1531. Because the sad truth is there never was a novel or a play waiting to be written, but rather only a misplaced desire for fame and adulation. So it is necessary to separate the creative impulse into two parts: the desire to create, and the desire to be recognized and appreciated for what one has created. These are two distinct, often horribly irreconcilable desires.
1532. One often has heard the question, “If you had to spend the rest of your life like Robinson Crusoe, on a deserted island, what one book would you chose to bring.” One person says, “The Bible,” and another wants to read, “Moby Dick, ” or some such other fat tome. But the creative person without hesitation says, “Give me a blank book, with as many pages as possible, a pen and enough ink to last a lifetime, and I will write a book only I will read.”
1533. “But,” a friend says, “no one will ever read your book.” And you should reply, “If on my island there is an apple tree, God willing it will produce apples, and never once will that tree enquire, “Is there anyone out there to eat my apples?” There are various creative types. First is the Salinger type, that being a person who has only one real idea given to them by God to produce. But then there is the Vonnegut type.
1534. The Vonnegut type of writer creates one work after another, one better than the last and never stops till they are ancient, old and wrinkled up, puffing on their cigarettes all the while just like Picasso who was another person of the same type. Such people never say, “I have said my last word,” until they take their last breath.
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