An Amazing Complement

So I started to write a poem for my blog today but it was turning out really crappy and trite.

I hate it when that happens.

Especially since the chair of my thesis committee gave me such an amazing complement yesterday. And he didn't just say it privately, that is what is so nice. He wrote an email to myself, and the two other profs on my committee regarding my latest draft. He first of all said that except for some minor changes it is ready for defense and that we should set it up for October. Thank God. Then, speaking to me he said:

"Brad, the latest draft is a significant improvement from the previous one, and there are moments where your writing reads quite beautifully."

Moments where your writing reads quite beautifully. There is nothing in the world that is a better complement to a writer, especially one who is creatively minded as well as analytically so. I have known for a long time that I could write well, and that in any class I could pull an "A" from a paper without too much effort. But to be told publicly that my writing reads beautifully is such a huge thing for my confidence. It is important to me that I be able to think and write intelligently and with clarity, but it is even more important to me as a lover of literature that I be able to write even just a sentance or two in a piece that strikes and grabs a reader. One that makes a reader pause, go back and read the sentence again because it moved them in some way.

That and the fact that if he thinks that even only in "moments" my writing reads beautifully then I have a LOT better chance of passing my defense!!! Believe me I am getting nervous about that!