Preface to Nectar of the Ordinary stories.
I am not even sure if anyone besides the people to whom these stories belong will read what follows in the collection. Maybe even they won’t. My sentences together serve as a frame to hold a snap shot of their element’s thumbprint on our big blue marble. A statement persistently orbits my peripheral consciousness as I begin to write. Over a decade ago, more years than I want to count specifically, a Literature professor in college tirelessly told the students in his class, every time staring directly at me (perhaps unintentionally each time), that all writers have an audience in mind and most importantly they write because they ... read more »
Tagged process of writing, questions, words
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader- not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” ~ E.L. Doctorow
“If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story.” ~ Barbara Greene “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”
~ Robert Frost
“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.”
~ Richard Harding Davis
“If a book comes from the heart, it will continue to reach other hearts.” ~ Thomas Carlyle
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Tagged process of writing
From:
www.onlinecollege.org 25 Famous Thinkers and Their Inspiring Daily Rituals
January 11th, 2010
Many find it interesting to glimpse inside the lives of famous thinkers in an effort to understand where such thought and intelligence is rooted. In that vein, here is a peek into the routines and rituals that writers, philosophers, and statesmen have depended on to keep their work on track and their thoughts flowing. Whether you need inspiration to make it through the next college semester or are working on a future best-selling novel, explore these daily rituals you may want to incorporate into your life.
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Tagged process of writing
There are times when words come to you from a source which floats somewhere between a higher consciousness at 3:30 a.m. and a restless unconsciousness. Sometimes you are able to get up to jot these thoughts down; more often, you tell yourself you will remember them in the morning and better sleep habits is what you need to practice. You wake up to find memory of the words like dew on grass–what can you possibly do with it?
Tonight I woke up to a sentence that I want to write in Her Sizwe, the damn skeleton I carry with me like a box of matches. It just came. It was better than what I could have ... read more »
From the December 21st and 28th New Yorker Issue.
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Tagged random
