forioscribe

The only thing I know is that you just have to make a serious & formal commitment to your art and then work hard at it for a very long time until you finally speak with your own voice, not an echo of those you admire. Some are blessed with it earlier than others.

Joyce, for instance. I always got the feeling that he had such an authentic acceptance of himself that he genuinely didn't care how he might appear to others as a person and as the implied author who peeks from between the lines. I have always admired and envied that quality. Self doubt, after all, poisons writing.

Ellmann says: "Joyce believed in his own selfhood too exclusively to find the word 'love' an easy one to employ; in Exiles a character declares 'There is one word which I have never dared to say to you,' and when challenged, can say only, 'That I have a deep liking for you.' Nora had no use for such delicate discriminations between love and Joyce's composite of affection, lust, and benevolence. One can imagine her saying, like Molly Bloom, 'Oh rocks. Tell us in plain words.' But what he told her was evidently good enough."

All this might just be a long way of saying that for Joyce his art always came first.

John,

I also appreciated you adding me as a friend, it meant a lot to me. I'd really appreciate if you read some of the stuff I have up on my LJ, and maybe I'll e-mail you some of the poetry I have written over the past years. I really appreciate any sorts of criticism and would love to really get a feel for what I need to do in my writing to... take it up a level.

I guess my obsession with early french surrealist writers comes out in my writing, but I don't know how much. Anyhoo, I'd appreciate any feedback.

Also, you're basically living the life I want a few years from now. Living in Italy after spending a life writing? That's fantastic, I'm happy that you actually persued that lifestyle.

Taking your writing to another level will involve fully embracing the notion that "ars longa, vita brevis," art is long, life is short. You may be lucky and achieve literary success overnight. But then you might have to wait a while. The application of serious effort over a long period of time will GUARANTEE success. Either in this lifetime, or the next!