(Awesome is the word one uses for Eleanor Roosevelt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and pitching a no-hit no-run ballgame. Not available for the crappy cheese ques… - Harlan Ellison

Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.

I no longer indulge in those time-wasting amateurisms called “fanning”; I decided if I was going to be a writer, I had to go ahead and ignore all the silverfish in the paperwork. And that meant no more fan magazine writing, no more convention attending, no more getting caught up in the moronic time-cannibalizing feuds many fans need to sustain their mingy little lives.

Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.