Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
~ Charlie Chaplin
And you so often don't realize you are being protective of your ego until bits of it accidentally fall away. I didn't realize I was writing So Late into the Night, my long poem in ottava rima, for an audience until it got turned down by a couple of publishers. I loved it so much I kept rewriting it, keeping in mind Murat Nemet-Nejat's great line: If no one is buying the bread you're baking, you can make it as salty as you want. I anticipated that poem never getting published so I wrote it to please myself only—and it became my most admired (or well-reviewed, anyway) work.
~ Charlie Chaplin
And you so often don't realize you are being protective of your ego until bits of it accidentally fall away. I didn't realize I was writing So Late into the Night, my long poem in ottava rima, for an audience until it got turned down by a couple of publishers. I loved it so much I kept rewriting it, keeping in mind Murat Nemet-Nejat's great line: If no one is buying the bread you're baking, you can make it as salty as you want. I anticipated that poem never getting published so I wrote it to please myself only—and it became my most admired (or well-reviewed, anyway) work.