Flowers at Lona & Suddhayu’s
The Water and the Page
Some New Year’s encouragement (well, I’ll read it as such) from this interview with Zadie Smith:
“You read my work and think I don’t have anxiety every day about being a writer? Incredible! Of course, yes, I don’t come from a background in which being a writer was even a conceivable fantasy. Of course. But the way I deal with things is to focus on the page I’m writing. Otherwise I’d find it impossible to work at all.”
“…That’s why I understand why they should feel that way, because reading is a magic thing. But writing, I actually feel, is considerably less magic. It’s a lot of work and a lot of daily grind, where reading is a true pleasure.”
2012 found me finally understanding the value of hard work - or, I guess, to sound less like your dad, the power of my own will. I can’t quite believe I lived 27 years thinking the only things worth my time could be done with natural talent and minimal effort. I guess everything I’d learned before had been by force or by accident? Teaching myself to swim freestyle this year was a revelation. Now all the things I can’t do (whistle, cartwheel, play an instrument, run a mile, finish a novel, find a full time job) are just facts waiting to be changed.
