Don't write today

Don’t write today. It doesn’t matter. The world will keep turning on its axis. No one will be worse off because you didn’t scribble down some words today. No one needs what you’re working on, especially if it’s fiction.

Admit it. This is for you. Writing fiction is an egotistical act. You write for you. To try to satisfy some emotional need in yourself. You want this or else you wouldn’t be doing it. “This” meaning acknowledgement from family or friends that you’re a worthwhile human being after all, or kudos from peers, or to produce something approaching artistic merit. You can claim, “But I want to give something to the world!” Really? We’re in desperate need of another small-town amateur sleuth or big city meet-cute or zombie-riddled alien planet? At least try to elevate your story above genre. Put heart into it. Please.

I don’t encourage beginning writers. Because if they let a discouraging word from some asshole (me) stop them from even one writing session, they may as well give up right now. Writing is long-haul stuff. Like marriage. You stick it out through good days and bad. You write when you “don’t feel like it.” If you don’t, you really don’t want it bad enough.

So—don’t write for me, or your parents, or your kids, or anyone else. Do this for you.

You are, anyway.

10 ten-minute pick-me-ups

Don’t feel like writing? Or even getting off the couch? Here are ten simple ways to make yourself feel better:

1.       Wash your face, comb your hair, brush your teeth.
2.       Grin for 30 seconds. (I know, I know, but it works. Something about endorphins.)
3.       Write a note to somebody, especially a thank-you note.
4.       Tackle a minor chore you’ve been putting off like putting away those books stacking up beside your bed. And while you’re at it,
5.       Make your bed. Changing the linens is even better. You’ll anticipate all day how nice it will feel when you finally slip between the sheets.
6.       Jog in place for 10 minutes. No equipment necessary. Or walk to the corner mailbox and mail that thank-you note. Take a trash bag with you and
7.       Collect trash on your way.
8.       Write a love note to your S.O and leave it in her sock drawer. While you’re there, straighten up her sock drawer. IOW,
9.       Do somebody else’s chore besides your own.
10.   Count your blessings. Use your fingers. And toes. Make a fresh list every time.

What do you do to make yourself feel better?

10 scenarios: “I don’t know you”

At Arby’s today a grandmother was wrangling three children when the five-year-old started pouring his drink on the floor. She looked at him and said, “I don’t even know you.”

Classic instances of “I don’t know you”—the Klingons turning their backs on Worf, Peter denying Christ, a mob boss banishing an underling in a third-rate gangster movie—leapt to mind, then other scenarios suggested themselves. Some are made up:

·         Husband to wife of twenty years when she cuts in line to get Stone Cold Steve Austin’s autograph.

·         Teen to friend shop-lifting Pepto Bismol, of all things.

·         Bride-to-be to maid-of-honor stuffing $20 bills in a male stripper’s G-string.

·         Nephew to uncle who refuses to stand up for the National Anthem at a Braves game.

·         Husband to wife who took pole-dancing lessons in secret.

·         Clan chief exiling a hunter who hoarded meat.

·         Cheating wife to herself in her car mirror in a motel parking lot.

·         Mother to daughter who brings home a “B” in AP Chemistry.

·         Wife to husband after he insults an airline clerk for no reason.

·         Cult member to the parents who’ve come to take him home.

Have you ever been on either end of “I don’t know you”? What fictional situations can you conjure?

 

Ten random writing prompts

• "But it doesn’t make any difference!” she cried. Couldn’t they understand that?
• The cradle rocked to and fro under the waves, and in the sing-sang song of the sea, she slept.
• Fickle Fiebleman fiddle-farted too long and frittered the day away.
• What is so jejune as a day in Rare? Rare is that new resort here in Gorleston Beach devoted to the wee ones.
• Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? screamed the voice in his head.
• Percival didn’t care the new headmistress had a MBA and a PhD and a bunch of other letters after her name, or the second headmaster raised himself up from Tower Hamlets, or Nurse Hornsby spent two years in Ghana fighting some disease or other. Percival planned to eat them all.
• “Go ahead,” the babysitter said. “Play in the street.”
• Sandra gave Susan the cookie recipe all right, and even though Susan followed it to the letter (including the 1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoon salt) she could never get it to come out like Sandra’s, and it was only after Sandra died and Susan inherited her recipe file did she understand why. Bitch left out the cinnamon.
• “Halt!” please keep running please keep running please keep running.
• Glad we are for the Father, and glad we are for thee, glad we are for The Big Fellow, and an Ireland that’s free.

 

April 13 Birthdays

Happy Festoy Nensktag! (Lipen Søerjehn) to:
　
1506 French Jesuit theologian and co-founder of the Society of Jesus Peter Faber
1519 Italian noblewoman Catherine de' Medici; queen consort of France
1570 English conspirator Guy Fawkes
1743 US President #3 Thomas Jefferson
1750 American historical painter John Trumbull
1769 English portrait painter and draftsman Sir Thomas Lawrence 
1772 American clockmaker and an innovator in mass production Eli Terry
1795 American publisher James Harper; co-founded Harper & Row
1816 English pianist, conductor and composer Sir William Benett (The May Queen)
1852 American businessman Frank Woolworth
1866 American baseball player Herman Long; despite holding the record for most career (17 years) errors, he is considered the best shortstop of his era
1866 American outlaw Butch Cassidy
1871 Mexican Modernist poet, physician and diplomat Enrique Gonzalez Martinez
1885 Hungarian Marxist philosopher, writer and literary critic Gyorgy Lukacs
1888 American inventor John Hays Hammond Jr.; developed radio remote control 
1892 Scottish physicist Sir Robert Watson-Watt; knighted for his role in the development of radar
1899 American architect and inventor of scrabble Alfred Mosher Butts
1906 Nobel Prize-winning Irish-born author, critic, and playwright Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot)
1909 Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Eudora Welty (The Optimist's Daughter)
1922 English novelist John Braine (Room at the Top); one of the "Angry Young Men"
1939 Nobel Prize-winning Irish novelist Seamus Heaney (Death of a Naturalist)
1949 Anglo-American writer Christopher Hitchens (Hitch-22)

British actor Edward Fox (Ghandi, The Day of the Jackal) is 78 and actor Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas, Slow Dancing in the Big City) is 76.
Oscar-winning film composer Bill Conti (The Right Stuff) is 73. You can probably hum his best known work, the theme to Rocky ("Gonna Fly Now").
Actors Tony Dow (Leave It To Beaver) and Lyle Waggoner (The Carol Burnett Show, Wonder Woman) are 70.
Multiple Grammy-winning soul singer Al Green ("Let's Stay Together") is 69 and actor Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy) is 65.
Drummer Max Weinberg (E Street Band) and Grammy-winning R&B singer Peabo Bryson ("Beauty and the Beast," "A Whole New World") are 64.
Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov is 52 and actress Caroline Rhea (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch) is 51.
Actor Rickey Schroder (Silver Spoons) is 45 and actress Kelli Giddish (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) is 35.
Actresses AllisonWilliams (Girls, Peter Pan Live!) and Kallie Flynn Childress (Sleepover) are 27.

Celebrate Read Across America Day!

Read Across America Day is an annual celebration on March 2 that encourages people of all ages to pick up a book and read. It just so happens to coincide with the birthday of one of the world’s most beloved authors, Dr. Seuss.

You probably learned somewhere along the way that the real name of the author of such classics as The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Green Eggs and Ham is Theodor Geisel. But you may not know:

1.   Geisel’s first children’s book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, was rejected over 20 times.

2.   He wrote an advertising campaign for a bug spray that became part of the popular culture: “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” spawned a song and was used as a punch line for comedians like Fred Allen and Jack Benny.

3.   He wrote the story bases for two Oscar-winning films: Design for Death (1947) and Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950). Two Grinch TV specials won Emmys.

4.   He added “Dr.” to his pen name because his father always wanted him to be a physician.

5.   He believed in luck. Geisel had decided to go home and burn Mulberry Street after so many rejections when he ran into an old Dartmouth classmate who was juvenile editor at Vanguard Press. He said, "If I had been walking down the other side of Madison Avenue, I'd be in the dry-cleaning business today.”

6.   When an editor at Houghton-Mifflin challenged Geisel to "bring back a book children can't put down,” Geisel, using 236 of the 250 words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat.

7.   He won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his “contribution over nearly half a century to the education and enjoyment of America's children and their parents."

8.    He never had children of his own. When asked about this, he would say, "You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em."

9.   His books consistently outsell the majority of newly published children's books; his works have spawned eleven television specials, four feature films, a Broadway musical and four television series.

10.   Seuss, his mother's maiden name, is pronounced to rhyme with "voice." But Geisel didn’t mind the Anglicization because it evokes an association with Mother Goose.

“You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.”

 

Quotes from two wise men born February 16

You may recognize some of these:

From Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), member of the Adams political family:

• Friends are born, not made.
• Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.
• Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.
• It is impossible to underrate human intelligence--beginning with one's own.
• Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
• No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
• A friend in power is a friend lost.
• The proper study of mankind is woman.

Although noted in his lifetime for his nine-volume History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, Adams received the Pulitzer for his posthumously published memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams. The Modern Library named this work the top English-language nonfiction book of the twentieth century.

**

From presidential advisor/ambassador George Kennan (1904-2005), one of the group of foreign policy elders known as “The Wise Men”:

• The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.
• The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.
• Heroism is endurance for one moment more.