Labor

As I sit down to write, I am reminded what a small task is at hand and yet I still am reluctant to begin.  I have put off writing in favor of reading for the past few days, which I naturally do without thinking whenever I have something to write.  I have been enthralled all day with Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, a novel on my list of texts that I need read before I start writing my thesis.

I read because I love literature; I write to put my thoughts in order.  One is for pleasure, while the other is almost entirely practical.  When I think of writing my thesis is seems large in comparison to what I write today and it is.  It is indeed large for my experience and at times I think it is large for my abilities also.  Yet while thesis thoughts ran through my mind and intermingled with the lines of Radcliffe, I thought with awe at the even larger task of a novelist.  I would some day like to write the musings of my mind in narrative form, that is when I have something to tell, but a novel is after all a whole different and more arduous journey than that of a thesis.

I am glad that I walk one foot in front of the other and not with two feet at a time.  I am content as a critic and not a master.  Virginia Woolf was both and perhaps that is why her criticism is beautiful, clever and spot on.  She is well balanced.

I do not pretend to think that I could ever master the art of narrative or criticism, but I can be honest.  I continue to come back to honesty and it continues to draw me in.  It is of the most import, it is what makes writing true.  But honesty in mind is not enough if it is not committed to paper; therefore, I would like to add to honesty that of labor and long suffering.  Something of Trollope must be there - some going to the desk each day, engaging the mind and searching for answers to our curiosities.  Work then is intrinsic to producing anything "whole and entire".