It's IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without
fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire
can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure
writers of all kinds. The brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader. To read posts from other members, click here.
A relative moved out of her home after 45 years and we spent this winter cleaning it out, which caused us to reevaluate. After
spending weekends throwing out old bills, countless notebooks filed with
clipped recipes and every birthday card ever received, my husband and I vowed we’d never leave a task so daunting to
our daughter.
To that end we’ve been purging our
own house, one of us more successfully than the other. We grew up
pre-social media and both had plastic bins holding years of correspondence
stored in the basement. Hauling them out, my husband upturned his container
into the laundry basket we were using for trash. “I can’t read them,” he
said, “or, I’ll never get rid of them.”
I don’t have his fortitude. Every
night last week, I sat in front of my own box, opening and reading enough correspondence
to transport myself back to a world I’d forgotten, before tossing each letter into a trash bag.
In the end though, I scored pay dirt.
I knew for sure I’d have to save the letters from my lovely lost poet friend
who died in a car accident just before our senior year in college. And, while I couldn’t bring myself to read
them all, I unfolded a lined sheet of paper. Apparently, we were bored in class
one day and writing notes back and forth. Sometime before that, I’d dashed off a
couple of poems and submitted them to the college literary magazine she edited,
knowing they weren’t my best work. I confessed in the note that I knew they weren’t
good, and here’s what she wrote in response:
You must give writing the time it deserves or it will not
reflect your real talent. You have the rest of your life you know – and you
will always have that talent – the only thing with talent is though, you can’t
just carry it around and take it out in a minute. It comes through much
effort…If you don’t think your writing is good, don’t settle for things you
don’t like…
The irony is, she didn't have the rest of her life. She was twenty-one when she wrote
that, wise beyond her age, and gone three months later. I'm closing in on forty years without her now, but it's made me so happy to recognize she's alive again, through the inspiring reminder those long-ago words just delivered to me.
