not yet arrived: consoling words from Rebecca Solnit

Up since four with my students' work—their expectations essays, their prose poems on the color of life.  Blue factors in, theatrical skies.  Declarations and near opinions are wrestled onto the page.



But there are questions, too, and that is right: We as writers are always only just starting out, incessantly finding our way.  I wanted proof of this—or not proof, but consolation—and so I turned to this passage from Rebecca Solnit's "Open Doors." 

Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale has not yet arrived, is what must be found.  It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it's where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own.