writing degree french

 

As a writer, when you first write something you stare at the text and are pleased; you could live there.

It's quiet, people leave you alone, you talk long walks in the countryside, and do some reading and writing.

Rene Char is important, as is Francis Ponge. You read Les Miserables for the first time and The Red and The Black for the tenth.

Some time goes by--not a lot but more than a little--and the writing piles up as does the reading.

Soon it's time to pack up and go; you've run out of money, the notebooks are filled, the books read, and your French is leaking, leaving big stains of red wine wherever you are invited to dinner.

At home, you look at the writing you've done and see you have something; not what you think you had, but something. Nothing you yourself or a good editor couldn't fix, with some hard work.

Every time you look at the words you've written you think of that little village in France: when you leave a place that doesn't mean it doesn't exist; it means you've gone through it, come to the other side, and are moving on.

To be a writer is to take almost as many words away as you have written.