PAUL REVERE’S RIDE….
Listen my children and you shall
hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This is only the first stanza, but
when April 18 pops up on the calendar I think of this poem. So, I had to put at
least this bit on my commentary for today. Besides, Revere wasn’t just a
Revolutionary, he was a silversmith by trade. So, art fits the picture, as it
always does!
I guess today’s post really is about
writers because I have been wanting to comment on the words and thoughts of
another writer, Anne Lamott. Last fall my book club read her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing
and Life, which I highly recommend. She is a thoughtful and very funny
writer and I gleaned much wisdom from her thoughts. In fact, I enjoyed the book
so much I ordered a copy for my son, who is a professional writer.
In the book’s introduction Lamott
relates her experiences teaching writing workshops to students who love to
read, who love good writing, and who are eager to see their words in print. She
begins by telling them what it is like to sit down to work with “a few ideas
and a lot of blank paper”. She tells them they will want to be really good
straight off, and that they may not be, but they might be good someday if they just
keep at it. She tells them that their heads will be filled with their stories,
even when they are not writing, that everything will be fodder for the page.
She also tells them that they will have days of frustration, low self-esteem
and self-doubt. They will want to give up, and forget this ridiculous belief
that they can actually write, much less write something someone else wants to
read.
Does that not sound like the life of
a visual artist as well? I think so. So, to keep this post from being too long,
I will just urge you to keep at it, because as Lamott goes on to say, there
will also be days when it feels like you “have caught and are riding a wave.”
Ride on my friends. It’s absolutely
worth it.
With many thanks to Anne Lamott for her beautiful writing and to Longfellow for his poetry.
