I love this. Imagine getting advice, a letter from the great woman herself. And what advice it is. "Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort & the most enduring." Amen to that.
That is a truth most people who are broken by the arts never grasp. "Failure" isn't necessarily your fault. Success is capriciously bestowed a lot of the time. You have not been judged and condemned.
"Little Women was written when I was ill, & to prove that I could not write books for girls. The publisher thought it flat, so did I, & neither hoped much for or from it. We found out our mistake, & since then, though I do not enjoy writing “moral tales” for the young, I do it because it pays well."
I take perverse pleasure in when artists troll the establishment to make a point about art they hate, only to find one of their most recognizable successes, such as "Nevermind" by Nirvana or "Loser" by Beck. "Here's a flat little girl's morality take to show you I can't write them," surprise, beloved multigenerational classic translated into dozens of languages and adapted several times into movies.
I think her advice is thoughtful and practical. I suspect there is no one “right” way to write (or approach any artistic endeavor). And that what is true for one artist isn’t true for another. I also think luck plays a big part in “success”. I use American Idol and AGT/BGT and the like as proof of that. All these amazing talents just waiting to be discovered. One reason I love Substack is discovering new artists I might never have heard of otherwise!
I'm happy to say I have a copy of Hospital Sketches (though too recently to have helped her much) as a part of my researches on life in Civil War Washington DC. Very interesting reading.
I’ve never read anything of hers but now I must do so immediately.
I love this. Imagine getting advice, a letter from the great woman herself. And what advice it is. "Success is often a lucky accident, coming to those who may not deserve it, while others who do have to wait & hope till they have earned it. This is the best sort & the most enduring." Amen to that.
That is a truth most people who are broken by the arts never grasp. "Failure" isn't necessarily your fault. Success is capriciously bestowed a lot of the time. You have not been judged and condemned.
"Little Women was written when I was ill, & to prove that I could not write books for girls. The publisher thought it flat, so did I, & neither hoped much for or from it. We found out our mistake, & since then, though I do not enjoy writing “moral tales” for the young, I do it because it pays well."
I take perverse pleasure in when artists troll the establishment to make a point about art they hate, only to find one of their most recognizable successes, such as "Nevermind" by Nirvana or "Loser" by Beck. "Here's a flat little girl's morality take to show you I can't write them," surprise, beloved multigenerational classic translated into dozens of languages and adapted several times into movies.
Agreed.
Her attitude toward writing and money-earning was very pragmatic and very much the opposite attitude to that of her utopian socialist father, Bronson.
I think her advice is thoughtful and practical. I suspect there is no one “right” way to write (or approach any artistic endeavor). And that what is true for one artist isn’t true for another. I also think luck plays a big part in “success”. I use American Idol and AGT/BGT and the like as proof of that. All these amazing talents just waiting to be discovered. One reason I love Substack is discovering new artists I might never have heard of otherwise!
She had a myriad of pen names, mostly to conceal her gender because women were not "supposed" to write (at all), and certainly not the way she did!
Christ, that's the world's worst typo. My kid is named after her!
I absolutely get it. There you were, being human!
I'm happy to say I have a copy of Hospital Sketches (though too recently to have helped her much) as a part of my researches on life in Civil War Washington DC. Very interesting reading.