(introduction)
Okay, so I haven't written
anything for quite some time.
That's just how it goes, I
guess.
But what the hell do I know,
really?
A far better, much more
experienced writer than I once replied when asked what he planned on writing
just after his first novel made the bestsellers list. He said:
"I answered then that I
didn’t have to write anything next, not a word, and that all my books together
said everything that I had asked them to say. I do not enjoy writing at all. If
I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening
the door to it, I won’t even reach for a pencil. I guess that that is the place
that I have come to. But once in a while there’s a great dynamite-burst of
flying glass and brick and splinters through the front wall and somebody stalks
over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says, “I will not let you
go until you set me, in words, on paper"."
Unfortunately that same
writer went on to, quite a few years later, churn out more than a couple of
second-rate, disappointingly bad novels that needn't really, in my very humble
opinion, be " . . . set in words, on paper"; that all his previous
books had, in fact, said everything that he had asked them to say and
that he was only cheapening those words by trying to regurgitate them over and
over again.
That being said, he still
remains one of my favorite authors.
Past work does count
for something.
A lot, actually.
Perspective. Use it or lose it.
Those are his words.
I guess that we can all lose
our perspective from time to time.
Perspective is everything
. . .
