Day 22 of #100daychallenge
For a change, I picked up the print version of The New Yorker. I generally read it on-line and often listen to the articles on Audm. The issue I picked up (they are all over the house, of course) had an Adam Gopnick article on Proust. (May 10, 2021 issue.)There isn't much better dining time perusal material than that for moi. This phrase "there's every sign of a natural writer, but not sign at all of an author" struck me.
The difference between a writer and an author has been one to perplex me for quite a while. In terms of my own writing, I have been pursuing that on and off since I was in high school, I never knew what really made you a writer. But maybe I have been a writer all along, but have yet to be an author ... and is that what I want?
Back in the 1990's I became interested in poetry. The poems I wrote were almost good. Almost what I think of as real poems. But I could never figure out what I needed to do to make them better, how to edit them, how to get them to the next level. I took classes and workshops and enjoyed it all, but I was frustrated by what I couldn't perceive or even learn how to learn. So I gave up the writing and largely tapered off of the reading, although I treasure my poetry library and am happy when I do spend focussed time on it.
Any thoughts?
The day was just spent with housekeeping tasks from laundry to vacuuming to ironing to medical matters to organization. There is still trash to be taken out and dishes to be done. And I really should do a deep night watering. No shortage of things to be done around here. And so not "so to bed" but so to the mundanities of life.
FAILURE 2
There could be nutrients
in failure—
deep amendments
to the shallow soil
of wishes.
Think of the
dark and bitter
flavors of
black ales
and peasant loaves.
Think of licorices.
Think about
the tale of how
Indians put fishes
under corn plants.
Next time hope
relinquishes a form,
think about that.
Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, New York, 2010
My poor mom is always in pain. The docs don't like to give her too much, particularly anything narcotic. I am in pain a whole lot with my knee but sometimes she moves her shoulders and almost starts to cry, she is in so much pain. It keeps her awake. I need to speak with her GP again to see if there is any sleeping medication we might try.
I went out to do a deep watering and took this picture of roses at night.
I too am quite guilty of being a writer but not an author. And I too have been writing poetry since I was 12 and some of it I think is good but I find it very hard to judge my own material. My appreciation runs from it is very good to it is crap and who am I fooling? However since I show it to no one I guess I am not fooling anyone or trying to.
ReplyDeletesame with my music. As to polishing and editing and improving one's poetry, that is another long topic entirely. Bottom line, KEEP WRITING, and the rest will sort itself out. Or not.
Well, is "guilty" really the word? I don't feel guilty just sad and frustrated and wonder what I am missing in order to be an author. I am not even sure that's what I would have wanted, but I do feel as if I have some natural ability.
ReplyDeleteI think you’re a fabulous writer...but my definition of an author is someone who has published. All authors are writers (bad or good) but not all writers are authors...??? Don’t understand Gopnik’s quote at all. And I don’t think I agree with it. Also LOVE the roses. Also so sorry for your mom’s pain...
ReplyDeleteThe Gopnick quote is a bit decontextualized.
ReplyDeleteHere's the whole paragraph referring to a new volume of Proust's fragmentary work:
"It’s striking how out of focus the stories seem: they have a trancelike rhythm that makes events uneventful, and an absence of narrative push. Reading these lost tales, one recalls that, although none of Proust’s contemporaries doubted his intelligence, they did doubt his ability to turn his literary bent into something solid. In these stories, one sees what worried them: there’s every sign of a natural writer, but no sign at all of an author."
And I have been published, besides here, at UCBerkeley for the Pacific Film Archive Calendar and The Daily Cal ... not to mention Monsterwood.