This is exactly what I needed to read today. During my PhD, I spent most post-workshop hours crying in my car because there's nowhere else for a grad student to have a good cry on campus. I've never been the most talented writer of my cohort--any cohort--so thank you for reminding me that it's not *just* about talent.
I loved this nonstandard writing advice. Staying in the room is the radical act of deciding that the work you’re doing, sung or unsung, is worth your own time.
Having a "wall of Cherished Minds Who Made Other Choices" - fuck, that's beautiful and generous and loving.
I think about this too all the time, looking back at people in college who were brilliant writers and who seem to have disappeared from the writing world (which doesn't really mean they're not writing, but I'm at least not aware of them doing so). And I think, too, about the privilege of having the time and space. But I also think a lot about how much "staying in the room" is subjective, by which I mean - writing can and does happen in the thinking too, which sometimes requires being out of the room! (At least, this is true for me - I wish wish wish I was able to sit down on a regular schedule to write.)
Lovely encouragement, Emma. An analogous piece of advice that always stuck with me was from Bret Anthony Johnston, who said he had no particular talent for writing, but a great capacity for revision. He traced this to his high school days of skateboarding, where he would spend all day trying to perfect one trick. When he stop skateboarding and started writing, he found he had the patience to do 20 drafts of a short story, slowly learning how to pull it off.
This is exactly what I needed to read today. During my PhD, I spent most post-workshop hours crying in my car because there's nowhere else for a grad student to have a good cry on campus. I've never been the most talented writer of my cohort--any cohort--so thank you for reminding me that it's not *just* about talent.
I loved this nonstandard writing advice. Staying in the room is the radical act of deciding that the work you’re doing, sung or unsung, is worth your own time.
Having a "wall of Cherished Minds Who Made Other Choices" - fuck, that's beautiful and generous and loving.
I think about this too all the time, looking back at people in college who were brilliant writers and who seem to have disappeared from the writing world (which doesn't really mean they're not writing, but I'm at least not aware of them doing so). And I think, too, about the privilege of having the time and space. But I also think a lot about how much "staying in the room" is subjective, by which I mean - writing can and does happen in the thinking too, which sometimes requires being out of the room! (At least, this is true for me - I wish wish wish I was able to sit down on a regular schedule to write.)
Thanks friend. I love this addendum <3
Lovely encouragement, Emma. An analogous piece of advice that always stuck with me was from Bret Anthony Johnston, who said he had no particular talent for writing, but a great capacity for revision. He traced this to his high school days of skateboarding, where he would spend all day trying to perfect one trick. When he stop skateboarding and started writing, he found he had the patience to do 20 drafts of a short story, slowly learning how to pull it off.