Thought for the Day What I had to face....

[Paul Whybrow]

"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."

Thomas Wolfe

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

Yep, kill your darlings. It has to be done.

 

[Sedayne]

But then take that piece of perfect writing and turn it into something else, surely.

 

[E G Logan]

"What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish."

Thomas Wolfe

This is not uniquely your problem, Mr Wolfe.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Apparently Maxwell Perkins took all the brilliant little bits he wrote and put them in some coherent order. So maybe this comment is about the cruelty of editors. Wolfe wrote about the parts of North Carolina currently devastated by climate change.

“. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.​

O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?​

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.”​

― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel