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Diana M. Wilson's avatar

Oh, Evelyn--I loved every word of this moving essay that captures so much of what I've been feeling as I work through the last few miles of my novel. And it came--as these things often do--at exactly the right time--as I was contemplating (after having been nudged out of bed by my muse at 1 am this morning) what all this effort has been "for"--what it will mean in the absence of commercial viability--And while loud ambition might discount the effort if there isn't future financial success--soft ambition understands the true value of things. 💜

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Katrina Donham's avatar

Ooh, what a treat for us! I love that you'll be publishing personal essays now and then. Thank you for this encouragement, Evelyn. One thing is say a lot nowadays is: "I'm still learning." I say it to my daughters. I say it to my husband. I say it to myself. And the more that I allow myself to "feel" my way through life, the more I begin to understand who it is that I really am, which includes my own version of the ambition that you've described here. I want both sides, too. I want my daughters to see a successful writer AND a loving mother. Despite what a cocky male English professor once told me about Anne Bradstreet as I was writing a thesis on her ambiguous desire for print publication, I think we can have it all. It just takes some attention, pruning, and patience.

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