I was part of a poem forum not long ago. One day some body left a lengthy rant about how only five or six of the hundreds of poets received any notoriety. The author of the rant was complaining that, of the sixteen poems he published on the forum, sixteen of them went unnoticed, a travesty. He said that the forum group (as a whole) needed to be ashamed of themselves for the lack of attention shared with the entire collection of poems, and focusing only on a few.
As I read his blasting of the forum, I felt a similar feeling to his. I also, had put many poems that went unheeded. I decided to look up the poems "the ranter" had wrote and found that they were unremarkable within the genre the writers in this forum wrote, which were mostly depressing. I remembered a line in Stephen King's book "On Writing", he said that he was a sell out, he wrote for no other reason than to make money.
My own failure (to be noticed in this group) was laid bare. (although my poems are far from unremarkable, they were a little too upbeat for this crowd) So as an experiment I sold out and wrote some really depressing poetry, and bingo, I received tons of comments. If my goal in posting poetry was to get noticed selling out helped me achieve my goal.
Selling out helped me get noticed, yet I learned something else. I wrote depressing poetry, but it left me depressed. So although I achieved my goal, it cost me something. I decided that this forum wasn't the one for me, but I wanted to impart what I learned with 'the ranter' before I left. When I pulled up his rant I found that he had a lively debate going. He had over one hundred comments, he achieved his goal too, not by selling out, but by being a baby.
As I read his blasting of the forum, I felt a similar feeling to his. I also, had put many poems that went unheeded. I decided to look up the poems "the ranter" had wrote and found that they were unremarkable within the genre the writers in this forum wrote, which were mostly depressing. I remembered a line in Stephen King's book "On Writing", he said that he was a sell out, he wrote for no other reason than to make money.
My own failure (to be noticed in this group) was laid bare. (although my poems are far from unremarkable, they were a little too upbeat for this crowd) So as an experiment I sold out and wrote some really depressing poetry, and bingo, I received tons of comments. If my goal in posting poetry was to get noticed selling out helped me achieve my goal.
Selling out helped me get noticed, yet I learned something else. I wrote depressing poetry, but it left me depressed. So although I achieved my goal, it cost me something. I decided that this forum wasn't the one for me, but I wanted to impart what I learned with 'the ranter' before I left. When I pulled up his rant I found that he had a lively debate going. He had over one hundred comments, he achieved his goal too, not by selling out, but by being a baby.
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