16 November 2023: Just finished my Jewett entry and cracked the 120K-word count barrier, both of which feel pretty darn good. I am a tiny bit bummed not to have found a place to include this excerpt from an 1873 letter that Jewett, then a young writer, penned to Hoarce E. Scudder:
“I am getting quite ambitious and really feel that writing is my work - my business perhaps; and it is so much better than making a mere amusement of it as I used…I am glad to have something to do in the world and something which may prove very helpful and useful if I care to make it so, which I certainly do” (27).
There is something so pure about her earnestness here, her belief that writing is her work and that it is something to “do in the world” that might “prove very helpful and useful.”
Work Cited
Jewett, Sarah Orne. Sarah Orne Jewett: Letters. Edited with an introduction by Richard Cary, Colby College P, 1956.
No comments:
Post a Comment