A Cottage Industry

Writing is local.

L. Frank Baum

A Local Writer—L. Frank Baum

If you’re sitting at a desk, or in the coffee shop, or under the weeping willow tree, tapping on the keys and trying to make your artistic vision one with the blank, mocking page—you are a local. If you have handed your work to someone and in return they have reluctantly given you a wrinkled piece of whatever currency spends successfully at your grocery—then you are also a business.

A cottage industry, no more, no less—akin to a potter, or wheelwright, or cooper or blacksmith, whether there is an oak tree or not in the area. You are an ink-stained wretch, grubbing for whatever shekels you can gather.

Writing is global.

The Internet may have hastened the process and broadly increased its extent, but laying words on a page to influence minds has always promised a worldwide audience.

J. K. Rowling has charmed people from pole to pole.

Stephen King has given universal willies in dozens of languages.

Dr. Seuss redefined whimsy and entertained children around the world.

If you write, your words may reverberate across the globe.

Write what you know, but write what you think people should know, wherever they are and whoever they are.

Even if you are writing in a cottage.

–William V. Burns

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3 Responses to A Cottage Industry

  1. Helena says:

    This was good to read. It gets quiet in the writer’s cottage I inhabit despite the millions of friends, corners or interests and distractions at my fingertips on line. I like the posts here.. fun, short… valuable. Carry on communicating!

  2. F. paz says:

    Yeah….The process of writing also teaches me I know more than I think I do…Words I never thought were within comes rushing to my brain. I write about what I know, and tapping into the secret of one writer, I also write about what I am yet to know.
    Good one.

  3. Truth writes itself. Everything else is pick and shovel work. I’m at my best when I surprise myself… write on.

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