So I guess this very short but hugely inspiring talk by Ira Glass has been kicking around the internet for a while. I’m posting it here anyway, in part because it basically sums up the point of about half of the couple of hundred Bad Advice pieces Bill and I have written. To some degree it is pretty standard advice, but I love the emphasis on taste, something I had honestly never thought about before. No wonder I hated my early work so much. (In my clunky, early novels, characters tended to quote Thoreau to each other.)
Leila Seth
My name is Leila Seth. I am eighty-three years old. I have been in a long and happy marriage of more than sixty years with my husband Premo, and am the mother of three children. The eldest, Vikram, is a writer. The second, Shantum, is a Buddhist teacher. The third, Aradhana, is an artist and filmmaker. I love them all. My husband and I have brought them up with the values we were brought up with—honesty, courage, and sympathy for others. We know that they are hardworking and affectionate people who are trying to do some good in the world. Continue reading →
(The Essay’s Place 
Does such a thing as effort even exist? Or are we humans genetically predisposed toward a certain amount of trying, with the oomph we put into our endeavors as predetermined as our height or eye color? Anyway, don’t most of us try more or less the same amount, with some of us making more of a show of it, like grunting tennis players?
..Nina de Gramont. Closing in on twenty years of love. In ten minutes I begin my trek back south. See you soon!