This quote is from a column by Cary Tennis, who gives great advice for Salon. (Subscribe to his stuff; it’s brilliant!) This quote in particular—given to a young publishing house employee whose exposure to the slush pile made her paralyzed with fear of writing something terrible— was the kick in the teeth that I needed to start writing fiction again after not really having done it in several years.
If you create this condition that you must believe in yourself to go forward, you might not go forward. You must find a way to go forward without that condition. You do not need to believe in yourself. You just need to find a way to move forward and embrace the activity you are engaged in. You think that believing in yourself will give you the strength to go forward? It may not work that way. It may be that you go forward simply by going forward. Let the taboos against bad writing fall, let the barriers come down, let the sharp-tongued English teachers take their seats and let us do what we do, and let those who would judge us go ahead and judge us — we don’t care. We’re going to do it anyway. Let them proclaim us as the dirty unskilled urchins of their nightmares. We are not living to please them.I used to think I was on top, looking down on all that was awful. Now I feel that I am on the bottom of the sea looking up at everything that is marvelous! You get where I’m coming from? So let us dance, all of us, together on the bottom of the sea.
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