To Encourage...

In this hard work

Reprise

It really is worth doing, every day, a little or more, as much as you can manage in all the noise and distraction and the hectic pace we all have to keep. I know it’s easy to say that this is easy to say because I have published these books and stories; but there is the example of all the silently admonishing others who never knew anything like our concept of a successful ‘career.’ Many of them went to their graves without breaking through the wide silence of the world. You must try to stop thinking of it all as a career; it is your work, your being. It is what you do, whenever you can and with as much as you can muster of all your heart. It gives meaning to your experience and shapeliness to your days, and it is terribly important, since this record we make is the deepest form of recording. It has survived in its beautifully various forms longer than all the structures trumpeting their power to the ages, those falling down ruins of stone. So, this will to write, this need to express—cultivate it, as Cocteau said in another context; it is you.