Thursday, January 14, 2010

Determination

In solidarity, as I said earlier, quoting John Westermann, to all my writing friends out there, and anyone, really, who struggles with their sense of creativity, whatever it may be, however it manifests.
I have two aged, wrinkled and frail pieces of paper taped to my printer. They have travelled with me from my old farm in Maryland, to my farm in Colorado, where SKULL COUNTY, USA transpires, and back to Maryland at our latest farm. We have lived here 13 years next month, so these scraps are probably 20 years old.
I don't see them any more, curled in on themselves as they are, but I saw them just now, because a literary agent has just asked to read the entirety of SKULL COUNTY, a great day for me, whether it goes on to be represented and sold, or not. If this agent does not bite, another will, and I know that now.
The little scraps read as follows, and if they help you in any way, if they cement your resolve to go on and keep fighting for what you want to lay by the road some days and never return to, well, I have helped you, as so many in recent times have helped me, and, in older times, like John Westermann, people helped me but I was not ready to accept that help. Take what you can from these simple words. They have helped me to keep pushing when I wanted to rest:

"If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know." Thomas Wolfe

"Do what you love,
Know your own bone;
gnaw at it, bury it,
unearth it, and
gnaw it still."
-Henry Thoreau

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