Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
This is the kind of book promotion I like
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Another great poem
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
Out of the
night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
The books of M. Scott Peck and Rollo May
Years ago,
I discovered the writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, who wrote a book that
helped to change my way of looking at some important aspects of my life. ‘The Road Less Traveled’ (published in
1978) was an eye-opener of a book, one that I have recommended to many people
through the years. The book’s basic tenet is that life is difficult and that personal and spiritual growth is a lifelong process involving hard work, struggle, pain and
introspection. Reading it made me realize at a fairly young age that it was
possible to change your life; that the hand of cards you were dealt was not a
permanent hand. It was possible to rise above personal and family problems and the
inefficient and often stagnant ways of dealing with them. But the key was to be
actively invested in doing so; it was important to understand and accept that the
work involved would be difficult and that there would be no immediate
gratification. Peck is one of the few authors to whom I have written; I was so
enamored of his book. Even though I was disappointed to subsequently learn about
his alcoholism, marital infidelities, and other problems, it made me realize
that he probably wrote the book as much for himself as for his readers. I
wanted him to be a person without faults; there are no such persons, and he
would be the first to admit that. He was not always able to practice what he
preached. I also read Peck’s ‘People of
the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil’, published in 1983. It is a much
more disturbing book since it presented and discussed his patients, albeit
anonymously, who had chosen to live in the darkness of their problems
(pathological lying, cheating, neuroses, anxieties, obsessions, banal evil)
rather than seek the light of truth (facing themselves and their problems and fears),
health and recovery.
Rollo May,
another of my favorite authors, was a psychiatrist who wrote many excellent
books, such as The Meaning of Anxiety, Love and Will, and The
Courage to Create, published in 1950, 1969, and 1975, respectively. My
father introduced me to his writings when I was a teenager. I read The Meaning of Anxiety when I was in my
early twenties, and it was one of those light-switch books—books that have the ability
to push you from darkness into the light. The power of the printed word never
ceases to amaze me. Little wonder that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Words
can change your perspective on things, and in this case, May’s words changed my
perspective on anxiety. Rather than viewing it as a major problem to be eliminated on the path to mental health, his view was that anxiety is necessary for personal growth, and
that it forces us to act, in order to alleviate the anxiety or to help us confront
what it is we are anxious about (what we fear?). Doing so allows us to live
life to the fullest. In Love and Will,
May discusses different types of love and how they should be intertwined. The
ideas of purpose and responsibility related to love are discussed at length. In
The Courage to Create, May writes
about the importance of creativity and art in our lives; this quote from his
book best describes his views, beautifully so:
“If you wish to understand the psychological
and spiritual temper of any historical period, you can do no better than to
look long and searchingly at its art. For in the art the underlying spiritual
meaning of the period is expressed directly in symbols………They (the artists) have the power to reveal the underlying meaning of any period precisely
because the essence of art is the powerful and alive encounter between the
artist and his or her world."
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Getting to know Wattpad
I’ve
discovered yet another social media community, Wattpad.com, a community of
writers and readers, more specifically, of writers who post their works online
for Wattpad members to read, comment and vote on. It appears to be quite an
active and engaged community, with the support of no less than the
internationally-known Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Wattpad describes its
community thusly in the About Us
section on their website:
Wattpad is the world's largest
community for discovering and sharing stories. It's a new form of entertainment
connecting readers and writers through storytelling, and best of all, it's
entirely free. With thousands of
new stories added every day, an incredibly active community of readers, and the ability to read on your
computer, phone, or tablet, Wattpad is the only place that offers a truly
social, and entirely mobile
reading experience.
I’m
fascinated by this community, and became a member this past weekend; it’s
enticing to think about sharing my writing this way, and I’ve already done so.
I posted two short stories as a way to get started: one entitled An Unusual Offer;
the other entitled Before My Eyes. They will eventually be part of a collection of short stories that I plan on publishing. If you want to read them, you'll have to join the Wattpad community.
I know that I’ve got to work at reading others’ works, following other authors, and commenting and voting on others’ works—in other words, I’ve got to contribute if I want feedback on my own work. So that’s my new adventure these days; I’m writing and taking the chance of posting my short stories and hoping for good feedback and constructive criticism. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes from time to time.
I know that I’ve got to work at reading others’ works, following other authors, and commenting and voting on others’ works—in other words, I’ve got to contribute if I want feedback on my own work. So that’s my new adventure these days; I’m writing and taking the chance of posting my short stories and hoping for good feedback and constructive criticism. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes from time to time.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Stuck, unstuck, willingness and unwillingness--what the experts have to say about women and their goals
I listened to
Sheryl Sandberg’s 15-minute TED talk from 2010 today and found it to be a good
talk, albeit a superficial one, from the standpoint of lack of time and the
inability to delve deeper into the subject matter. That is apparently why she
wrote her book Lean In: Women, Work, and
the Will to Lead, to delve deeper into the problem of women lacking the
will to lead. I haven’t yet read it, but plan on doing so. Women are not choosing
to be leaders; they are undermining themselves by not ‘sitting at the table
with the men and by leaving before they leave’ (thinking about having children
long before the situation presents itself and adjusting their career goals accordingly), as Sheryl Sandberg says. Funny how
not much has changed since the 1980s when I was starting out in the work world.
Thirty
years ago, Susan Schenkel, PhD, a psychologist, published an excellent book
called Giving Away Success—Why Women Get
Stuck and What to do about it. You can find it on Amazon (Kindle edition) at
http://www.amazon.com/Giving-Away-Success-Women-Stuck-ebook/dp/B00DS5QKJE/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1390668266.
I read it when it first came out, at a time in my life when I was really just
starting out in the work world and when I devoured most of these kinds of
books. Games Mother Never Taught You
by Betty Lehan Harragan was another favorite: http://www.amazon.com/Games-Mother-Never-Taught-You/dp/0446357030/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390677004&sr=1-1&keywords=games+mother+never+taught+you.
The kinds of books that told women to believe in themselves, to take themselves
and their dreams and goals seriously, how to tackle the business world, how to
get ‘unstuck’ when you were caught in a spiral of inaction and lack of ambition,
how to deal with anger, assertiveness and aggressiveness, and how to identify
negative thoughts and thought patterns—in order to be able to commit to a career
or career path. Schenkel’s book was a cut above the rest; not only did it
clearly identify the problems women faced, but it came with solutions for how
to deal with them, helpful solutions that I use to this day when I get ‘stuck’.
I recently re-read specific sections of her book and it is every bit as
relevant today as it was when I first read it. Perhaps more so, because I
finally understood that I have been stuck in my own negative thought patterns
concerning my present job during the past four years, and that I needed to practice
‘thought stopping’ as suggested by Schenkel. Believe me, it works. But it took
a long time for me to get around to ‘wanting’ to stop the negative thoughts. Why, is the operative question. Is it more
comfortable to wallow in the negative feelings? Do they allow us to remain
inert, to not make a decision, to not want to change your life? I could answer
yes and I could answer no—because whatever I answer could not answer the
question 100%. I think it is our subconscious thoughts about ourselves that keep
us stuck. Every now and then they surface, become conscious thoughts, and give
you a glimpse of your feet stuck in mud. Sometimes it feels like quicksand; if
you attempt to move, you will only sink deeper into it. Sheryl Sandberg has a
lot of good points that women in this generation need to hear, but Susan
Schenkel dealt with the problems of women getting in their own way already
thirty years ago. Women are still getting in their own way; but we don’t always
know why. We give up when we should fight, we fight when we should give in, we
don’t bounce back from failure very well, and we have a harder time visualizing
ourselves being happy and an easier time visualizing that a lot of what happens
to us is our fault. That doesn’t describe all women all the time, but it
describes a lot of women I know, including myself, at least some of the time.
That is why I want to dissect Sheryl Sandberg’s thoughts, to figure out how
much of my own current situation is me and how much of it is
externally-influenced. Because it’s important that her book not cause women
more stress in the sense of not being able to live up to the author’s
convictions. We don’t need a book to tell women the problems with them without
giving them the answers, or at least attempting to. There are no perfect
answers because the world we live in is not perfect.
When I was
younger, I was the type to take the bull by the horns and to go after what I wanted.
I did it as a student in grammar school, high school, and college—I wanted good
grades and a degree in science. I got them. I did it each summer when I wanted
a summer job, and got them as well. I was persistent and stubborn and didn’t
give up in the face of defeat. I went after any and all opportunities that were
thrown at me during the seven years I worked at a major research center in New
York, and they were not few because it was a great place to work. I didn’t get
everything I wanted there (to do a PhD and continue to work at the same time). So I understood after seven years there that it was time to
move on. And I did. The problem was figuring out what to do with my life. As
luck and fate would have it, I moved abroad and started a new life in a new
country. I ended up doing a PhD, working in medical research, and doing what
was necessary to advance in my profession (post-doc and junior scientist—all grant-funded
from external sources based on grant applications that I had written). I came up
with my own research ideas that funded my salary. My company didn’t have to pay
my salary since I managed to drag in funds to pay myself. I didn’t doubt my
abilities too much along the way. I reached the level of professor competency,
and that’s where I am today. But the workplace as we know it has changed
dramatically just within the past decade—there are budget cuts and high
personnel turnover rates; people come and go and there is very little stability
or continuity in the practice of research. You must reinvent yourself
continually, and you're only as good as your last publication. And as everyone knows, it's a catch-22 situation; you must have grant money to get students in order to publish, but it's your publications that get you grant funding. I know it’s time to leave this organization; I knew that already
four years ago. However, I’ve gotten stuck in negative thought patterns: too old
to change jobs (reinforced by many well-meaning people I know); too specialized
(also reinforced by well-meaning colleagues); won’t be able to compete with the
younger crowd; too many responsibilities to others (a typical excuse if ever
there was one—they still need me); can’t keep up with the pace of things and
won’t have the energy to keep up (how do I know until I try?); and the list
goes on. I’m scared and I find that strange. I left my birth country and moved
myself across an ocean to another country, started a new life (personal and
professional), made new friends, got adjusted to another culture, and---I’m
afraid? Of finding a new job, of the unknown, of not being wanted, of making a mistake, of new expectations from
others, of the devil I don’t know rather than the devil I do know, of not being
good at something new. And I’m confused about whether to stay or to go, whether
to give more chances to a situation I know won’t change or to take the
leap into the unknown. I will re-read the two books that had such a profound
influence on my early work life and give Sandberg's a chance too. But I also want to reconsider the definition
of success at this point in my life, and to figure out whether I really want to
be in the business world at all, or whether I want to pursue the creative
dreams I have for myself. Because it has occurred to me that one of the reasons
I might be dragging my feet about changing jobs is that I want to invest most
of my waking energy in my creative endeavors. I don’t think that’s the excuse
for staying put, but I’m willing to do what’s necessary to figure that out. I
believe in my writing, but entering into the creative world is every bit as
daunting as it was starting out in the research world. I want to be sure it’s
the right thing, but I know deep down that I’ll never get that confirmation.
Life doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to take the leap first.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Saying goodbye to Ray Bradbury: Your books live on.
I have previously written about some of my favorite authors
and books, both this year (February 8th) and last year (August 30th).
I included sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury as one of my favorite authors and The
Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion
Wine, and The Illustrated Man as some of my
favorite books. I think when I read The
Martian Chronicles for the first time, I got hooked. Just plain hooked.
Hooked on a genre of writing that drew me in and kept me engrossed for much of
my life thus far. I couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen years old
when I first read The Martian Chronicles.
Even at that age I understood that we might not be alone in the universe. And
even though there may not be Martians on Mars, Bradbury’s book was a
fascinating entry into a world that has never stopped intriguing me. We wonder
about what is out there in space, and we imagine all sorts of alien creatures
and humanoids. In The Martian Chronicles,
we as humans did not expect to be met by creatures who could read our minds in
an effort to make us ‘feel at home’, only to turn on us in the darkness. The Martians
we met on Mars looked like us—family and friends from home—and the travelers
from earth, who missed home, were easily led down that path.
I wrote a post
about The Martian Chronicles and Solaris on June 21st, 2011.
In honor of Ray Bradbury, who passed away on June 5th at the age of
91, I am including part of this post today, the part that has to do with The Martian Chronicles. Rest in peace,
Ray Bradbury and thank you for your wonderful books. For those of you who have
never picked up his books, now is the time to do so.
-------------------------------
(Excerpted from my post The Martian Chronicles and Solaris
from June 21st, 2011):
I have
been a fan of science fiction since I was a teenager, probably from the time I
first read The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I also read Something Wicked This Way
Comes, The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451, and enjoyed them all. Bradbury is a
thought-provoking and outstanding sci-fi writer (90 years old and still with
us), and his books have a haunting quality about them. You don’t forget them
easily. I don’t recall all of the stories in The Martian Chronicles in detail, just that there were
certain parts that were quite scary in that what was suggested was considerably
terrifying. You just knew that something terrible was going to happen to some
of the earthlings who made it to Mars, and it did (the third expedition was
liquidated by the Martians who posed as dead family members such that the
deluded (and lonely) crew ended up just giving in to the delusions). The
following passage from the chapter ‘April 2000: The Third Expedition’ is an example of the type of
terror Bradbury could instill in his readers: “And wouldn’t it be horrible
and terrifying to discover that all of this was part of some great clever plan
by the Martians to divide and conquer us, and kill us? Sometime during the
night, perhaps my brother here on this bed will change form, melt, shift and
become another thing, a terrible thing, a Martian. It would be very simple for
him to just turn over in bed and put a knife into my heart……..His hands were
shaking under the covers. His body was cold. Suddenly it was not a theory.
Suddenly he was very afraid……..Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them
back. He slipped from bed and was walking softly across the room when his
brother’s voice said, ‘Where are you going?’…...’For a drink of water’. ‘But
you’re not thirsty’. ‘Yes, yes, I am’. ‘No, you’re not’. Captain John Black
broke and ran across the room. He screamed. He screamed twice. He never reached
the door”.
This was
all Bradbury wrote about the actual murder of Captain John Black and the
massacres of the crew of the third expedition. You knew that murders were
occurring in the rest of the Martian houses who had crew members staying with
them because they were the ‘families’ of these crew members, but Bradbury
didn’t have to elaborate at all about them, because it was left to our
imaginations to figure out what was happening to them all. Superb sci-fi horror
in a category all its own.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Some of my favorite books
As promised in my post about writers from a few days ago--some of my
favorite authors and their books:
·
Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure; Tess of the d’Urbervilles;
The Mayor of Casterbridge; Far from the Madding Crowd
·
Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady; The Golden Bowl;
Washington Square; The Wings of the Dove; The Turn of the Screw
·
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations; A Christmas Carol;
A Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield
·
Francois Mauriac: Viper’s Tangle; Therese; The Woman
of the Pharisees; The Desert of Love
·
C.S.
Lewis: The Screwtape Letters; Mere Christianity; Surprised by Joy; Miracles;
The Problem of Pain
·
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea; Good Morning, Midnight; Smile
Please; Quartet
·
John Le Carre: A Perfect Spy; The Spy Who Came in from
the Cold
·
John Steinbeck: The Winter of Our Discontent; Of Mice
and Men; Cannery Row
·
Dorothy Sayers: Whose Body?; Strong Poison;
Have His Carcase; Hangman’s Holiday; Gaudy Night; Busman’s Honeymoon
·
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Life
is Elsewhere; Immortality
·
Rollo May: The Meaning of Anxiety; Love and Will; Man’s
Search for Himself; The Courage to Create
·
George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner
·
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
·
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
·
Henry David Thoreau: Walden; Civil Disobedience
·
Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles; Something Wicked
This Way Comes; Fahrenheit 451; Dandelion Wine; The Illustrated Man
·
Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain; The Terminal
Man; Timeline
·
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Ideas in the darkness and in the light of day
The best
time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
— Agatha Christie
If Agatha
Christie said this, then it is not so difficult for budding writers (like
myself) to admit the same. I think of all the times when I’m doing housework,
and ideas pop into my head, and I make a mental note to write them down before
they just flit away into the vast cosmos. I wonder if there is a world
somewhere—the world of lost ideas. I wonder if there is a way of entering that
world, in order to retrieve some of the ideas that got away. Because they do
slip away if you don’t catch them when they first appear. Many of them appear
while doing mundane chores. But many of them come vividly to life in the
darkness. How many times I lie awake at around 5am and ideas rush into my head,
and I ponder each of them, turning them over and over in my mind. Can this
work? Can I write about that? How will I develop this or that character? Should
I do so? And so on. Some of the ideas don’t pass muster in the light of day. It’s
odd what the early morning darkness will do for your creativity. Some of the
ideas are wild, fantastical, and completely irrational—but they are exciting to
think about because there is an element of dare and bravado to them; that can
disappear in the waking light. My mind is somehow braver in the dark, and it is
an aspect of me that I don’t understand. This can also be true for finding
solutions to problems—personal or otherwise. I come up with such wonderful
solutions in the dark—things I’m going to say (and mean), decisions that will
be irrevocable--the new me with a tough no-nonsense attitude. I come up with
quips and sarcastic retorts to rude people and can plan out my replies to those
who like to talk over me when I try and speak. And then the dawn breaks and in
the light of day I’m not so tough. I have to struggle to be brave and to
remember my promises to myself made in the dark. And it is the same with
writing. The ideas are there--hundreds of ideas. I don’t lack for ideas for
what to write about. The problem is choosing the one idea I want to focus on.
The ideas have probably been there for years, inside of me, waiting for an
opening. Sitting down and actually writing about them releases them, expands
them, solidifies them and makes them real. But in the darkness they all seem so
viable. In the light, they are not. In fact, some of them can seem quite
ridiculous.
I try to
pay attention to my inner voice, the one that tells me what path is probably
best to follow these days. My heart is in accord with this inner voice. So I have
often experienced that my inner voice tells me to have several projects going
at one time—I work a little on one of them during one week, and then suddenly
the following week, my inner voice suggests that I focus on another project. I
don’t know if it is like this for other writers. For example, I am currently
working on a book of short stories and a science fiction novel, but the book
that is ready to go at present is a book of reflections about workplaces and
the work world that I’ve been mulling over for the last month or so. Most of
the essays and reflections that make up the book were written during the past
two years, but it is the actual compilation of these that took some time. How
best to present them, which ones should come first--that sort of thing. It all
fell into place, and once again I marvel at the creative process. I understand so
little of it, but it is so exhilarating to experience. The freedom associated
with it is like nothing I have ever experienced before, and once you taste that
freedom, you will not trade it away for anything.
Writers I’d like to interview
This idea
came to me during a conversation with my husband this morning on our way to
work. And then I started to think about some of my favorite books and their authors. Who would I like to have a really interesting conversation with, and
would that necessarily be the result if it was possible? Some of the writers
who came to mind (both living and deceased), in no particular order, are as
follows: Thomas Hardy, Henry James, John Le Carre, John Steinbeck, Ray
Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem, Charles Dickens, Francois Mauriac, CS Lewis, Jean
Rhys, Milan Kundera, George Eliot, Rollo May, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte,
Henry David Thoreau, Michael Crichton, and Dorothy Sayers. These are just a few
of many; but I think these particular writers had a remarkable influence on me
at different times in my life. I’ve read at least one book by each of these
authors; in many cases, three or more.
I wonder how
it would be to interview them; I certainly have many questions I’d love to ask
them. Questions about how they write; the process of writing--do they sit and
write each day? Where do they get their inspiration from? When did they know
that they had this talent, this ability to put words on paper that ended up
being a book, and when did they decide to reveal that talent to the world? I
would ask them how it felt to finish their books; especially the first one. How
did it feel to read a review of their first book? How did it feel to earn a
living by writing, and was/is it possible? Or do you always need to have a
backup job in case the writing doesn’t provide a comfortable-enough living? Do
they associate with other writers? Do they share their writings with others
during the process, or do they wait until the book is finished before they show
it to someone else? Are they ever nervous about how their books will be
received? How long did it take to write their individual books? Do they
re-write and edit constantly? Do they believe in a collective unconscious—a
collection of the archetypical personal experiences of many individuals that can
be shared with all those who wish to learn from them or utilize them for their
creative works? I will include some of these authors’ books in a future post—the
ones I call my favorites.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Brain food
I thought I would write a short post today about a blog I
love reading and getting updates from via Twitter: The Scholarly Kitchen. It was established by the Society for
Scholarly Publishing; I’ll let their written statement about their mission
(found on the blogsite) tell their story for me.
--The mission of
the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) is "[t]o advance scholarly
publishing and communication, and the professional development of its members
through education, collaboration, and networking." SSP established The Scholarly Kitchen blog in
February 2008 to keep SSP members and interested parties aware of new developments
in publishing.
......................................
The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog. Opinions on The Scholarly Kitchen are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by their respective employers.—
......................................
The Scholarly Kitchen is a moderated and independent blog. Opinions on The Scholarly Kitchen are those of the authors. They are not necessarily those held by the Society for Scholarly Publishing nor by their respective employers.—
I recently joined the Society for Scholarly Publishing
because I was so impressed with their blog. The posts are clever and intelligently-written—reading
them is like eating a gourmet meal—apropos their being a scholarly kitchen. You
enjoy the meal and know you’ll come back for more. There is a panel of authors,
whose professions vary from CEO/publisher of a medical journal to senior editor
to associate dean to consultant—a broad spectrum of professionals who know what
they’re talking about.
You won’t regret dining here: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/
Friday, December 30, 2011
A little humor from authors about writing
·
I’m
writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.
Steven Wright
·
I
love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
·
A
critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan
·
I
just wrote a book, but don’t go out and buy it yet, because I don’t think it’s
finished yet.
Lawrence Welk
·
A
blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.
Sidney Sheldon
·
All
the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary – it’s just a
matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
Somerset Maugham
·
Asking
a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it
feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton
·
A
good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed
envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a
temptation to the editor.
Ring Lardner
·
A
young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning
writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.
Marguerite Yourcenar
·
Writing
a novel is like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself.
But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I’m going
down the wrong hole here.
Chang-rae Lee
·
Most
writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.
Richard Curtis
·
It
took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t
give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley
·
Writing
a novel is like paddling from Boston to London in a bathtub. Sometimes the damn
tub sinks. It’s a wonder that most of them don’t.
Stephen King
·
Being
a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.
Lawrence Kasdan
·
Everywhere
I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that
they don’t stifle enough of them.
Flannery O’Connor
·
It’s
a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
Andrew Jackson
·
There
are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they
are.
Somerset Maugham
·
Your
manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not
original, and the part that is original is not good.”
Samuel Johnson
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
What others have written about Christmas
o
Christmas
waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more
beautiful. ~Norman Vincent Peale
o
He
who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree. ~Roy
L. Smith
o
I
have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time;
a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long
calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their
shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were
fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on
other journeys. ~Charles Dickens
o
Happy,
happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days;
that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport
the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own
fire-side and his quiet home! ~Charles Dickens, The Pickwick
Papers, 1836
o
There
has been only one Christmas - the rest are anniversaries. ~W.J. Cameron
o
Christmas
is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us
that we're here for something else besides ourselves. ~Eric Sevareid
o
Our
hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are
better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at
Christmas-time. ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
o
Christmas
is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial
flame of charity in the heart. ~Washington Irving
o
Gifts
of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry
Christmas. ~Peg Bracken
o
Instead
of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the
year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true
sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish.
Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.
~Francis C. Farley
o
It
is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air. ~W.T. Ellis
o
For
centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means
fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.
~W.J. Ronald Tucker
o
I
sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into
it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for
me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.
And thus I drift along into the holidays - let them overtake me unexpectedly -
waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself: "Why,
this is Christmas Day!" ~David Grayson
Friday, November 25, 2011
What John W. Gardner said
Who was
John W. Gardner? An intelligent, wise and forward-thinking man, who served as
the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson.
I saw one of his quotes today posted on Twitter, and it struck me with its
wisdom. This was the quote—‘We are all faced with a series of great
opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems’. I thought about
how this somehow sums up much of what is going on in society at present—if opportunities
really become nothing more than impenetrable problems, then all the talk about
changing the world for the better will be nothing more than hot air because we
will be defeated by the rampant pessimism that is ever present in trying to bring
about change in the world. If a society can say that its problems are insoluble,
then the individuals living in that society don’t have to step up to the plate
and take responsibility for changing things for the better. Fear of failure /
fear of success? Interesting words from an interesting man.
·
True
happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
·
Some
people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.
·
Men of integrity, by their very existence,
rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral
squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.
·
The cynic says, "One man can't do
anything." I say, "Only one man can do anything."
·
Excellence is doing ordinary things
extraordinarily well.
·
Some people have greatness thrust upon them.
Very few have excellence thrust upon them.
·
The idea for which this nation stands will not
survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable
mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every
phase of life.
·
America's
greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral
commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly
self-destructive.
·
The hallmark of our age is the tension between
aspirations and sluggish institutions.
·
The ultimate goal of the educational system is
to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will
not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that
education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
·
Much education today is monumentally
ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we
should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
·
One of the reasons people stop learning is that
they become less and less willing to risk failure.
·
It is hard to feel individually responsible with
respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
·
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
·
History never looks like history when you are
living through it.
·
Our problem is not to find better values but to
be faithful to those we profess.
·
The creative individual has the capacity to free
himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He
is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
What M.Scott Peck Said
M. Scott Peck (1936-2005)
was a psychiatrist and the best-selling author of a terrific book called The Road Less Traveled. I read it during
the 1980s and it had a profound effect upon my life in terms of helping me deal
with my life at that time and in making some necessary changes. I recommend it because it contains some real wisdom and advice on how to deal with life and its trials and joys.While Peck
himself didn’t always live up to the high ideals he espoused for others (he
didn’t always practice what he preached), he was an inspiration and a man of
wisdom, perhaps all the more so for his failings and weaknesses, and he shared his wisdom and thoughts in his writings.
·
“Until you
value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will
not do anything with it. ”
·
“The truth is
that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply
uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments,
propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and
start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
·
“Love is the
will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's
spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely,
both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to
love. We choose to love.”
·
“Love is the
free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite
capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”
·
“Genuine love
is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because
of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether
or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible
but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.”
·
“We must be
willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a
problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”
·
Each one of us
must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no
formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for
another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit,
and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. ”
·
“The difficulty we have in accepting
responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the
consequences of that behavior. ”
·
“Whenever we
seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting
to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity.
But this means we then give away our power to that entity. ”
·
“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do
anything else at the same time. ”
·
“It is only
because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. ”
·
“If we know exactly where we're going, exactly
how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn
anything. ”
·
“Human beings
are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND
tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.”
·
“Life is
difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great
truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know
that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no
longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult
no longer matters.”
·
“There is no
worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not
lived.”
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
My list of favorite fantasy/science fiction/horror authors and books
I have been a fan of fantasy/science fiction/horror literature for years, as I have mentioned in previous posts. There is something about this genre of literature that never ceases to fascinate me. I know many people who are completely uninterested in it, who find it boring because they say these types of stories are not real or logical. I have come to the conclusion that you are either a fan or you are not. There is no middle ground. I am a staunch fan. My mind was always stimulated by this type of literature; I had an active imagination as a child and could scare myself silly just thinking about the deformed creatures that were waiting for me behind the bedroom door or in the bathroom mirror. You would think that this fear would have stopped me from reading these types of books about alien worlds or strange creatures and the like. But it didn’t. And it was cool to imagine what other planets and worlds might look like, or how it would be to travel there and communicate with their inhabitants, even if it proved to be quite dangerous.
Some of the first books I can remember reading were fantasy novels for children, e.g. books by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; James and the Giant Peach) and CS Lewis. We read Edgar Allan Poe’s morbid tales of horror in grammar school and would discuss them at home around the dinner table in the evenings. Our teachers even organized movie sessions for us where we would watch films based on his books—Murders in the Rue Morgue comes to mind as a particularly violent story, although I believe we saw this in high school if memory serves me well. As a teenager I became fascinated with the books by Ira Levin and JRR Tolkien as well as by Ray Bradbury. I was drawn more and more to the idea that there are alternative worlds that we do not understand much about or that we cannot inhabit for one reason or another, or that there is alien life. That is the appeal of science fiction/fantasy to me. I don’t need to have this proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. I am not really interested in proof at all, although I think it is cool that much of science fiction is based on real facts. It is sufficient to me that these strange worlds and creatures exist in one form or another in the minds of their creators. I am interested in how the science fiction/horror/fantasy writers dreamed up the worlds they did; the fantastic stories about space and time travel, or how they managed to describe on paper the monsters that lived in the deep recesses of their brains. It is the creative process that interests me yet again. We are profoundly influenced as children by what we read, and I know that this is true for me. My parents never discouraged us from reading these kinds of books, hence the continued interest in them so many years later. I am including a list of favorite fantasy/science fiction/horror authors and their books that I have read and enjoyed during the past years.
1. Aldous Huxley—Brave New World
2. Bram Stoker—Dracula
3. Cormac McCarthy—The Road
4. CS Lewis—The Screwtape Letters; The Chronicles of Narnia; Out of the Silent Planet; Perelandra; That Hideous Strength
5. Doris Lessing—The Fifth Child
6. Douglas Adams—The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
7. Edgar Allan Poe—The Fall of the House of Usher; Murders in the Rue Morgue; The Pit and the Pendulum; The Premature Burial; The Tell-tale Heart
8. George Orwell—Nineteen Eighty-four; Animal Farm
9. H G Wells—War of the Worlds
10. Ira Levin—Rosemary’s Baby; This Perfect Day; The Stepford Wives; The Boys From Brazil
11. Isaac Asimov—Fantastic Voyage
12. JRR Tolkien—The Hobbit; Lord of the Rings Trilogy
13. Madeleine L’Engle--A Wrinkle in Time
14. Mary Shelley--Frankenstein
15. Michael Crichton—The Andromeda Strain; The Terminal Man; Timeline; Prey
16. Neil Gaiman—Coraline; The Wolves in the Walls; The Graveyard Book; Stardust
17. Ray Bradbury—Fahrenheit 451; The Martian Chronicles; Something Wicked This Way Comes; The Illustrated Man
18. Richard Matheson—I Am Legend
19. Scarlett Thomas--The End of Mr. Y
20. Stanislaw Lem--Solaris
21. Stephen King—Salem’s Lot; The Shining; Cujo
22. Tim Powers--The Stress of Her Regard
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Keeping up and catching up
I’ve been doing a lot of catch-up reading since I started vacation—a pile of magazines waiting to be read that have been sitting on my living room table waiting to be read for the past two months, maybe more. I am finally making a dent in the pile. Most of them are Time magazines, and what I’ve rediscovered is the pleasure of reading really good writing. Surprisingly, I’m hooked on the column of their economy writer--Rana Foroohar, the assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business who writes The Curious Capitalist column, and Fareed Zakaria, the editor-at-large who writes some really interesting essays about world politics and economics. They manage to make the American and global economic messes not only interesting from a historical standpoint, but understandable. God knows we need more writers like them, writers with a historical perspective. I also bought a recent Scientific American, which I haven’t read for years. It too was surprisingly interesting with its cover story about quantum mechanics—‘Living in a Quantum World’. Did I understand what I read? Yes, I actually did, even though I couldn’t really parrot it back to you in an intelligible fashion. But when I read the article, I had my ‘a-ha’ moments and then I know I’m in the presence of a good writer and an articulate teacher. When I actually begin to understand the meaning of the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment, that is a little miracle, considering that the derivation of some of the equations underlying this experiment was one of three final exam questions in my college inorganic chemistry class. Most of the class failed the exam, including yours truly. This is the paradoxical thought experiment that asks the question--is the cat is alive or dead (quantum states)—in other words, when is the cat alive and when is it dead and when are these separate quantum states? The answer may depend on an earlier random event. Could I have written a similar article? No, and luckily I don’t have to. But I consider myself lucky just to be able to understand it a little bit now, after years of working in science.
I used to have more magazine and newspaper subscriptions than I do currently, to The New Yorker and to the Financial Times among others. I had to give them both up; I just couldn’t keep up with the weekly and daily issues, respectively, even though I really did love The New Yorker stories and poems and cultural updates. Hope springs eternal, as the saying goes. I always thought I would have more time than I actually had to keep up with the weekly issues. I found out that you cannot prioritize everything and that for me to fit in all the things I want to do, writing, reading, working, reading for work, consultant work, time for family, a social life, etc. that I couldn’t do it all and I couldn’t read it all. I couldn’t keep up and in the end I couldn’t catch up either. The sad thing was that both The New Yorker and the Financial Times were delivered punctually. I never had to complain about late deliveries or no delivery.
The biggest myth that has been foisted upon us these past two decades is that we can do it all and have it all—pack it all into eighteen waking hours of each day. We can’t. We have to choose, we must choose, we must prioritize. We don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. No wonder we complain about high stress levels. If we don’t end up learning to (grudgingly) prioritize, we risk running ourselves ragged in an effort to keep up. And then all we end up doing is playing catch up. I’m giving up my membership to my health club for much the same reason. I am never there and I am paying a fee each month for the privilege of possibly attending the gym. Another myth shattered—that I will carve time out of my busy schedule to train. The thing I like best these days is to not be stuck indoors in a gym in order to train. I want to be outside breathing fresh air, running, biking or walking and taking in the scenery at the same time. I want to feel free, the freedom that comes from being outside in nature. I want that more and more these days. But when I am actually indoors, I want to be reading something good, something interesting, not wasting time watching TV. That aspect of my life I’ve actually changed. I have given up most of my TV watching. Do I miss it? No. So that’s progress. The rest of it will come with time. I am learning to prefer silence to mindless chatter. Good silence, the kind that makes you reflect on your life—both the practical and spiritual—and gives you the time to get to know yourself and to figure out what you really want from this life. I was told yesterday by an elderly woman I know and respect how much I’ve changed just this past six months. She hadn’t seen me since January, and meant that I no longer derived my identity via my work. She’s right. I don’t. I am happy because I have given up that heavy burden. I am ‘just me’ now, for all that’s worth.
So this is what vacation is good for too, not just for recharging the batteries, but for giving us the time to reflect on our lives and on what we want from our lives. Free time makes me appreciate silence, reflection, peace and quiet, relaxation, the art of ‘just being’, and the virtue of gratitude. We are lucky to have the time to reflect on our lives and lucky to be able to take some vacation. I’m focusing on ‘thank you’ these days. It’s a good way to start each day. As Meister Eckhart said “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
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