It's brazen of me to mention myself in the same sentence with the great Walt Whitman, but I've discovered we have something in common

—he devoted a large

part of his writing life to rewriting Leaves of Grass, just as I’ve devoted a large part of mine to rewriting Rewritten Rewrites Rewritten. Slim justification, I know, for sharing a sentence with him, but we all do it, don’t we?—take heart and a smattering of self-esteem from glimpses of ourselves in those we admire? I do, anyway. And Whitman isn’t my first. I’ve just as brazenly shared sentences with Ernest Hemingway, Leonard Cohen, E. B. White, and, as an artist, with Alex Colville. I'm working toward being brazenly mentioned, myself, in the same sentence with.

Progress is slow.