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If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
—Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon
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| There are no conversations. |
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| Ernest Hemingway |
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water. |
| James Fenton |
Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty. |
| Sigmund Freud |
The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water. |
| Moliere |
All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose. |
| Jonathan Edwards |
Sincere friendship towards God, in all who believe him to be properly an intelligent, willing being, does most apparently, directly, and strongly incline to prayer; and it no less disposes the heart strongly to desire to have our infinitely glorious. |
| Henry James |
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. |
| William E. Gladstone |
Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions. |
| Jupiter Hammon |
There are but two places where all go after death, white and black, rich and poor; those places are Heaven and Hell. Heaven is a place made for those, who are born again, and who love God, and it is a place where they will be happy for ever. |
| Joel Osteen |
Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows? |
| Bob Edwards |
In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news. |
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Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writers
1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story."
2. Don’t use passive voice. “Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.”
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"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day." - Hemingway's Nobel Prize Speech
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Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?"[171] Writing in "The Art of the Short Story", Hemingway explains: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit."
This post is a comment.
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1: To get started, write one true sentence.
Hemingway had a simple trick for overcoming writer's block. In a memorable passage in A Moveable Feast, he writes:
Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you kno...
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Trying to remember your dreams, in my experience, is doing these small things like telling yourself to write things down when you wake up or to think about what is possible/not possible while falling asleep. Or to say things out loud when you wake up. I don't remember to do these things until one day I say "if you do this thing it will help you remember." And then I find myself doing it. I think because you're not conscious the only way to influence these things is by priming your brain to do them. It just makes me think about how I could probably improve other areas of my life by just telling myself that if I do X, then Y will change or improve; by priming myself for better habits.
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I'm not sure if I could ever believe in a god. I wish I could. Sometimes, when I am overwhelmed with the unexplainable beauty of the world, I try to attribute it to someone/something. I try to personify all these amazing things I'm seeing, feeling, and thinking so I can evaluate my place in the world. I say things to this god in my head and try to guess what its reply might be. Recently, I?ve realized that a version of this game has been playing in my head since I was a child. Sometimes I can come close to convincing myself the universe isn't chaos. However, when I feel sad and think about tragedies in my life or other people's that chaos is comforting. I hate to think that this beautiful imaginary god would do such awful things so I take shelter in the chaos. I wish I could.
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“You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things. But nobody talks about that.”
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I am intrigued by this idea of hiding the fairy from your family. As for "not being interested in what people were doing and wanting to wander off into nature," I definitely got that from your description of the dream (combined with knowing you and hearing you talk about feeling that way). It sounds lonely. I'm glad the wolf reached out to you.
The architecture thing reminds me of the cool ideas you have about projects (research, ThinkLynx, etc.). But also your frustration when it feels like impracticalities or other things stand in the way of making those things come to fruition.
This post is a comment.
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The great Tao flows everywhere.
All things are born from it,
yet it doesn't create them.
It pours itself into its work,
yet it makes no claim.
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn't hold on to them.
Since it is merged with all things
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I had a dream I was playing violin. People were stealing my things and hiding them and being very rude and none of the things they said seemed to matter to me at all.
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