Thoughts that keep a writer up nights...

With apologies to Will:


To write or not to write, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous critics
Or to take pen against a sea of reviews
And by opposing, end them. To dream, to mark,
No more. And by ‘to mark’ we mean to end
The heart-ache of the thousand critical words
That books are heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To dream, to write
To write perhaps to glory! Ay, there’s the rub!
For in that glorious writing what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mid-list coil
Must give us pause: where’s the respect
That makes us glorious for so long life?
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time
The reviewer’s wrongs, the proud reader’s incredulity,
The pangs of despised love, the royalty delays,
The insolence of booksellers and the spurns
That writers of their books must take
When she herself might her quietus make
With a sharp-tongued quip? Why would authors bear,
To grunt and sweat with weary fingers
But for the dread of fixed obscurity,
The too-familiar country from whose bourn
No writer returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather write within the lines
Than fly to genres that we know not of.
Thus paychecks do make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
And great novels of pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.