Words of our Hearts By Catherine Viel

[Manuel Tavares]

Words of our Hearts
By Catherine Viel
+https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/06/words-of-our-hearts.html

think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,
bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.
~Billy Collins, Writing in the Afterlife

A friend commented that my article the other day sounded melancholy. I hadn’t thought so when writing it, but upon rereading, I perceive an element of tristesse, seasoned with a sprinkling of bitterness.

Perhaps I have reason to be disappointed, if not bitter. Forty-five years ago, I looked ahead to this current time and visualized that I’d be a successful, multiple-published, well-compensated author.

I had decades to accomplish it, looking ahead from age twenty, and worlds within me to write. Although the publishing industry has never been welcoming to new authors, I wasn’t daunted. There was nothing else I wanted to do, and without false modesty I can say that even as a college student, I was a damned good writer.

I drafted my first novel when I was seventeen. I learned by doing. Now, I also think I was born knowing how to create stories because this isn’t my first rodeo as a writer. Who knows how many lifetimes I have put quill to parchment?+++
https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/06/words-of-our-hearts.html