Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [465]

I’ve never felt that I was making any of this up—not the name, Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation. I wish I could believe it was all supernatural, and that I’m getting messages from God. But then, I don’t believe in that kind of God. All I do is observe and take notes, trying to put things down in ways that are as powerful, as simple, and as direct as I feel them. I can never do that. I keep trying, but I can’t. I’m not good enough as a writer or poet or whatever it is I need to be. I don’t know what to do about that. It drives me frantic sometimes. I’m getting better, but so slowly. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 465

Note

A founded religion whose founder is anxious about her prose. The chiasmus “discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation” gives the mystical claim intellectual rigor, then the passage abruptly descends into ordinary writerly despair (“not good enough as a writer or poet or whatever it is I need to be”) — conviction and inadequacy kept in the same breath.