MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AS AN EDITOR for The Writer was writing a column called “Lasting Effect,” which involved mining the magazine’s archives to find nuggets of past wisdom from the greats – Stephen King, Lois Lowry, Barbara Neely, Ursula K. Le Guin – that might still be relevant today. As long as you didn’t mind legions of dust and the occasional papercut, it was a fantastic gig. I distinctly remember the first time I headed back to my desk with a stack of archival volumes from our library. It was winter in Boston, the sun slanting low through the windows, and I flipped through each year with heady reverence, never knowing which literary titan might appear on the next page. But it wasn’t any particularly well-known name who reached through the pages to catch my wrist that day in December. It was the magazine’s longtime columnist Lesley Conger, in an advice-laden essay from the April 1959 issue called “Ecivda Spelled Backwards.”
Be bold when you write, Conger wrote. Don’t be timid. Don’t write little, wispy, fragile things unless you really prefer little, wispy, fragile things. Don’t write little, wispy, fragile things because you’re scared of big ones.
I suddenly went very, very still at my desk.
Don’t be afraid of your own ideas, no matter how Gargantuan; a grand and zesty idea, even imperfectly executed, has more hope in it than a little, timid, shivering idea, carried out
