January 24, 2024
Amy Tan: the price of success
Imagine being so successful that you had no time for anything but writing, because you were being hounded by your publisher to finish your next book. After I read Amy Tan’s account of being in exactly this position, I began to wonder if I actually craved that kind of success (as I thought I had for most of my life).
A few years ago, I read all of Tan’s books—novels and memoirs. In one of her memoirs about her writing life, she tells of a period when she had to closet herself and write “under the relentless pressure of a … deadline.” She couldn’t even stop to prepare her meals; her husband did this and brought them to her so she could eat while she wrote.
Though I’d still like to write a runaway best-seller, I also want a life. How about you? Do you cherish big ambitions, but have mixed feelings about it?
Music of Writing 
John Jeremiah Edminster said,
January 24, 2024 at 11:15 am
Yes! I want a life! I’ve written some worst-sellers (recently, a modern edition of Job Scott’s Remarks upon the Knowledge of the Lord (ca. 1790) and a Quaker Bible Index main index for the Epistle to the Colossians) and no publishers are hounding me to finish my manuscript by the deadline, and I still lack the free time to write the letters to friends I’d like to write, read the books I’d like to read, prepare the meals for myself I’d like to eat, or… work on the Quaker Bible Index main index for the Acts of the Apostles! Or… evangelize the world with the glorious Everlasting Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which seems the task most worth doing! … But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies: __________(Reader, fill in the blank for thyself!)
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Rebecca Hein said,
January 24, 2024 at 4:46 pm
Thanks, John. I too wish for more time to write letters, read books, etc. But I still want to write a best-seller.
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