A Solitary Apprenticeship

Our apprenticeship is harder than most. We don’t have a master to guide us. Well, we do have the MASTERS, but all that they left us is their work. Maybe we get lucky and find a journal or two — something, anything, to give us some insight into how they did it. It won’t do much good, though.

We apprentice alone with our thoughts and our pages. That’s it. A writing teacher is a nice thing to have, but the real education must be our own; self-directed, slow, and dogged, our work, to be of value, must truly be our own. The only way to achieve this is through the persistence of our solitary apprenticeships.

It can be lonely, but would you have it any other way?