Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life… The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.. Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.~ Baz Luhrmann
]]>Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand?
But the essential question is, “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?” Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration.
If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.
When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. “Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?
~ Doris Lessing, On Not Winning the Nobel Prize
]]>#09 – Leo Tolstoy [1828-1910] Russian Author: Gave away entire fortune, froze to death in a railroad station on a cold winter night.
#08 – Virginia Woolf [1882-1941] British Author & Critic: Filled pockets with stones and drowned self in the River Ouse.
#07 – Euripides [480-406 B.C.] Greek Playwright: Mauled by a pack of wild dogs owned by Archelaus, the King of Macedonia, according to legend.
#06 – Sherwood Anderson [1876-1941] American Author: Complications of peritonitis in Colon, Panama, after ingesting a toothpick along with a hors d’oeuvre at a cocktail party.
#05 – Hart Crane [1899-1932] American Poet: While en route to New York aboard the S.S. Orizaba, leapt into the Caribbean Sea; reputedly said “Good-bye everybody.”
#04 – Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849] American Author: Died of “acute congestion of the brain” several days after he was discovered lying unconscious in a Baltimore street, wearing someone else’s tattered clothes.
#03 – Sergei Esenin [1895-1925] Russian Poet: Cut wrists, wrote a final poem in own blood (called “Do svidania drug moi” or “Goodbye my friend”) and hanged self in a hotel room in Leningrad.
#02 – John Berryman [1914-1972] American Poet: Jumped from a bridge over the Mississippi River; reputedly waved at passersby on way down.
#01 – Yukio Mishima [1925-1970] Japanese Author: Committed seppuku (hara-kiri) and was beheaded during failed attempt to overtake a Japanese garrison.
]]>Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
]]>Don’t be afraid, the darkness you’re in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin. I bet you’ve never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn’t frighten you . . . my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside.
- José Saramago
]]>Don’t make thoughts something more than what they are. They’ll rise to the challenge and before too long you’ll forget they’re thoughts and decide they’re you. Cut that off at the pass. [...] Stay awake and they won’t run your life. Fall asleep and you’ll find yourself wondering where your life went and who was in charge while you were gone.
- Laraine Herring, The Writing Warrior
]]>Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
]]>In order to change the character’s sex, I first search-and-replaced the male name with a female name, and then reversed all the pronouns. I expected this would create some jarring moments, but I didn’t expect them to show up in the first three paragraphs.
As I read the part of the story where my newly minted female character first appears on stage, I was struck with an almost overwhelming urge to describe her physically. Nowhere in the previous version of the story did I physically describe her male incarnation – no height, no weight, no haircut, no musculature, no eyes, no lips, no nothing — and yet now that her sex had changed, I felt intensely compelled to add markers of physical description. The role of this newly minted female character was to be the same as the earlier male’s role, her function in the story and the scene exactly the same (in the scene where she first shows up, she’s counting money – pretty gender neutral behavior) and yet now I had this intense urge to describe her black bobbed hair. Interesting, no?
Having come face to face with this strange reptilian urge, I’ve decided to fight it. I’m leaving her physically undescribed. If the male didn’t need it, then presumably the female doesn’t either.
]]>The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal.’ To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.
Via.
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