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Wednesday May 10, 2006

Writers who whine about work are full of the wrong stuff

crybabyaw.jpgThis is from last week, but Garrison Keillor does not want to hear you whine about how difficult it was to eke your sad story onto the page (via Writesville):

I have had it with writers who talk about how painful and harrowing and exhausting and ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE it is for them to put words on paper and how they pace a hole in the carpet, anguish writ large on their marshmallow faces, and feel lucky to have written an entire sentence or two by the end of the day.

It's the purest form of arrogance: Lest you don't notice what a brilliant artist I am, let me tell you how I agonize over my work. To which I say: Get a job. Try teaching eighth-grade English, five classes a day, 35 kids in a class, from September to June, and then tell us about suffering.

I hear you, Gar. My question is, though--who inspired this rant?


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