How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
All that I know about the relationship between publication and mental health was summed up in one line of the movie Cool Runnings, which is about the first Jamaican bobsled team. The coach is a four-hundred-pound man who had won a gold in Olympic bobsledding twenty years before but has been a complete loser ever since. The men on his team are desperate to win an Olympic medal, just as half the people in my classes are desperate to get published. But the coach says, "If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it." You may want to tape this to the wall near your desk. (28.36)
Nothing like '90s sports films to teach us about the literary life. If publishing is our main goal, we're bound to be disappointed. But if we really want to write, for ourselves or a few people we really respect, that's likely to produce a more real kind of satisfaction, even if we do get published.