Marc Joan
Basic
- Aug 26, 2014
The following extract is from a piece by Kent Haruf, ‘The Making of a Writer’, in Granta issue 129:
“[My first] book came out in the fall of 1984. Except for one very tiny short story, that was the first thing I ever had published. By that time i was forty-one years old and had been writing as hard as I could for almost twenty years. If I had learned anything during those years of work and persistence, it was that you had to believe in yourself even when no one else did...You have to believe in yourself despite the evidence. I felt as though I had a little flame of talent, not a big talent, but a little pilot-light-sized flame of talent, and I had to tend to it regularly, religiously, with care and discipline, like a kind of monk or acolyte, and not to ever let the little flame go out.”
Just thought I'd share it, pour encourager nous, les autres...
“[My first] book came out in the fall of 1984. Except for one very tiny short story, that was the first thing I ever had published. By that time i was forty-one years old and had been writing as hard as I could for almost twenty years. If I had learned anything during those years of work and persistence, it was that you had to believe in yourself even when no one else did...You have to believe in yourself despite the evidence. I felt as though I had a little flame of talent, not a big talent, but a little pilot-light-sized flame of talent, and I had to tend to it regularly, religiously, with care and discipline, like a kind of monk or acolyte, and not to ever let the little flame go out.”
Just thought I'd share it, pour encourager nous, les autres...