Hope -- There's a book for that

Dec 08, 2011

I've been rereading The Writer's Book of Hope by Ralph Keyes. Keyes discusses the hundreds of rejections great writers endured before publishing books like The World According to Garp, Altas Shrugged, All the President's Men, and Gone With the Wind. I find this encouraging in a sick way. As Keyes points out, most writers get lost in the black lagoons of despair around their own work.

I’m particularly fond of this quote, written by Gustave Flaubert in 1850:

"Bad week. Work didn't go. I had reached a point where I didn't know what to say. It was all shadings and refinements; I was completely in the dark: it is very difficult to clarify by means of words what is still obscure in your thoughts. I made outlines, spoiled a lot of paper, floundered and fumbled......What a struggle it has been. My God, what a struggle! Such drudgery! Such discouragement!"

The result, of course, was Madame Bovary.

Perhaps that is life’s best joke: we’re meant to flounder and fumble endlessly in order to find the truth. Yes, writing causes despair. But it’s also the antidote. The only way to face the demon is to muddle through and keep on writing.

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