Samizdat, sort of

I let myself down a little when these posts don't come out regularly but right now I'm writing mostly for the drawer.

This is different from something I've blogged about before, somewhat erroneously:  samizdat, the self-publication that Soviet authors were forced to engage in.  It was quiet publication, circulating manuscripts hand to hand.  Both for some level of protection, and because the authors probably couldn't get the materials published in the USSR even if they wanted to.   It isn't really writing for a drawer, where they stay.

Samizdat may be at the other end of the same scale as blogging, which is conspicuous self-publication at the click of a mouse.

Writing for the drawer, making a journal, whatever you call it, is writing for other reasons.

There is the ancient one: writers have to write like breathers have to breathe.

Also to make a record, published or not.

Also to exorcise demons.

As to the last, exorcism, it's double-edged.  If the point is therapy, then the more right down-to-the-bone personal, the better. But then the less likely you'd want anyone to see it.  If no one sees it, what has been revealed?  If nothing is revealed, does it just swirl around and go nowhere, and do nothing?  The Franz Kafka  - Emily Dickinson problems... ah, next post, or the next, or the next.