The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion

Every success is a combination of talent, vision, and courage.  Two out of three won't cut it.  Talent and courage will get you to some technically rewarded level.  You could end up writing for the New York Times even, but not for The New Yorker.  You might end up a fashion photographer whose work shows up in the glossies, but only your friends and industry insiders are aware of you.  You will never be a Sarah Moon or a Paolo Roversi.

Courage and vision will get you recognition, too, but an almost embarrassing one.  Coffee house fame and self-publishing.  You know, the legends that might have been if they had not been quite so lazy.

The most heartbreaking combination are those with vision and talent.  The works are breathtaking but thin, in small volumes and skinny portfolios.  Quiet people who are afraid that their work does not add up.

Retreats and workshops will not help any of this, I fear.  As Hemingway said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, writing groups may help palliate the loneliness of the writer, but they do not improve the writing.

It is lonely trying to do something creative.  Unless you are writing a group poem or novel or are working on a group painting.  But those will not turn out.  You must chizle yourself from stone, mold yourself from clay, talk to the dead for years and years and try to understand what they say.

Who wants to be around that?  And there is no in between.  Unless you plan on doing the art festivals.

But I guess it is better just to keep quiet about it.

*      *     *     *     *

Whoops!  I left out the most important part.  

Luck