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Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.
Some visual inspiration for a Monday
May. 21st, 2012 07:59 am
Casey Muir-Taylor via Compfight
Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.
The Searchers
Nov. 27th, 2011 08:24 amFound via Theodora Goss’ blog, which is always amazing:
“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know – unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.”
Oh, yes.
Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.
We are all made of stories
Oct. 26th, 2011 12:01 pmAccording to my calendar, I haven’t written properly in almost a fortnight. Sickness meant that I didn’t have the focus, and depression added to the weight pulling me away from the page. Today, I feel well enough (with the addition of medication), but a clingy kidlet kept me away from the computer instead.
It feels strange. To not be writing, though I have been reading. To be haunted by those days as they pass. Haunted by all the shoulds: I should be further along in my career, I should be better/stronger/more than I am right now.
Meandering through my books brought me to the biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr, purchased a while ago and languishing unread. I have been enthralled by her, absolutely fascinated by what made her. She didn’t start writing seriously until she was much older than I am now, and look at what she produced. There is still time.
Here is still time.
And the stories, they will come.
Yesterday afternoon, in a break between the unseasonable rain, I walked the land. I hadn’t been out walking for too long, thanks to sickness, and I’d almost forgotten how much it makes me whole. I follow a druidic path, and just being out beneath the sky and the trees, the earth beneath my feet feeds everything that makes me.
There are stories in the land, if you only take the time to see them.
Aided by my trusty Atrix, I captured some of them.
( Read the rest of this entry » )Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.
Do not waste time
Dec. 19th, 2010 08:56 pm“Write as if you were dying. At the same time, write as if for an audience consisting only of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?”
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something will arise for later, something better. These things fill in from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
“After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: ‘Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.’”- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.
Words and inspiration
Mar. 15th, 2010 08:38 pm
I’ve been despairing about the lack of words in my life, as most of you are probably tired of hearing.
This morning, I decided to make a commitment to bring them back.
Ideally, I’d love to be reading and writing in every moment I could. But the reality is different – even when I have the time while Liam is napping, I usually have other, more pressing things to be done, or I’m just too damn tired.
Which means that I need another plan. I will return to writing when time permits, but for the time being, I can at least begin to fill the well again.
I have a stack (or three) of books to be read, but I lack the focus to do justice to new novels right now. Instead, I’m going to dive back into old favourites – into the books that inspired me to write in the first place, and the books that make me want to be a better writer. As I go along, I’m going to blog about them and the influence they had on me.
I’m going to begin with the books that originally made me want to write – L.M. Montgomery’s Emily books. Now I just need to steal some time to read.
Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.
