It is the truth. But you do know some things. I remember that it
happened to me, when I was at Iowa. My second or third year there,
certainly not my first. I spent a lot of time floundering. And then,
between one poem and the next, I suddenly discovered that I was writing
poetry. Everything before had been self-indulgence; that was a poem. And
it turned out others thought so too -- it was published in /Poetry/.
(Not by Harriet Monroe -- I'm not /that /old.) And I think this may be
happening to Lynda.
Probably the best description I've ever read of that revelation that one
is suddenly seeing through the eye of an artist is in Chaim Potok's /My
Name is Asher Lev/.
It doesn't mean you're in like Flynn. But it does mean you've passed
through a portal. And it's not a portal everyone passes through, and
that's why everyone here is so thrilled for you.
Another old saw but a true one -- a writer is a person for whom writing
is a whole lot harder than it is for anyone else.
Kenneth Wolman wrote:
> TheOldMole wrote:
>>
>> I asked how can you ever be sure
>> that what you write is really
>> any good at all and he said you can't
>>
>> you can't you can never be sure
>> you die without knowing
>> whether anything you wrote was any good
>> if you have to be sure don't write
>
> The God's honest truth. Not because you can but because you fear you
> can't.
>
> k
>
> --------------------
> Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
>
> We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
> We'll do the best we know.
> We'll build our house and chop our wood
> And make our garden grow...
>
> Bernstein/Wilbur, "Candide"
>
--
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
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