I love this piece. This represents, I think, so much of what many young writers go through. I know it definitely resonated with me.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we happen to have a few things in common – the same high school, that same literary magazine, the same little eastern shore college. A few years and other factors gave us some distance, but I love that I know exactly which teacher with the female anatomy-face you speak of. (Man, I haven’t thought of her in a long time. By the time I took creative writing in high school, someone else was teaching it. Someone no more qualified, I’m sure.)
This is one of my favorite lines: “The problem here is that no one is challenging me — I have to provide the challenge myself.”
After living and working in the “real world” for a few years now, I see how easy it would be to just sit back, stop writing, and succumb to the drudgeries of a stable day job. (Or night job, in your case.) It’s a constant fight to be brave enough to do what you love most, which also happens to be a very solitary endeavor – writing. In the past couple of years I’ve kept my schedule full of writing groups, workshops, conferences, etc. But in the end, it comes down to sitting at my desk and writing. All alone, where no one is going to push me along.
Thanks for writing this…it’s great.
Laura W.
Laura (12:58 pm, 16 June 2006)
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Sean,
I love this piece. This represents, I think, so much of what many young writers go through. I know it definitely resonated with me.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we happen to have a few things in common – the same high school, that same literary magazine, the same little eastern shore college. A few years and other factors gave us some distance, but I love that I know exactly which teacher with the female anatomy-face you speak of. (Man, I haven’t thought of her in a long time. By the time I took creative writing in high school, someone else was teaching it. Someone no more qualified, I’m sure.)
This is one of my favorite lines: “The problem here is that no one is challenging me — I have to provide the challenge myself.”
After living and working in the “real world” for a few years now, I see how easy it would be to just sit back, stop writing, and succumb to the drudgeries of a stable day job. (Or night job, in your case.) It’s a constant fight to be brave enough to do what you love most, which also happens to be a very solitary endeavor – writing. In the past couple of years I’ve kept my schedule full of writing groups, workshops, conferences, etc. But in the end, it comes down to sitting at my desk and writing. All alone, where no one is going to push me along.
Thanks for writing this…it’s great.
Laura W.
Laura (12:58 pm, 16 June 2006)