Someone said that to write is to stand naked on a stage, meaning that you cannot write without exposing who you are, in all your true colors.

I started answering Plinky out of an urge to do something creative. A new and unpredictable prompt every day – what a great nudge! I could be straightforward or whacked out. I could adopt the voice of an aristocratic snob or a barely literate teen. I could write as creatively as I wanted, stretching my wings.

I worked on my Plinky answers, usually 15 or 20 minutes on each. I was usually proud of my answers – they showed thought, style, education, polish, and a little personality. I tried to write answers that carefully did not disclose my location or my gender, but no one could read those answers without forming an image of the sort of person I am.

I was writing for myself, really. I rarely looked at any other answers. I didn’t care what anyone else wrote, because I was just doing it to push myself. I wasn’t being a snob; I just wanted to use Plinky for my own benefit.

After a couple of weeks, a few people started to follow me. I was flattered – gosh, people like what I write! I must be doing something right! People like my writing, so in a way they like me! I’m ok! How great is that? What a nice ego boost!

How many people were following me? I started to pay attention. Hey, another new follower! I wondered how many followers other people have. I wondered why Plinky doesn’t display some sort of statistics. I wanted to know whether I had more followers than anyone else. I started to feel competitive. This wasn’t so much ego boost as pride.

There was another part of that pride. I did scan other answers. The majority of the answers to any prompt showed little thought, little style. I wondered why those people bothered to answer at all. In my uglier moments, I felt contempt for their lack of effort and ability. Pride is an insidious sin – it sneaks up on us even as we try to do our best, and it corrodes us.

I struggle with that demon, but there is another danger to Plinky, a danger common to any public forum like bulletin boards or blogs. That danger lies in interaction, and, like pride, it starts innocently enough.

I am married, very happily married. My wife is the true center of my life, as passionate as I am calm, as creative as I am precise. She is a wonderful muse, and I write almost as much for her as for my own pride.

Occasionally, a Plinky reader would comment on one of my answers. That was almost as nice as being followed. Gosh, someone liked what I wrote enough to post a public comment! How great is that? (Well, except for the person who posted “How OLD are you, anyway?”) Mostly, I didn’t respond. I wanted my answers to stand on their own.

Some of those comments were thoughtful responses, perhaps even generous and caring. I started to feel a bit selfish in not responding and in not commenting on anyone else’s work. After all, if I felt an ego boost knowing that other people read, followed, and commented on my answers, I was being almost rude in ignoring them.

I knew that there was a risk in interaction, though. I knew that to comment and to respond to comments was to begin a conversation, to begin a relationship. However innocent those comments may be, they draw us into a relationship that has little to do with writing and much to do with emotion. Like pride drawing me in, playing on my need to feel good at writing, this interaction draws me in, playing on my bottomless need to be liked and loved.

My wonderful, extraordinary wife is my center, and I have pledged with all my heart always to work to strengthen our relationship and never to act in any way that would threaten it. Like pride, I know this risk when I feel it. I know my own weakness, and I know what is most important to me.

I will write answers to Plinky prompts, but I will keep them at home. I will focus on the writing, which is what I intended when I started this exercise. I wish you all the best – good prompts, good answers, and, to quote Hemingway, “When you see an adjective, kill it.”

After answering 36,499 prompts, I will have honed my writing process to the point where a robot will answer just as I would. Unlike Max Headroom, the robot that compiles my answers would, of course, pass the Turing test, and its answers would be indistinguishable from those of a person. It would never make spelling errors, and every answer would meet my personal criteria:

1) The answer should have no information that would enable the reader to identify me, my location, or even my gender.

2) If a prompt merits a personal answer, it should be honest and more than surface-deep, without violating criterion number 1.

3) If a prompt allows for more, the answer should be creative, the more elaborate the better.

4) Style should vary from one answer to the next.

Other desirable features to answers include occasionally inserting derisive references to Michael Jackson, likening most contemporary musical performers to the Pitiful Shags, using an outsider point of view to turn a prompt on its head, and a touch of loopy self-reference ference ference.