I've recently found on my shelf a book I read many years ago called The Courage To Create by Rollo May. Years ago, this book helped me when I had reached a place where I wasn't sure I could continue to write. I had published a number of short stories, three novels and some poems in a short span of four years. Suddenly the markets were dying and I wasn't sure if I should continue or not. Several of my short stories had been sold to magazines that folded and though I had the money I wouldn't see these stories in print. That was when I took a short hiatus from writing since I felt there was no where to go. I returned to my other career and began working as a nurse.
I had read The Courage To Create during the year it had been published and put it aside. The second discovery helped me return to writing and to discovering new venues for my stories. The book also helped me find that my time as a nurse had brought new stories and a different depth to my writing. I also found electronic publishing because this book gave me the courage to look at new places to show my work to the world.
For me writing isn't money or recognition. Writing is finding new worlds and having the courage to explore them. Finding the courage to continue writing and sharing experiences with others will continue beyond a writer's life and into his or her death. So take that courage and find symbols, old and new and put the words down to people someday will read them and ponder the same way as we do over the writers from the past.
Nice post. Writing isn't money or recognition to me, either. If it was,I'd have quit long ago. Writing is what I do. After years of teaching, being a mother, and living a routine life, I'm now doing something for me. I enjoyed the early years. I'm enjoyed the later years too, because of my writing. So I shall write. :)
ReplyDeleteHere's to your new worlds, JL.