take this to your people
I've had the sort of long weekend that was a mild torture of wanting to write, feeling like I could write, and not actually writing. Through nobody's fault but my own. It certainly wasn't a wasted weekend. Caught up on all the missed sleep, watched/listened to all six episodes of Pride & Prejudice --- and yeah, it finished just before the Persuasion debacle on telly --- and laughed a lot at the Aunt's mural painting efforts.
Mind you, having said that, I actually did do some writing just now. Curiously enough, also did a re-read of the novel from the very start and am mildly concerned about a suddenly perceived shift in tone. Or lapse of tone or something. Hunh. I dunno. I may also not actually care cos I've been gripped again with the forward momentum obsession.
The Aunt made me read this book she picked up from her masseuse --- don't ask --- which was One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths For Writers by Gail Sher. A bit too airy-fairy for my liking which prompted some vigorous discussion tween the Aunt and me. Cos I was coming at it from the writer point of view and found some of the advice quite problematic. Whereas the Aunt was coming at it from the Zen point of view and found some of it quite interesting even if she did end up skipping most of it towards the end.
Honestly, the power of her intellect amazes me sometimes. She's not a writer, she only really tolerates my incessant babbling about writing, and it's an incredibly hysterical thing that I can actually tell her stuff about an industry. But the power of her brain is so vast and incisive that she can metaphorise a book about writing and apply it to her life. Just makes me marvel quietly to myself.
This all began because she had to tell me that the word for 'crisis' in Japanese is made up of two characters, those being 'danger' and 'opportunity'. And she said "Tell this to your people!"
"My people? Who the hell are my people?"
"You know, your tortured mad writer people. Go tell this to your people."
"So I should take this to my people, a message to my people? Like Moses?"
Hehehe. I think she got that from this book but didn't find it myself.
Still, the four noble truths were pretty excellent stuff:
*** Writers write.
*** Writing is a process.
*** You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
*** If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.
I think the first and last one have pretty much galvanised me, the extremely simple and unarguable thing of "you have to show up to get it done." I could argue some of the other stuff but still, as the Aunt says, you take what you want.
Dude, I can't believe Robin Williams is going to be on SVU. Eek!
Anyway, wordcount: 54,000.
Mind you, having said that, I actually did do some writing just now. Curiously enough, also did a re-read of the novel from the very start and am mildly concerned about a suddenly perceived shift in tone. Or lapse of tone or something. Hunh. I dunno. I may also not actually care cos I've been gripped again with the forward momentum obsession.
The Aunt made me read this book she picked up from her masseuse --- don't ask --- which was One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths For Writers by Gail Sher. A bit too airy-fairy for my liking which prompted some vigorous discussion tween the Aunt and me. Cos I was coming at it from the writer point of view and found some of the advice quite problematic. Whereas the Aunt was coming at it from the Zen point of view and found some of it quite interesting even if she did end up skipping most of it towards the end.
Honestly, the power of her intellect amazes me sometimes. She's not a writer, she only really tolerates my incessant babbling about writing, and it's an incredibly hysterical thing that I can actually tell her stuff about an industry. But the power of her brain is so vast and incisive that she can metaphorise a book about writing and apply it to her life. Just makes me marvel quietly to myself.
This all began because she had to tell me that the word for 'crisis' in Japanese is made up of two characters, those being 'danger' and 'opportunity'. And she said "Tell this to your people!"
"My people? Who the hell are my people?"
"You know, your tortured mad writer people. Go tell this to your people."
"So I should take this to my people, a message to my people? Like Moses?"
Hehehe. I think she got that from this book but didn't find it myself.
Still, the four noble truths were pretty excellent stuff:
*** Writers write.
*** Writing is a process.
*** You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
*** If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.
I think the first and last one have pretty much galvanised me, the extremely simple and unarguable thing of "you have to show up to get it done." I could argue some of the other stuff but still, as the Aunt says, you take what you want.
Dude, I can't believe Robin Williams is going to be on SVU. Eek!
Anyway, wordcount: 54,000.