All these truths and quasi-truths…about publishing are finally ephemeral…What is demanding and fulfilling is writing a single word, trying to write le mote juste, as Flaubert said; writing several of them, which become a sentence.
When a writer does that, day after day, working alone with litter encouragement, often with discouragement flowing in the writer’s own blood, and with an occasional rush of excitement... the treasure is on the desk.
If the manuscript itself, mailed out to the world, where other truths prevail, is never published, the writer will suffer bitterness, sorrow, anger, and more dangerously, despair…
But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, and hatred,; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another.
This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer’s soul.
When a writer does that, day after day, working alone with litter encouragement, often with discouragement flowing in the writer’s own blood, and with an occasional rush of excitement... the treasure is on the desk.
If the manuscript itself, mailed out to the world, where other truths prevail, is never published, the writer will suffer bitterness, sorrow, anger, and more dangerously, despair…
But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, and hatred,; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another.
This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer’s soul.
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