Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Sept 29

There was a wonderful article in the Sunday paper two weeks ago about a woman who spent thirty years as the sole cook and server in the midnight kitchen at the local children's hospital. It told her story-how she loved to cook and worked her way into the kitchen. How she saw a need to have food service in the dead of night- when parents could leave a sleeping child for a few moments, when nurses or doctors could take a breath. When people who hadn't eaten all day needed something warm and nutritious. The hospital allowed her to come in and run a grill. This grandma quietly developed her talents and spent them helping people-giving small comfort to any one who wondered in in the dead of night.
Writing can be like that. We develop our talents, write our stories, find our small publishers- only a few get the big splashy name and the big splashy money. But that doesn't stop the rest of us from developing our talents and letting our stories find there way into the hands of those few who need them. So- even if we never make a best seller list or six figure advances, like the lady in the midnight kitchen, we have served our talent well. Cheers!

3 comments:

  1. Yes. lovely analogy. Reminded me of this quote:

    "Artistic talent is a gift from God, and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it." Pope John Paul II

    I really do believe that - as lovely as being published would be - developing our gift, our talent, is the real goal of writing. Anything else (the fame! the fortune!) is a bonus.

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  2. Your post reminded me of a quote too. But I can't remember it verbatim. It went a little something like, "you don't have mean something to the whole world as long as you mean the whole world to someone."

    So, I guess we don't have to write for a vast majority, but for those single people out there who'll be touched by our stories the way we are.

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