Todays Takeaway
Hold true to your voice, respect the reader and write with reckless abandonment.
Worthy fiction requires wile preparation. Rules of the Dance by Mary Oliver guide my meter and rhythm, crafted by the sage Art of Fiction by John Gardner. Nourishment is select readings and podcasts, toning my palette for NaNoWriMo gorging.
Three things to Remember, by Mary Oliver
As long as you are dancing, you can
break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules
Sometimes there are no rules.
“The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.” — John Gardner
Todays podcast From Write now with Scrivener, episode 12: Damon Young
“He believed tiny things in subtle detail could be pathways to a richer, broader, consciousness. ” — Philosopher, Damon Young on writer Marcel Proust,
Todays reading, A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver.
For a while I could not remember some word
I was in need of,
and I was bereaved and said: where are you,
beloved friend?
If I were
There are lots of ways to dance and
to spin, sometimes it just starts my
feet first then my entire body, I am
spinning no one can see it but it is
happening. I am so glad to be alive,
I am so glad to be loving and loved.
Even if I were close to the finish,
even if I were at my final breath, I
would be here to take a stand, bereft
of such astonishments, but for them.
If I were a Sufi for sure I would be
one of the spinning kind.