Katherine Sharpe's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-failure-quotes"
Writers on Failure
This is from an essay in the New York Times's "Draft" series on writing, by Rachel Shtier:
"I remember the first time I felt like a bona fide failure as a writer. This feeling of nausea washed over me, but it was confusing because it appeared at the exact moment when I was supposed to be feeling success. It was when I finished my first book and realized there were some things in it that I hated, things that were made all the more hideous to me whenever people said, 'You must have such a sense of accomplishment.' I asked a more experienced writer if she ever got over this nauseated feeling. She didn’t reassure me. 'Oh, that never goes away.'"
Zadie Smith said a similar thing more succinctly:
"Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied."
Years ago my uncle, who is a painter, told me something like:
"Being an artist means being home alone, all day, with your inability to render on canvas the things that you can see in your mind."
As a writer and maybe also as a human being, I find all three of these thoughts more comforting than they are sad. You?
"I remember the first time I felt like a bona fide failure as a writer. This feeling of nausea washed over me, but it was confusing because it appeared at the exact moment when I was supposed to be feeling success. It was when I finished my first book and realized there were some things in it that I hated, things that were made all the more hideous to me whenever people said, 'You must have such a sense of accomplishment.' I asked a more experienced writer if she ever got over this nauseated feeling. She didn’t reassure me. 'Oh, that never goes away.'"
Zadie Smith said a similar thing more succinctly:
"Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied."
Years ago my uncle, who is a painter, told me something like:
"Being an artist means being home alone, all day, with your inability to render on canvas the things that you can see in your mind."
As a writer and maybe also as a human being, I find all three of these thoughts more comforting than they are sad. You?
