If what you've written, say, two weeks or two years ago makes you cringe on rereading it, does that mean you should try to obliterate all traces of it and possibly go into hiding until people forget it, and you? Francis Bacon the painter said that if you are going to try to be an artist, you should be ready to make a fool of yourself. I've always been very ready to do that, it would seem, looking back.
So I ask you: should I cringe more and "publish" less? Or is my cringing a sign that I'm doing great?
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I did insist that I have no pretenses to being a poet. Apparently I do have pretenses , since I worry myself about it. Well, throw these on the pile with all the other ones.
ReplyDeleteYou could cringe, I suppose, but I prefer the "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" route.
ReplyDeleteFrancis Who?
ReplyDeleteMy personal cure for cringing is to think about how big space is and how shockingly tiny I am. It shrinks the swelling immediately.
I think you should just write because everyone here wants to read whatever you have to say, and however you want to say it.
I am cringing about my use of the word "shockingly".
ReplyDeleteCould you please delete it?
Does Danielle Steel cringe all the way to the bank? Like aging, writing is not for wimps..
ReplyDeleteExcellent advice, Theresa, and I think it may hold the key to a system:
ReplyDeleteCringe less than Sylvia Plath but more than Ogden Nash.
Uncle Dan,
ReplyDeleteI too cringe. I think I cringe on average 3-5 times a day. It appears that I come from cringers. It never occurred to me that cringing is genetic. I'm finding that makes it easier to let it go. Thanks for that!