I have been writing a lot. And I have published a fair bit too. There is a joy in hard work. If you write something that touches someone else then it is all the better. I have been on TikTok quite a lot, and I do a thing there where I write poems which I ask people to request. I coined the notion of Emotional Support Poet, because I am encouraging people to ask me for poems that touch on something deeply personal … something that they may not have been able to put into words for themselves, or something they might like me to write for someone else. It is a very rewarding thing for me.
I have also been working through older works I had originally published on a self-publishing platform Lulu. I have been gathering them into more cohesive sub-collections that makes them make sense in terms of a reading order. Is it something anyone asked for? No. Writing doesn’t really work that way. Apart from request poems — see above.
It’s interesting to be something of a fringe writer to be thinking of legacy, but it is kind of unavoidable when you think enough of your opinion that you sandwich it between book covers. Arrogance and insecurity are two of the competing daemons that sit on your shoulders as a writer.
Why shouldn’t you have that ambition? How many broke and anonymous artists had a lasting impact? I mean, posterity isn’t why I write, but it is not an alien concept. I don’t think any writer that denies he wonders how history will treat him can be trusted.
I did an interview with Roger Miller, which I shared over on Musehick.com that you should go and check out.