Loving it is enough, isn’t it?

I read this in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and cried:

“Actually, you can be bad at something, Lily, but if you love doing it, that will be enough.”

There was relief in that crying. I can just do it. Just because I love it! Oh God, thank you.

But now, a week later, I ask myself, Is it enough?  Is it enough for me to just love doing it–writing?

Of course, soon after reading the Bees quote, I reread something (that I didn’t remember from any of the earlier readings) in The Intuitive Writer by Gail Sher.  Sher tells a story about a painter in the 30s, Harlen Hubbard, who from seeing his work ignored and rejected, eventually (ten years later) rejected all others, but not his work. He kept painting. Sher writes,

“‘No Paintings for Sale’ Hubbard firmly tacked across the door of his studio when he realized that the mere hope of sales and acceptance by other  artists had created a psychic trap. Not untl he could paint without even the possibility of selling, would he be able entirely to surrender to himself.”

And that surrender, that freedom for the work to come from Truth,  is more important to me than “the mere hope of sales and acceptance by other artists.”

So, Yes, for me, Loving doing it is enough.