Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Writing Gembun

written for Richard Bach and Robert Frost

A cursor blinks in the white of my screen.

darkness pools around stars
words I never said
words I never sent



FYI: Below are two of my favourite remarks on writing:

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. 

-- Richard Bach

And

Every time a poem is written, every time a short story is written, it is written not by cunning, but by belief. The beauty, the something, the little charm of the thing to be, is more felt than known.

-- Robert Frost


Added: I just found this "reading, writing and human connection" remark:

These days, it’s easy to feel that we’ve fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love. I mean: we have. But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.

George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, 2021.