There Are Many Occasions In Literature In

You Can Assume That If A Writer's Work Has Survived For Centuries, There Are Reasons Why This Is So, Explanations That Have Nothing To Do With A Conspiracy Of Academics Plotting To Resuscitate A Zombie Army Of Dead White Males.

What’s Strange Is How Many Beginning Writers Seem To Think That Grammar Is Irrelevant, Or That They Are Somehow Above Or Beyond This Subject More Fit For A Schoolchild Than The Future Author Of Great Literature.

When We Humans Speak, We Are Not Merely Communicating Information But Attempting To Make An Impression And Achieve A Goal.

To Be Truthful, Some Writers Stop You Dead In Your Tracks By Making You See Your Own Work In The Most Unflattering Light. Each Of Us Will Meet A Different Harbinger Of Personal Failure, Some Innocent Genius Chosen By Us For Reasons Having To Do With What We See As Our Own Inadequacies. The Only Remedy To This I Have Found Is To Read A Writer Whose Work Is Entirely Different From Another, Though Not Necessarily More Like Your Own—a Difference That Will Remind You Of How Many Rooms There Are In The House Of Art.

But Beneath It All Will Run That Sicilian Understanding That The Underside Of Joy Is Grief, That The Face Of Sacrifice And Suffering Is The Dark Mirror Image Of Pleasure And Enjoyment, That Every Moment Of Arrival Is To Be Treasured And Enjoyed In The Full Knowledge That It Has Brought Us A Moment Closer To The Moment Of Departure.