Flora was in that state where the spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak and wishes to go on holiday - and where the flesh in most cases wins hands down with a packed suitcase. It did so now. So she did what many a researcher both great and insignificant does when they are stuck. She yawned while contemplating how to catch the Muse by surprising Her. Almost invariably, the Muse has seen it all before - and also yawns.
I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking 'What have I achieved?' rather than 'What have I enjoyed?' I've been writing about a subject I love as long as I can remember--horses and the people associated with them, anyplace, anywhere, anytime. I couldn't be happier knowing that young people are reading my books. But even more important to me is that I've enjoyed so much the writing of them.
Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling.
Well, I definitely advise anyone who wants to write, write. Don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. Because a lot of people can be very discouraging to people who say they want to be a professional writer. If you want to do it, then chase it. Chase your dreams. Follow your heart. If that’s what you want, go after it. Write it out. You never know, you could be the next big thing.
Uma hipótese leva, na cabeça em que se estabeleceu ou mesmo na cabeça em que nasceu, uma vida comparável à de um organismo, já que assimila do mundo exterior apenas o que lhe é proveitoso e homogêneo. Quanto ao que é heterogêneo e prejudicial, ou ela não deixa que chegue perto, ou então, quando se trata de algo que é inevitável assimilar, expele-o novamente, intacto.
Every writer on this planet THINKS he is a great writer (why waste your entire life writing when you believe you are mediocre?) but its deemed socially unacceptable to actually speak out such thoughts. So, modesty is always a public concept and not an inner one. For that reason alone 'modesty' can actually be said to be the product of a large ego, for the ego is primarily concerned with survival and society rewards this dishonesty and tends to punish honesty (see Camus)
Assim como todo excesso numa atividade costuma levar ao contrário do que se pretendia, as palavras servem de fato para tornar os pensamentos compreensíveis, mas só até certo ponto. Quando esse ponto é ultrapassado, elas tornam os pensamentos a serem comunicados mais e mais obscuros. Encontrar tal ponto é uma tarefa do estilo e uma questão da capacidade de julgar, pois toda palavra supérflua age diretamente contra seu objetivo.
When the silence comes and the echoes of former life fades, what will have mattered will be, one made the world a bit better ‘fore their de-berthing. Writing, needs none, but the initial push of heart and passion, enabling the story to take flight, doves to clouds, clouds to doves, then to faithfully follow its unfolding through the quill transcribed, this self-perpetuating engine once born, with no further fuel required, to lift others in the journey, through time, for all time.
When the silence comes and the echoes of former life fades, what will have mattered will be, one made the world a bit better ‘fore their de-berthing. Writing, needs none, but the initial push of heart and passion, enabling the story to take flight, doves to clouds, clouds to doves, then to faithfully follow its unfolding through the quill transcribed, this self-perpetuating engine once born, with no further fuel required, to lift others in the journey, through time, for all time.
I've never heard a writer feel that way about a device with a screen. Oh sure, they're functional, practical. We would be lost without them. But just as we need to feel our feet on the earth, smell and taste the world around us, the pen scratching against the page, sensory and slow, is the difference between looking at a high-definition picture of a flower and holding that very same flower in your palm, feeling the brush of its petals, the color of its stamen rubbing off on your fingers.
Writers write because they're writers. Because their imaginations boil up inside of them, waiting to overflow into the written word. Ordinary people have little capacity for unyielding imagination, whereas the natural-born writer can do little but yield to the tug of imagination. Ordinary people may practice for years to 'perfect' the challenge of writing; but the one destined to create and destroy with the stroke of a pen, the strike of the key, their wells of imagination shall never run dry.
Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy.
Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.
The writer doesn’t want to disclose or instruct or advocate, he wants to transmute and disturb. He cherishes the mystery, he cares for it like a fugitive in his cabin, his cave. He doesn’t want to talk it into giving itself up. He would never turn it in to the authorities, the mass mind. The writer is somewhat of a fugitive himself, actually. He wants to escape his time, the obligations of his time, and, by writing, transcendthem. The writer does not like to follow orders, not even the orders of his own organizing intellect.
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ...this book...is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.
