Day 137: An Inspiring Interview

I was reading this interview with Toni Morrison from 2019 for some inspiration and came across this quote which I think is just perfect.

"Students are frequently unwilling to rewrite, because rewriting suggests to them that what they wrote the first time is wrong, and they don't like that feeling. But it's not that, it's just that writing is a process and you are cleaning up the language. It's not that you're changing it: you're doing it better, hitting a higher note or a deeper tone or a different color. The revision for me is the exciting part; it's the part that I can't wait for—getting the whole dumb thing done so that I can do the real work, which is making it better and better and better."

'Getting the whole dumb thing done' resonated particularly well with me. You can find the rest of the interview here if you're interested. She talks about teaching her courses, her career, her novels, and life in general. Hard not to find some nugget of wisdom in this.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley