Fortunate Moments Of Arduous Contrivance

Fortunate Moments Of Arduous Contrivance

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Fortunate Moments Of Arduous Contrivance “The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one’s own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would…

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Quality Of Inadequate Sentences

Quality Of Inadequate Sentences

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Quality Of Inadequate Sentences “And so too, in later years, when I began to write a book of my own, and the quality of some sentences seemed so inadequate that I could not make up my mind to go on with the undertaking. I would find the equivalent in Bergotte. But it was only then, when I read them in his pages, that I could enjoy them; when it was I myself who composed them, in my anxiety that they…

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Obsolete Lexicographer’s Mark Of Dread

Obsolete Lexicographer’s Mark Of Dread

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Obsolete Lexicographer’s Mark Of Dread “OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer’s attitude toward “obsolete” words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except…

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Rigor Mortis Has Set In

Rigor Mortis Has Set In

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Rigor Mortis Has Set In “I am beginning to be sorry that I ever undertook to write this book. Not that it bores me; I have nothing else to do; indeed, it is a welcome distraction from eternity. But the book is tedious, it smells of the tomb, it has a rigor mortis about it; a serious fault, and yet a relatively small one, for the great defect of this book is you, reader. You want to live fast, to…

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Squeeze Your Unfortunate Brain

Squeeze Your Unfortunate Brain

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Squeeze Your Unfortunate Brain “You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.”–Gustave Flaubert

Track The Value Of A Writer’s Time

Track The Value Of A Writer’s Time

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Track The Value Of A Writer’s Time “There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”–E.B. White

Story-tellers Live Life Learning

Story-tellers Live Life Learning

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Story-tellers Live Life Learning “A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”–Ursula K….

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Sublime Fool Wrestling Creative Muses

Sublime Fool Wrestling Creative Muses

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Sublime Fool Wrestling Creative Muses “If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes…

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Schemes Gang Aft Agley

Schemes Gang Aft Agley

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Schemes Gang Aft Agley In his poem “To A Mouse”, Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men, gang aft agley”. Murphy’s Law, named after Captain Edward A. Murphy in 1949, basically reiterates this: something will always go wrong. Take, for example, my last actual post. When it was posted on January 2nd, I was expecting to get back to something close to a schedule. Obviously, my schemes went awry. Between caring for the generation before me…

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