Meaning

I watched the video of John and Hank performing at the Carnegie hall. It's pretty amazing that they got to do a show there.
Here's the video if you want to watch it.
John talked about The Fault in Our Stars, and how it explores the meaning of life (starting at about 46 minutes into the video). When he was my age, he started trying to write with the "meaning of life" theme. But it never worked out right. As he said in another video, he was unconsciously writing these earlier versions for himself, not for the potential readers.
And it took him years to finally get that theme right right. Certain events in his life allowed him to look at life and develop that theme to the point where it is in the book.
He also mentioned the themes of his other stories. Like "you're not as special as you think you are," and "people should be seen complexly."

It makes me wonder.
There are most definitely times when I write for myself. And I tend either to keep those things limited to fanfiction, or avoid sharing them with people because no one else would care about them.
But what about my other stuff? The stuff that I want to share and get published some day? Like Katani's story. I don't think I'm writing his book for myself. I'm trying to write it for others. But I wonder if I am writing it for myself, and I just don't realize it.
And then the theme. I could list a few themes that are going on. And I think that one of them sticks out as the main theme. If it is, then I definitely need to work on it some more. And I'd have to be cautious, since it's a theme that I've seen around.
Of course in the existing version, everything's horrible because I haven't finished re-writing it. So I have plenty of time to think about these things as I edit and finish Crystal's story (and write a couple letters that have to do with one of my classes last semester. I need to finish those too...)