I try not to read things I have written and published in the past. If I find that I like something I wrote quite a lot, then I wonder if I still "have it," can still be as smart as I used to be. If I am disappointed to find that I could have done better, then that is bad too. Either way, I can't win.
But I had to read a few pages of my Lorca book in order to cite myself, and I found that it reinvigorated me. I made the discovery that I really do "have it." It is easy to see myself as an everyday blunderer, stumbling through life as I tend to do, but when I re-read my own prose I realize that I can pretty much kick ass (immodestly speaking) in that narrow area in which I specialize. To minimize that is to sell myself short.
1 comment:
I read a few pages in AL yesterday because I'd been asked about Ginsberg. I had a similar feeling -- though less, I guess, "subjective".
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