A friend forwarded an article from Matthew Weiner (the creator of the TV series Mad Men) on writing. He makes the point that writers often pretend there’s little work involved in creating their final piece, but that the process is slow, full of visions and revisions, false starts, painful changes.
Anyone who has ever sat down to write is faced with the gap between what they feel is good writing and what is happening on the page at that moment. I occasionally look back at old drafts of my best poems, sometimes 12 or 19 of them, which I shove in a folder called “Prev.” I am almost always shocked by how truly awful they are. One’s taste evolves, and one’s work rarely can keep pace.
The article is worth a read, but here is my favorite quote:
My fourth grade teacher once pulled me aside and let me have it. She said, “Talking to you is like talking down the drain; you don’t hear anything. You think you are going to make it through the rest of your life because you are charming. You think you don’t have to do all the work—but you do.” I remember looking up at her after this tirade and saying, “You think I’m charming?”
I remember when a teacher told me: “you have a smart mouth, Mr. Rafferty;” I heard the ‘smart’ part much more clearly than the ‘mouth’ part.
You’re just another Matthew Weiner!