I’m an editor at Bloom, a site for and about writers working in midlife and beyond. This week I interviewed my friend Anne Elliott, who in addition to being an amazing writer (and dog-adopter, and ukulele player) is a former Wall Street financial analyst. Our conversation starts with a description of how Anne changed her life and ends with the verdict on which of her three dogs Anne would be if, you know, she could be a dog. I also asked her about how she stays the course as a writer—a job can be, let’s be honest, uniquely replete with rejection and loneliness. She said:
“Finding joy in the work itself is not disappointing. It’s never disappointing … I mean, we’re not really doing this to achieve, are we? We’re doing it because we love literature.
“Once I heard [the poet] James Longenbach say something along the lines of, “it doesn’t matter who writes the next great poem, what matters is that it gets written”. So whether I’m making the investment in my own writing or in the writing of one of my colleagues or a student, investing that time in unfinished writing is really important because that is the literature of the future.”
Read the full interview here.
(Thanks to Anne for the photo of Junior, Gracie and Fiona)