At my last job, a colleague would stop by my table at lunch most days.
“That opening.”
“The numbers you used were spot on.”
“The ending got me.”
When you write for an organisation, your work goes out every week, and the people you work with read it. Some of them walk over to tell you.
Then I went independent. I control my time and choose my work. I write better now, I think.
What I don’t get anymore is the lunch table.
Days go by and nobody says a word about the work. Somewhere in those days I start to believe the work has slipped. I know it hasn’t. I believe it anyway.
In Ask the Dust, Bandini tells us everyone in his hotel read his first story. Later he admits: “Of them all only one read The Little Dog Laughed.” She was 14. She came to his room to ask for a copy.
On Saturday, a clinic director replied to a message I’d sent him. He said he had no work for me at the moment. But he said he was impressed by the skill, and that he was a big fan of good writing.
I read it twice.
Then I finished my lunch.