This could be the problem.

Evidently, my life has been just a little too normal, or boring, or whatever. I read up on my dear Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea, today. Wow.

How best to summarize this? With irony, of course.

Seems all I need to do in order to be a widely regarded novelist is:

1. Have three husbands and multiple affairs. Sorry, honey.
2. Become an alcoholic. Sorry, kids.
3. Pose nude for an unknown artist. Sorry, everyone else.
4. Live as a destitute wanderer for several years. Sorry...I don't think so.
5. Die with an unfinished autobiography at my elbow. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

It's interesting, though, that adversity often leads to some sort of brilliance--or at least talent. She was an outcast at her English school, because her Caribbean accent was deemed too "strange" to correct. And there you go.

I guess the message is that, if we want our kids to be creative geniuses, we have to be really awful to them when they're young.

Yeah, there has to be a better way. If it's okay with you guys, I'm going to keep looking for that. For me and for my little lovies.

Comments

[Jen C.]

See also: Edgar Allan Poe

Re: Caribbean fiction: I LOVE "Annie John" by Jamaica Kincaid.

[Erin K. Rice]

Oh, Edgar. I know. And Hemingway. And Coleridge. And, and, and....

[Jen C.]

Keats. Poor Keats! Yes, the list goes on and on!