In a non-exclusive sense ("a" right motivation in place of "the" right motivation), I think bakkhos is right for what she's seeking -- publication. Writing solely for oneself and trying to get published is unlikely to succeed (though in theory it could), because it has a high chance of coming off as something done solely for the writer's own pleasure, not anybody else's.
I think it's important to distinguish, though, between writing professionally and writing for an audience; they're not the same thing. I confess that I've always been somebody who writes for an audience. This remains true despite the fact that nobody read 95% of what I wrote from the age of whenever I first started putting things on the page until I was eighteen, and only a scattered person here and there ever read the stuff that did get shown, because in my mind, I was writing my way toward an eventual audience. For me, it's a form of communication. I could not be Emily Dickinson. No doubt this is why I never successfully kept a journal or diary for more than an entry or two until I started keeping one online; if I've got something deeply personal bothering me, I don't work it out by writing it down, so private writings never meant much to me. And it does mean, I'll admit, that writing fiction one never intends to show to anybody, with no intent of ever showing fiction to other people, is alien thinking to me.
It's true, though, that our culture has issues with hobbies. It's a topic I've chewed on more than once in my own head. I have a hard time figuring out what criteria determine which things I can do without an end goal in mind, and which I can't. I love sitting down at a piano with my iPod and noodling out how to play a song I'm listening to, but I haven't picked up my French horn since I stopped having an ensemble to play with and concerts to prepare for. I'll dance at parties, but "real" dance, choreographed dance, I need to be preparing for a performance. Some of it's culturally shaped (we accept some hobbies more readily than others), some of it's socially shaped (is it a solo thing, or do you need other people for that hobby?), and some of it's personal.
When it comes to writing and what one does with it, I guess my philosophy goes more like this: write for fun, absolutely, because if you're not having fun then why are you doing it? But if you're writing for fun, and what you're producing is good, why not try to sell it if you can? You might get something out of it that you didn't have before. I recognize that there are reasons someone might not want to sell their work, but I like to suggest it as a possibility.
Re: $0.02
I think it's important to distinguish, though, between writing professionally and writing for an audience; they're not the same thing. I confess that I've always been somebody who writes for an audience. This remains true despite the fact that nobody read 95% of what I wrote from the age of whenever I first started putting things on the page until I was eighteen, and only a scattered person here and there ever read the stuff that did get shown, because in my mind, I was writing my way toward an eventual audience. For me, it's a form of communication. I could not be Emily Dickinson. No doubt this is why I never successfully kept a journal or diary for more than an entry or two until I started keeping one online; if I've got something deeply personal bothering me, I don't work it out by writing it down, so private writings never meant much to me. And it does mean, I'll admit, that writing fiction one never intends to show to anybody, with no intent of ever showing fiction to other people, is alien thinking to me.
It's true, though, that our culture has issues with hobbies. It's a topic I've chewed on more than once in my own head. I have a hard time figuring out what criteria determine which things I can do without an end goal in mind, and which I can't. I love sitting down at a piano with my iPod and noodling out how to play a song I'm listening to, but I haven't picked up my French horn since I stopped having an ensemble to play with and concerts to prepare for. I'll dance at parties, but "real" dance, choreographed dance, I need to be preparing for a performance. Some of it's culturally shaped (we accept some hobbies more readily than others), some of it's socially shaped (is it a solo thing, or do you need other people for that hobby?), and some of it's personal.
When it comes to writing and what one does with it, I guess my philosophy goes more like this: write for fun, absolutely, because if you're not having fun then why are you doing it? But if you're writing for fun, and what you're producing is good, why not try to sell it if you can? You might get something out of it that you didn't have before. I recognize that there are reasons someone might not want to sell their work, but I like to suggest it as a possibility.