Practicing To Be Perfect

Over the past few days I've been offered lots of pats on the back, much appreciated. And the most notable congrats coming my way seem to agree: One thing it takes to move your writing along the road to publication, besides that whole 'butt in chair" thing, is perseverance. Blame my parents who disapproved of throwing in the towel till you'd exhausted all possibilities, blame my writing groups who kept pushing me, whatever. This quote keeps rolling around in my head so I had to share.

Thanks to one of my favorite kids' writers Linda Urban, writing about revising, for the Malcolm Gladwell quote, from an interview he gave about his book Outliers:

"Talent is the desire to practice, right? It is that you love something so much that you are willing to sacrifice and commit to that -- whatever it is -- task, game, sport, etc."

Late Bloomers and Prodigies

Read Malcolm Gladwell's October article in the New Yorker for lots of reasons. The list of Top Ten poems. Picasso. Cezanne. Stay-at-home Dads. Art patrons. Haiti. But the true theme of the piece is the difference between early starters and late bloomers.

The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition.

I think he's also writing about not giving up. A good thought for the New Year.