Sometimes, because most books change the world so slowly, "one reader at a time" as my website says, writers can get weary. We can feel useless and cranky, and above all, we can feel selfish. After all, we tell ourselves, who else needs so much attention? Who else thrives on being noticed? Why do I feel worthless when a book is rejected, we ask ourselves. And why am I so buoyed up when my work is praised? Why is it that my artistic identity hinges on acceptance?
If today's blog happens to catch you at such a moment; if you've fallen into this particular slough of despair and are beating yourself up for being called to a profession that requires public approval, please stop it right now. First, you're only distracting yourself from your work. (Self disdain is one of my favorite procrastinations!) And second, it's a mistake to assume that because you want to be read, you're a spotlight-seeking egomaniac. Finally, and most important of all, it's another mistake not to realize (at least once a day) how blessed we writers are to know what we're here to do. How privileged we are to spend our days doing it. So here, for all of us, is a present from Rilke, a lovely reminder of the real reason a writer wants to be read:
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me,
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
–Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Barrows and Macy, Riverhead Books, New York, 1996