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Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Getting into shape

It's always interesting when I am reading the classics, something that was written 80, 100, 200 years ago, and I come across a thought that rings true to me in today's world. And I am embarrassed afresh at my teenage self for ever having said, "But mom and dad, you just don't understand!" Of course they understood. They understood everything. As did their parents, and their parents' parents, etc. There must be something timeless about the human condition so as to make things that were true multiple decades ago still true today.
A quote by Charles Dickens from Great Expectations caught my eye this week:
" I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape".
I love that quote. We, as writers, are working on our craft. We get bent and sometimes broken when rejection comes, when writers block rears it's ugly head, etc. But I look at my work today and feel like not just my work, but myself as an author have become better because of the bending...and the breaking.
If it was true 150 years ago, it is true today. We can be bent and broken, but it is all worth it if we are, in the end, in better shape because of it.