Quote from: p69We have, as humans, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.
can relate
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Show posts MenuQuote from: p69We have, as humans, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.
QuoteIf you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately. [...The core, ethical concepts which you most passionately believe to be true or right] probably feel like givens, like no one ever had to make up, that have been true through all cultures and for all time. [...] the truth doesn't come out in bumper stickers. [...] Your whole piece is the truth, not just one shining epigrammatic moment in it.
QuoteHere is one sentence by Gary Snyder:
Ripples on the surface of water--
were silver salmon passing under--different
from the ripples caused by breezes
Those words, less than twenty of them, makes ripples clear and bright, distinct again.
QuoteTo be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass--seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colorectal theology, offering hope to no one.
QuoteShort Assignments
[..]Often when you sit down to write, what you have in mind is an autobiographical novel about your childhood, or a play about the immigrant experience, or a history of --oh, say--say women. But this is like trying to scale a glacier. [The way I deal with this is that I panic and panic and panic because of the weighty impossibility of the task... until] I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. // It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame.
[..] E. L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.