Comments on: Dancing with Bears

By: I Suspect Everyone Else Is Smarter, Better-Looking, Taller, Cooler, Cuter, Has Newer and Shinier Objects than I Do (and Is More Modest)

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:53:45 +0000

[...] you are prone to measuring yourself against others, like I am, and when you both work and live out chunks of your life online, as I do, the Internet can be a [...]

By: Nettie Hartsock

Nettie Hartsock — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:10:41 +0000

This is totally how I feel when I read anything by Julie Hecht, David Sedaris, Erma Bombeck, Richard Russo or Roy Blount Jr..

Roy Blount Jr. in responding to a letter I wrote to him almost 15 years ago, did give me some great advice, stating , “If you can’t but not write, then you’re a writer.” (Sure that letter was also telling me he could not marry me on David Letterman as I had hoped, but still, it’s good advice.)

E.B. White gave him that advice in a letter years before when Blount wrote to him asking him to read some of his stuff. (Blount did not ask E.B. White to marry him though.) :>)

So I think the key is to just keep writing. Keep writing, because you are already a great writer by virtue of continuously doing it despite all odds.

By: Angela

Angela — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:47:27 +0000

I felt that way after reading “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” And oddly, sometimes I feel that way after reading “Dooce.”

By: Alan Wolk

Alan Wolk — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:16:06 +0000

I know that little girl well Ann. I was the boy who didn’t see why I should stick with basketball if there were going to be people who were better than me. Who didn’t see why I should bother to keep writing short stories if they weren’t going to be published in the New Yorker.

It wasn’t until last year that I really internalized the fact that all the people getting out on words I could easily spell didn’t have some secret formula. They just put themselves out there and risked failure. But mostly they just put themselves out there.

Which is the beauty of the internet- the need to stop worrying about gatekeepers and letting the audience find us.

Somehow I think, that to psyches like ours, there’s something far more appealing about that.

By: Dusan Vrban

Dusan Vrban — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:56:04 +0000

I cannot imagine how we would communicate here if many people before us haven't had what it takes to make their bear round and full and invented electricity.

By: Shelley

Shelley — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:57:57 +0000

Weird timing, Ann… I was just looking through my collection of favorite quotes yesterday. Two of them:

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
-Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
-Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955)

By: Karen Swim

Karen Swim — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:06:19 +0000

Ann, you uttered words that were in my heart. I too was that little girl who struggled with competitiveness but threw things on my own terms. Like you I often have that mix of inspiration and self loathing and it appears by the comments that so many of us do. You are a wonderful writer and you have shaped this piece in a way no one else can.

By: Julie

Julie — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:56:03 +0000

Wow! I love reading the slants everyone puts on what they’ve read… What it highlights and brings out for them… Even a new tagline! What a wonderful lot we all are.!! And you bring us to that place… Wow. Thanks Ann.
xx

By: Christian Gulliksen

Christian Gulliksen — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:38:55 +0000

I’ve got a new tagline, baby!

Christian Gulliksen
Arrogant Sonuvabitch ™

So, basically, is it fair to say that you’ll look more favorably (read: with green-eyed jealousy) on the brilliance that is my writing if I deliver late at night? I’d rather not send you into a spiral of despair that wouldn’t exist in the morning, but if it makes me look better…I guess I can handle the guilt Because I’m an Arrogant Sonuvabitch ™

By: Mack Collier

Mack Collier — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:50:47 +0000

I think what we ALL do is, we try to imitate the other writer’s VOICE to a degree. I do it as well, I will read something by another writer that I just love, then without even realizing it, I will find myself adopting their tone and style, because I fool myself into thinking that if it works for them, it will work for them.

It won’t. Their voice isn’t my voice and my voice isn’t their’s. We all have to find and speak with our own cadence. And the world will be a much better and more interesting place, if we can.