[lucasgonze]

Growing up I envisioned myself as a writer. When I got old enough to test that out I found out the truth of this writer's piece: I was well-known but painfully poor. My girlfriend asked "what are you doing this for?" and I couldn't answer.

I reset my career vision to writing creative code and everything turned around. Adulthood is crap except when it isn't.

[hbrn]

"You should only write when you feel within you some completely new and important content, clear to you but unintelligible to others, and when the need to express this content gives you no peace."

[lucasgonze]

Any time you write you create noise for others. You shouldn't do that unless the information you are offering is valuable to them. Your writing can't be about you. It has to serve the reader.

[hbrn]

I strongly disagree, though I'm not a writer, so I'll just give you another quote (from "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser):

  Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: “Who am I writing for?”
  It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new.

[lucasgonze]

Which came first, the supply or the demand?

[markdestouches]

This moment will never come if you just sit and wait for it. Practice in writing is just as important as in coding. Unfortunately, as many great arts of the past, writing is dying due to the publics' interest shifting away from reading (reading fiction in particular) to something else.

[lytefm]

> This moment will never come if you just sit and wait for it.

If you're literally just doing nothing, I'd agree.

But I haven't felt the urge to write anything creatively in over 8 years. Last year, I met someone (my muse?) who sparked this desire in me.

Nowadays I spend much of me free time writing songs, lyrics and I'm working on a draft for a novel.

It's not like I do that because I expect to make money from it - it's because I have to in order to feel al peace.

[asdfman123]

The trick is getting started pursuing a hobby because you feel some mission, and practicing every day despite losing the motivation.

Then, when the motivation returns, you'll have the skill to express what you really want to say.