Just realized part of…

Just realized part of why I'm so crabby about my writing tonight. Taught Emerson and Thoreau earlier today -- a terrific, wide-ranging lecture that went really well, where I managed to cover the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, Deism, Ben Franklin, the Enlightenment, etc. and so on -- I mean, I don't know if the students liked it, but I really had fun linking all these brilliant writers and thinkers for them.

And of course, I've been just suffused in gorgeous prose while doing the prep for the class, and I think, unnoticed, a little envy demon has been sitting on my left shoulder, and a little despair demon on my right shoulder, both of them whispering that I will never ever be able to write, or think, as well as those guys did.

Okay, deep breath. I may not be able to match some of the greatest American writers that ever lived, who spent decades confronting some of the deepest and hardest issues of their time head-on.

My SF novel may not quite reach those heights. It is okay. It can still be a good book, and entertaining, and even, hopefully, worthwhile.

(We read Hawthorne and Poe next. That should be better.)