Henrik Karlsson on Substack: "David Foster Wallace, on working your way back to writing for yourself and rediscovering the fun of the craft: At some point you find that 90% of the stuff you're writing is motivated and informed by an overwhelming need to be liked. This results in shitty fiction. And the shit…"

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David Foster Wallace, on working your way back to writing for yourself and rediscovering the fun of the craft: At some point you find that 90% of the stuff you're writing is motivated and informed by an overwhelming need to be liked. This results in shitty fiction. And the shitty work must get fed to the wastebasket, less because of any sort of artistic integrity than simply because shitty work will cause you to be disliked. At this point in the evolution of writerly fun, the very thing that's always motivated you to write is now also what's motivating you to feed your writing to the wastebasket. This is a paradox and a kind of double-bind, and it can keep you stuck inside yourself for months or even years, during which period you wail and gnash and rue your bad luck and wonder bitterly where all the fun of the thing could have gone. TRY TO REMEMBER The smart thing to say, I think, is that the way out of this bind is to work your way somehow back to your original motivation – fun. And,

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