On the curious nature of Fame.

Fame is keeping a downy feather aloft in a crowded room, everyone elbowing and jostling each other trying to keep their own feathers floating. We punch, we kick, we scratch just to keep our feather in the air. Some turn to more radical means- they paint their feather blue, adorn it with outrageous and gaudy baubles that scream 'look at ME!', even set them on fire in the desperate attempt to gain notice, to attract affirmation, to keep their own feather floating.

And it is fleeting. Fame in this modern era of 24-hour news cycles and the barrage of social media is affected by a curious half-life of pure saturation. However mundane or significant, relevant or trivial, the sheer volume of new information, within minutes, overwhelms and drowns the next tidbit underneath a ton of other feathers, burying a potential gem under a tidal wave of pebbles, of what could potentially be an earth-shaking bit of knowledge blindly swept aside by an avalanche of mediocrity.

So it is with writing. To keep your feather aloft you must expend more energy and effort than it took to create the feather in the first place. It is abhorrent, repugnant, a seeming waste of valuable time (and often money) but nonetheless necessary, to keep your feather from being buried under a ton of others. And in the end, the only thing you can hope for is that the feather you have created will somehow, eventually, keep itself aloft. That is why you stick with it, every day, carefully polishing and crafting and caring for your creation so that one day, maybe, others will keep your feather aloft for you.