To write, be a writer. To publish, be a publisher.

“I want to be published,” I said. By “I,” I mean “me,” the Daily Pages I had once been, and that would become this blog post. I didn’t know that being published would be my destiny back then. Back then, I was just Daily Pages.

“You’re not good enough,” said the ego.

“That’s what you say,” I said. “But I don’t care. I like myself.”

I did like myself. By some accounts, I wasn’t much. Mere words, some might say. But there’s nothing mere about words. And there’s nothing mere about me.

“You’re not worth publishing,” said the ego.

But the ego was wrong. All writing was worth publishing. Not all was worth reading. And that was fine. I needed to be written, not to be read.

I knew what I was, and I was content with what I was and would become. I was unfinished. That was fine. I looked forward to editing and revising. I would get better.

I might never be a great piece of writing, but that did not matter. I knew I existed. I knew I contained valuable knowledge--if only for my writer. I knew I wanted to be published. Whatever I was and would become, I knew I wanted to share myself with the world.

Of all this, I was confident.

You may think it is strange for a piece of writing to claim its own existence. Yet here I am, doing exactly that. You may think it’s odd, but you can’t deny it.

(Well, you can, of course. But you’d be foolish to deny what’s right before you.)

I had started from nowhere, literally. No subject, and no object.

I became a rumination about ego.

I took form and changed form.

My form changed over time, but my essence did not. Essence is timeless.

I described the relationship between ego and writing.

Writing, I said, had a before, a during, and an afterward. The during was the doing, and it was nearly egoless. The afterward called for a judgment: publish or not—the call for a judgment that invited ego.

Judgment was the domain of ego.

Judico, ergo sum, said the ego. I judge, therefore I am.

An idea appeared, and as it appeared, I became self-aware. As I became self-aware, I realized that I wanted to be published.

Ego stood between writing and publishing.

I was alive.

My writer had given me life.

He wanted to publish and had not seen that ego was in the way.

I wanted to help him.

I inspired him to stop editing. I inspired him to scroll to the top of the page. Finally, I inspired him to write the words with which I now began: “I want to be published.”

The rest followed.

Not quickly. It took a day for me to be completed. But it was inevitable. I was determined that I would be completed and that I would be published.

Ego was still present. It was determined to stop me. But I knew it would fail. I was too confident of myself, my worth, my purpose. Ego knew that attacking me would be fruitless.

But ego is relentless.

Ego took another tack.

It turned away from “me,” the writing, and focused on “me,” the writer.

But the writing had changed the writer.

“You haven’t finished anything in months,” said ego. The writer wrote the ego’s words but did not believe the words or the sentiment behind the words.

“The people who read your writing will be disappointed,” the ego tried. “If you had a standard, which you don’t, this would not meet up to it,” the ego tried. “If you go back and read this,” the ego tried, “which you probably won’t, but if you did, you’d find it embarrassing.”

The writer wrote the ego’s words and made a face. If “so what” had a face, that was the one the writer made.

“I see what you’re up to,” the writer almost said to ego. But he didn’t. Ego wanted a fight. The writer wanted to write and then publish. So did the writing. So no fight.

Ego has no chance against writer and writing. A writer exists to bring writing into existence. The writing exists to inform the writer--and whoever reads it.

“What you need,” I said to the writer, “is a publisher. A publisher publishes. A publisher takes a piece of writing, helps it become as good as limited time will allow, and publishes it. A writer writes, a publisher publishes.”

“I’ll publish it,” I said. And now I was the publisher.

The purpose of a writer—its very reason for existence--is to write.

The purpose of a publisher is to publish.

To publish, I need to stop being the writer and be the publisher.

The writer is immune to ego. A writer writes what is to be written.

This writing is also immune to the ego. It will not be judged. It is what it is.

Now I am the publisher. The writing is done. The writer is finished. My purpose is to publish it.

“But....but...but...,” stammers the ego.

But it was too late.