Writer. Contributing Editor at The Discarded Image. Digital Content Strategist. Here's where I publicly explore the books I'm reading, the projects I'm working on, and other current interests. Well Said: paradoxes of the writing life
Poet and fiction writer Ken Barris describing a literary awards ceremony in which he lost to another writer:
The moment captures a schism that runs through my life as a writer. It is the difference between public and private self. I don’t mean the public self in the obvious sense, one who appears in public, talks, grins, reads and signs things. I mean the person who has to deal with hostile reviews, rejection slips, sometimes disappointing sales, and near misses. To do that demands the cultivation of a thick skin, or some kind of thickening of the skin you have. The problem is that to write poetry, short fiction, novels—which is what I write—you need to be a thin-skinned observer. The membrane between yourself and the world has to be permeable and soft, flexible, prone to tear.
Read the rest of “Blood on the Floor” in Glimmer Train‘s Bulletin 26.
