Put Yourself Out Of Your Misery.

I Do Not So Much Write A Book As Sit Up With It, As A Dying Friend. I Hold Its Hand And Hope It Will Get Better.

The Written Word Is Weak. Many People Prefer Life To It. Life Gets Your Blood Going, & It Smells Good. Writing Is Mere Writing, Literature Is Mere. It Appeals Only To The Subtlest Senses—the Imagination’s Vision, & The Imagination’s Hearing—& The Moral Sense, & The Intellect. This Writing That You Do, That So Thrills You, That So Rocks & Exhilarates You, As If You Were Dancing Next To The Band, Is Barely Audible To Anyone Else.

She Is Nine, Beloved, As Open-faced As The Sky And As Self-contained. I Have Watched Her Grow. As Recently As Three Or Four Years Ago, She Had A Young Child's Perfectly Shallow Receptiveness; She Fitted Into The World Of Time, It Fitted Into Her, As Thoughtlessly As Sky Fits Its Edges, Or A River Its Banks. But As She Has Grown, Her Smile Has Widened With A Touch Of Fear And Her Glance Has Taken On Depth. Now She Is Aware Of Some Of The Losses You Incur By Being Here--the Extortionary Rent You Have To Pay As Long As You Stay.

Beauty And Grace Are Performed Whether Or Not We Sense Them.

Learn Punctuation; It Is Your Little Drum Set, One Of The Few Tools Oyu Have To Signal The Reader Where The Beats And Emphases Go. (if You Get It Wrong, Any Least Thing, The Editor Will Throw Your Manuscript Out.) Punctuation Is Not Like Musical Notation; It Doesn't Indicate The Length Of Pauses, But Instead Signifies Logical Relations. There Are All Sorts Of People Out There Who Know These Things Very Well. You Have To Be Among Them Even To Begin.