Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain (via prettybooks)
“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone
Beginning writers often cut their emotional scenes too short, taking the scene right to the point where things get heated and then ending with some faux cliffhanging line or witty zinger. This shows television’s influence where a scene is written to its emotional apex and then cut for a commercial break. When the show comes back, the emotional moment is over and we just see the results of the emotional outburst. However, in real life, the heart of such a scene usually takes place after the point where they cut. Think of your own life. Have you ever had an emotional argument with someone? if you have, you realize that the discussion doesn’t end when someone gets in a good line, nor does it usually end at the height of the emotion. Instead people run out of things to say, they get frustrated, they get weary, they change their minds. This is the messy part of the conversation, the part people don’t want to live through and weak writers avoid writing. They’d rather have someone slam the door and leave. Scene over. Next time, keep writing the scene. Stay with the characters so the reader can see what they are made of.
- Raymond Obstfeld from Novelist’s Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes
Hard but good advice. I am far too often guilty of this, even with this being one of my favorite writing books. While I am often insistent that creative writing is the simulation and not the replication of life, this is one of those instances where hewing closer to reality can yield a much richer tale because it forces the reader to go through the story with the character.
(via emptymanuscript)
Plot isn’t what compels many novelists to write, or some readers to read. But if you choose to write a novel without a plot, I would hope three things for you: that your prose is gorgeous, that your insights into the human condition are inspirational, and that your book is short.
John Irving (via emptymanuscript)
The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
Alain de Botton, On Love (via justbesplendid)
My life’s ambition. No joke.
“If one has failed to develop curiosity and interest in the early years, it is a good idea to acquire them now, before it is too late to improve the quality of life.
To do so is fairly easy in principle, but more difficult in practice. Yet it is sure worth trying. The first step is to develop the habit of doing whatever needs to be done with concentrated attention, with skill rather than inertia. Even the most routine tasks, like washing dishes, dressing, or mowing the lawn become more rewarding if we approach them with the care it would take to make a work of art. The next step is to transfer some psychic energy each day from tasks that we don’t like doing, or from passive leisure, into something we never did before, or something we enjoy doing but don’t do often enough because it seems too much trouble. There are literally millions of potentially interesting things in the world to see, to do, to learn about. But they don’t become actually interesting until we devote attention to them.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology Of Engagement With Everyday Life (via justbesplendid)
I enjoy being indoors. I enjoy laying on couches, snacking, and reading (watching TV). Summer sucks because it is the only season when, if I want to do this in the middle of a gorgeous day, people (my children) look at me like I’m a disgusting person. Well, guess what? It’s 90 degrees out there, it’s 68 degrees in here, and this episode of The Bachelorette isn’t going to watch itself.
Adam Scott, on why he hates summer (via leahsnewblog)
We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.
Dr Seuss (via justbesplendid)
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
W. Somerset Maugham (via ree-writes)
