You have been at work for some time when he gets home. It’s the sort of day that has found you in the work and then necessarily away from it and then back at it again, exhilarated and discouraged by turns. This is good work; this is bad; this is god-awful in a way that makes you certain you will never go at it again, will never try again, should never– of all people in the universe of people who might possibly at some point consider putting pen to page– write anything ever at all. Ever.
But somewhere, at some point, things have looked up since then, since that dim time hours or even minutes ago when you were certain you should quit. Yes, things have looked up, and now you sit in front of your laptop, and you know– you know in ways that makes your blood thrill in your veins– that this is Good.
And he has just gotten home.
His dinner is there under the dishtowel, wanting its brief spell in the microwave. There he is, (one of) the son(s) you are so proud of, come home from basketball practice, from soccer practice, from Real Life out on the field or the court, where the blood runs because it has to, because of the pumping legs and heart, the ball in the goal, the sweat and the team and the effort that Means Something. Here he is, physically weary but mentally quick, intellectually alive (he is so smart). And he has been interested before.
“Mom,” he has said before in time out of mind, “Mom, can I read your book?”
He has said this before. He has said this More Than Once. He has had years to say this, months and weeks and days, those days (few and priceless) when you left them all to Go Write. He has known all his life (All His Life) that his mother is writing a book.
He has asked to read it before.
And now, you think to yourself. Now. Now here he is and his dinner is heated and this passage, just here, these pages, just this. This Is Good.
You will read it to him. Aloud. While he eats his dinner.
He is fifteen. He is sixteen. He is eating his microwaved dinner. He is sitting at the kitchen table where the laptop also sits, where his mother sits with her own words beating hard in her ears as if they’re her very own heart.
He eats, and he listens.
And you read it. Not too quickly, not without passion, not with too much. And it is Good, you are thinking to yourself as his fork scoops up his lentils, his broccoli, his whathaveyou. You are thinking This is Good.
Still you read. Still he eats. You hadn’t thought the passage was so long, really you hadn’t. And he is impassive; he is eating; he doesn’t care much for lentils. And still you are thinking that this work of your hands, this birth of your very own imagination, will be something that gets him, that makes him think, that makes him laugh. That he will join you in thinking it is Good.
It’s over. He chews. He swallows. He says,
“Why does everybody’s name begin with an ‘M’?”
Another luxury for an idle imagination is the writer’s own feeling about the work. There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.
—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
