The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

February 17Authoring Something Beautiful

The whole plan laid itself smoothly out before me, and I slept no more that night, but worked on it as busily as if mind and body had nothing to do with one another. Up early, and began to write it all over again. The fit was on strong, and for a fortnight I hardly ate, slept, or stirred, but wrote, wrote, like a thinking machine in full operation. When it was all rewritten without copying, I found it much improved, though I'd taken out ten chapters, and sacrificed many of my favorite things; but being resolved to make it simple, strong, and short, I let everything else go, and hoped the book would be better for it.

Louisa May Alcott—Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889)

Norman Maclean's novella A River Runs Through It includes a passage that captures today's reading well:

One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.

That is perhaps the truest description of the magic trick you must perform in order to become self-reliant: to stand somewhat apart from yourself and let go in hopes that whatever it is you are engaged in would be better for it.

In the movie adaptation there is a scene where the narrator, describes how his father taught him that the art of writing lay in simplicity. The son would present an essay and the father would approve and instruct his son to make it half as long.

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