (3); I still believe my thinking to be profound and laden with value to others. However, I've learnt the hard truth about writing that so much more of suceeding as a writer is in producing charismatic works. This is then just a function of one's social talents via the pen and not necessarily the beauty of one's intellect.

found via MeFi