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55 BETSY LERNER  Writing sucks. Writing for anthologies that will benefit worthy causes sucks. Walking to work and seeing a flock of birds take flight and thinking “The Birds” and hoping you don’t get splat on sucks. And wondering all the while what it is people want anyway. Immortality? Fame! Waiting for your life to change. Don’t hold your breath. Or maybe you are one of those people who stand naked and say: I have to write. But is it a calling or a compulsion? And why? Did anyone ask you? Does anyone care? Why did you grab a notebook when you were eight and write down every indignity you suffered? And why as a middle-age mom with a good job and life that looks normal to the outside world, why do you still feel like such a freak and fall asleep at your computer . . . writing? Yes, yes, writing is important for all the reasons we all know. Dostoevsky wrote that everything important that needs to be said can fill two pages. Ha! Easy for him to say. But it has “the ring of truth.” That great golden ring. So if you only had two pages, what, my dear friend, would you say? Writing Sucks CH014.qxd 7/15/09 7:38 AM Page 55 ...

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