Monday, January 13, 2003
I like this excerpt on the writer experience from Sue Monk Kidd's email newsletter. She wrote The Secret Life of Bees. Find out more about her at:
www.suemonkkidd.com
from Sue Monk Kidd:
"DEAR READER,
The last time I wrote it was a warm September day, and I was ruminating about Snowy Egrets, alligators, and the Low Country marsh beyond my study windows. I write now on a cold January evening twelve days into the new year. Though I’m definitely not what you’d call a “winter person” (I tend to hibernate in the manner of bears until Spring), I’ve always loved January for the irresistible mix of nostalgia and hope it stirs up, a paradoxical combination that sends me meandering backward into the past and soaring forward into the future. In fact, January is named for Janus, a Roman mythological figure with two faces, one which looks forward and one which looks backward. That’s how I always feel in January- a little two-faced.
THE BACKWARD FACE
Every January I have a ritual, the same one that I’m embarked upon right now: I curl up on the sofa with a mug of tea and read back through my journal of the year just passed. Lots of 2002 entries, I notice, have to do with The Secret Life of Bees. I read, for instance, about the grand publication party my friend Susan threw, the wild and wooly book tour, the excitement as the novel unexpectedly climbed onto best seller lists, and got picked for Good Morning America’s Read This! Book Club. My gosh, I think, who could have predicted all of that? I linger, though, over something I wrote in my journal not long after the novel came out:
“What if I hadn’t listened to the impulse that kept telling me to write fiction? I came so close to dismissing it out of fear I couldn’t do it. And what if I had listened to the ‘writing expert’ who told me he didn’t think my short story (‘The Secret Life of Bees’) should be turned into a novel? Well, actually I did listen to him for almost three years before giving into my own vision. I suppose the thing I’ve got to remember is to simply trust the wisdom of my own heart. To stalk this wisdom with passion, and when I find it, believe in it enough to follow it.”
The purpose of the “backward face” is to help us grasp the lessons in the past, and of all the lessons I learned in 2002 (Keep your sense of humor; be grateful; don’t take yourself too seriously; remember what’s important; play with your dog often) this is the most poignant: to listen to my heart. Every heart has its own unique intelligence, and to live disconnected from it fills our lives with a certain meagerness." - Sue Monk Kidd
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www.suemonkkidd.com
from Sue Monk Kidd:
"DEAR READER,
The last time I wrote it was a warm September day, and I was ruminating about Snowy Egrets, alligators, and the Low Country marsh beyond my study windows. I write now on a cold January evening twelve days into the new year. Though I’m definitely not what you’d call a “winter person” (I tend to hibernate in the manner of bears until Spring), I’ve always loved January for the irresistible mix of nostalgia and hope it stirs up, a paradoxical combination that sends me meandering backward into the past and soaring forward into the future. In fact, January is named for Janus, a Roman mythological figure with two faces, one which looks forward and one which looks backward. That’s how I always feel in January- a little two-faced.
THE BACKWARD FACE
Every January I have a ritual, the same one that I’m embarked upon right now: I curl up on the sofa with a mug of tea and read back through my journal of the year just passed. Lots of 2002 entries, I notice, have to do with The Secret Life of Bees. I read, for instance, about the grand publication party my friend Susan threw, the wild and wooly book tour, the excitement as the novel unexpectedly climbed onto best seller lists, and got picked for Good Morning America’s Read This! Book Club. My gosh, I think, who could have predicted all of that? I linger, though, over something I wrote in my journal not long after the novel came out:
“What if I hadn’t listened to the impulse that kept telling me to write fiction? I came so close to dismissing it out of fear I couldn’t do it. And what if I had listened to the ‘writing expert’ who told me he didn’t think my short story (‘The Secret Life of Bees’) should be turned into a novel? Well, actually I did listen to him for almost three years before giving into my own vision. I suppose the thing I’ve got to remember is to simply trust the wisdom of my own heart. To stalk this wisdom with passion, and when I find it, believe in it enough to follow it.”
The purpose of the “backward face” is to help us grasp the lessons in the past, and of all the lessons I learned in 2002 (Keep your sense of humor; be grateful; don’t take yourself too seriously; remember what’s important; play with your dog often) this is the most poignant: to listen to my heart. Every heart has its own unique intelligence, and to live disconnected from it fills our lives with a certain meagerness." - Sue Monk Kidd
