Wednesday, December 03, 2014

A Word of Encouragement for Writers - E. B. White and The Promise of A Blank Sheet of Paper



I subscribe to Gretchen Rubin's daily Moment of Happiness e-mail.  Today's quotation particularly caught my eye - both as a fan of E.B. White and as a writer.  It may surprise some of you to know that "Charlotte's Web" is one of my favorite stories, and that I once portrayed the challenging role of Wilbur the Pig on stage in a dramatic adaptation of that story.  The scene in which Wilbur bids adieu to Charlotte was one of the highlights of my career on the boards!

White's guidebook for writers, "Elements of Style," with his co-author Strunk has been a Bible for many nascent authors over the decades.  I love his sense of wonder and possibilities that he evokes in the quotation to follow.  I trust that it may inspire you - as it did me - to pick up a blank sheet of paper or a blank screen on your computer and start writing. His remembrance to his friend Stanley Hart White reminds us that we are never too young or too old to experience the wonder and adventure of writing.


"I’m glad to report that even now, at this late day, a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me—more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears. I can remember, really quite distinctly, looking a sheet of paper square in the eyes when I was seven or eight years old and thinking, ‘This is where I belong, this is it."


- E. B. White, letter to Stanley Hart White January 1947

 

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