Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
- Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
- If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
- Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
- If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
‘Cannery Row’ is one of the best books, and ‘Of Mice & Men’ can make a grown man cry. Steinbeck was a legend. Also; the third point here is vital, stellar advice.
Happy Birthday, Mittens! Today is Mitt Romney’s 65th birthday - and while we know he will not be celebrating his birthday by enrolling in Medicare because he’s not some socialist thug like your grandma, I imagine he may spend today doing the following:
- Taking one of his wife’s Cadillacs out on the open road*
- Compiling a giant list of things he likes about Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi and American Samoa while watching construction workers renovate his oceanfront property
- Bathing in Ron Paul-approved gold
- Kicking his 1%-certified Generation Y Hippie voodoo doll
- Kicking actual hippies
*dog on roof required
And this is how my morning is going (Taken with instagram)
i exhale,
i breathe
to remind
the universe
that i too
am a beautiful note
in
its symphony.
Taken with instagram
I couldn’t not.
I feel like I am drowning in complacency. I need someone to pull me out. I don’t think it’s going to be you.