Wednesday 6/22/22
Time to get outside for some exercise. It's very late morning--coming up on half past eleven. I took the longer version of the Fourth of July/Old Manse op-ed, which was 900 words--and built it into a full feature, with an emphasis on Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, totaling 2000 words. It's an excellent piece. Three works have been built from a starting idea. I'll read it back one last time, then send it to someone who may or may not use it; everything prior with them has been off a pitch, and that's how I like to go, but it's a special piece. Fourth of July pieces are also hard to come by. More than that, though, I think it's a landmark essay. It says things that no one else is saying and no one has thought. It's a prose clarion call. That longer version could go into The Human Reader: Pain-Free Explorations of Life-Changing Literature, though of course I have so many pieces to pick from. These days it feels like so much of what I do is a first volume that would be followed by many more. The body of work is just huge.
A truism: You are as brave as you're willing to be. Never forget that. Am I talking to you? Yeah, I'm talking to you. You know I am. To the stairs, ZW. Talking to myself that time.