Good writing ...

"Good writing is an experiment in meaning that works. The experiment that works is a product of many experiments that fail. The failure is essential, because through trying, failing, trying, failing, we discover what we have to say." Donald Murray

I hate the failure part. I hate working and reworking for hours only to discover I don't like what I've written any better than I did a cup of coffee and a pot of tea ago. But this is one of the gifts of writing, one of the gifts of art, that we are forced to deal with ourselves as we do it. It's not brute strength, it's not sheer determination, it's not luck (though those are certainly involved at times). It's looking inside and seeing what's really there and working with it until we find something authentic. That thing, that true thing, may come out in the form of a poem or a story that takes place in another world. ("Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth." Camus.) But the truth that is finally revealed, that we finally figure out how to tell, that we finally craft into art, is truly part of us. And that is why the failure is so important, because that's the only way to the truth.