Summer Summer Moon
When the student is ready. This writing stuff is hard. At least for me. I’ve been collecting rejections (which, believe it or not, is an advance) and wondering whether it makes any sense to keep at it.
Then, I ran into Megan Hogan again. Megan, a red-headed sprite of a museum guard, and
I started exchanging personal stories about the artist’s life three years ago. She’s trained as a portrait and fine artist and works at her art when she’s not reminding two young ladies who came into the museum while I was talking with her that they could not bring their non-fat, decaf cinnamon mochas into the museum.
“Yes, when I just got out of art school, I went around to galleries, trying to get in and kept getting rejection after rejection.” Megan has a friendly, warm smile, but with this story she shook her head, bemused, not smiling.
“I know,” I said, “and it’s hard not to take it personally, after all they’re rejecting your work. Your work. I know you’re supposed to let it go and keep on, but I start to doubt my own judgment.”
“I know,” she said, “I know.”
Her lesson, the lesson I took from Megan on Saturday, was the old one, one I need to relearn quite often it seems. Keep working. Whether for an audience or not for an audience. Whether the owl comic she’s working on right now will be worth the four-color print run or not. Whether the people at the comic convention, when offered a chance to buy her comics, say, “Meh.” Keep working.
“In the end,” I said, “We have to please ourselves.” She smiled. My teacher. This day. Did I mention Megan is in her late twenties? Age is no barrier to self-awareness.