This is the part I don't understand:

- If you don't want to sell it, you don't want anyone to read it.

- If you don't want anyone to read it, why do you need someone to tell you how to write it?

The idea that people need an excuse to "take an interest" in writing is a bad one. I suppose on some level somewhere it's "empowering" to discover that you can blather for a month straight and end up with something you don't want anyone else to read but I mean, fuck - Jack Nicholson did that in The Shining.

Writing is about storytelling. It's about conveying information from my head to yours. Stephen King calls it straight up telepathy and if you aren't trying to reach out to someone else, you're just "thinking."

It is a fuckin' tragedy that you wrote a book that you can't stand to read. But it is fuckin' archetypal that it's what NinnnyNinnyNooNoo is about.

You wanna talk about the death of reading, here it is: encourage people to type drivel for one month a year so they can be "novelists." That's why the writing magazines are all about low-residency MFAs and why literary agents are worshipped as gods walking the earth: we've created a culture where it isn't about what you write, it's about the fact that you closed Facebook long enough to puke-draft 50,000 words between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Guaranteed: there were writer's groups that you missed out on because you were hanging out with the NaNoNinnies. They would have made better friends, they would have been more committed to success, and they wouldn't have let you put out a book that you didn't want to read.

I've written nine screenplays. I've optioned two. Eight of them are fan-fucking-tastic. I'll show 'em to anybody.

And that comes from a commitment to storytelling instead of typing.