{"id":38,"date":"2009-05-13T13:31:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T18:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/13\/praise-and-detachment\/"},"modified":"2009-05-13T13:34:14","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T18:34:14","slug":"praise-and-detachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/2009\/05\/13\/praise-and-detachment\/","title":{"rendered":"Praise and Detachment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcelo in the Real World<\/em> has been out there since March and I have been overwhelmed by its reception both critically by the professional reviewers as well as by the many, many people who have reviewed the book in their blogs or have commented upon it either publicly or by contacting me personally through this website. I am so happy that the book has already touched as many people as it has. I know that it will continue to do so. And yet, I confess to feeling a certain detachment from all the good things that are happening to the book. Maybe it is the length of time involved between when\u00c2\u00a0an author finishes writing a book and when the book is published that creates that\u00c2\u00a0distance -\u00c2\u00a0the sense\u00c2\u00a0that the book is no longer one’s own and\u00c2\u00a0all the praise (or criticism) that are heaped upon it are not to be taken, well, personally. Did I really write that book? I remember the years and the days and the hours of struggle and joy but they seem so far off now.\u00c2\u00a0I feel as if\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0images and the words came to me, were given to me, and that I was fortunate to have a good editor who set\u00c2\u00a0me on the right path. I’m not trying to be\u00c2\u00a0humble. I’m trying to convey what\u00c2\u00a0happens after\u00c2\u00a0a book is written. I think this natural separation from the work\u00c2\u00a0is\u00c2\u00a0sort of\u00c2\u00a0what a woman\u00c2\u00a0goes through in forgetting the labor pains of the prior child so that the next child can be conceived and born.\u00c2\u00a0Maybe in the case of writing, it is not only necessary to forget the pain of creating the previous work but also the praise received for it. It is just as easy to get stuck in pain as it is in praise. But forgetting<\/em> pain and praise is not the right term. What is needed after a book is out is the gentle remembering<\/em> of the gift-like qualities of the book’s creation. It is this remembering that will carry us\u00c2\u00a0steadily into the next work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcelo in the Real World has been out there since March and I have been overwhelmed by its reception both critically by the professional reviewers as well as by the many, many people who have reviewed the book in their blogs or have commented upon it either publicly or by contacting me personally through this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franciscostork.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}