The Anatomy Of Construction

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Dialect out loud.
2008-02-07 01:17:00
Click on the image to the right to see the full size page.I have been having blogger issues. Now the spell checker doesn?t work, which is a proiblem for me, because my fingers don?t necessarily type what my brain tells them to. Several friends have pointed out, you?re a writer, you shouldn?t need a spell checker. This is true, I shouldn?t need a spell checker, but I do. Mississipi is always fun for me to remember how to spell, and I come form Australia, so there?s a whole host of Global words I?m going to screw up. I kept spelling Georgre W. Bush ?A-R-S-E-H-O-L-E? until word told me that was wrong. Which brings me back to the point of this little diatribe. Several of you have already pointed and said, ?Hey! That?s not how you spell arsehole!? but it is, in Australia at least. Your native dialect is beautiful, never forget it, always come back to it. I read a lot of Robbie Burns? poetry; he tells great stories, but he told great stories in his own voice, the words of the world ...
More About: Loud , Dialect , Dial

Writing and philosophy
2008-02-06 00:56:00
Click on the image to the right to see the full size page. There is no philosophy that makes writing work. Really. Unless it's Yoda's line, "Do or do not, there is no try," Even if you're only wriitng a paragraph a day, but making sure you write that paragraph a day, you are writing. You'd have to agree you're not writing a lot, but everything comes by degrees. If you make the effort to ensure you write today, and tomorrow, and the day after, you'll find it easier all the time. Sometimes your body and mind will resist, there's stuff to be done, clothes to be washed, house to be cleaned. Relax, there'll always be soemthing elese to do, so why not do this thing now? The clothes will still be on the floor in an hour, the lawn will not be appreciably longer, and the car will not be any worse off for want of a wash. It helps to make writing sweet. I do my serious work, but make sure I have the time to write pages of bad comedy, rants, diatribes and wild true...
More About: Philosophy , Writing

The secret to freelancing
2008-02-05 01:02:00
Click the image to the right to see the full size page. Yesterdays picture was a punter launcher- well, maybe not, but it is the tower pylons of a ride called "The slingshot" you get in a little metal cage, they strap you down and fling you up into the sky, all for the low low cost of $35- bargain, eh? This was all at the Big Day Out, you can just see the beer-filled punters reeling up to the ride, loading themselves down and as the ride began it's upward accelerated launch thinking to themselves, "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea..." But back to the writing thing... "What does it take to write professionally?? a friend asked me the other afternoon, as he sat in his back yard, knocking back a stubby of Coopers Pale ale. I shrugged, ?Well, you gotta write every day,? I started, ?Yeah, I know that, but what else?? ?Well, you gotta practice, that means you?ve gotta write a lot,? ?Yeah, but what?s the trick to it all?? ?I guess it?s to write a lot,? I said, confused,...
More About: Writing , Freelancing , The Secret , Freelance , Secret

How much do you love your notebooks?
2008-02-04 01:14:00
Click on the image to the right to see the full size page.Ah, yes, strange photos. What do you think it is in today's photo? Is it some weird yacht mast? Support poles for some trapeze act? A bizarre new voting system destined for installation in Uganda?Don't blame me for all this weirdness today, blame blogger. Yeeess, Blogger, that tries to tell me there's no facility for uploading pictures or checking your spelling. Actually, Blogger and I have been getting along quite well lately (Except for it's infernal internal spell checker). Which is nice, because we're spending a lot of time together. Blogger is one of the best excuses I've found for free writing, which is the writing that gives speed strength and endurance to all the other writing I do."Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you derive from what you do."- Michael KordaSome days serious writing wears me down, the angst, the anger, the injustice and the sickness I write about every...
More About: Love , Inspiration , Notes , Notebooks , Freewriting

Composition and decomposition.
2008-02-03 01:19:00
Click the image to the right to see the full size page.I've got to write everyday. I had the day off for the Big Day Out and had the worst withdrawal the next morning. I was crabby, ready to argue with everything and in no mood to hear about Other People's problems. Grape fruit and raisin toast for breakfast did nothing to ease my angst. I couldn't understand it, and it wasn't until after my first writing session for the day that I realized I was just withdrawn, like an addict away from the spike, my body demanded a daily creative output. After another five thousand words I felt like my good natured self again. Am I the only one who gets this problem? I hope not.... I've been focussing on the Big Day Out Experience in my writing for the last day, trying to put a meaning to it all, and so far can only come away with the idea that it has become a rite of passage for a lot of young people. Get drunk, drop heaps of drugs and see the Big Day out- "Who's playing?" "Who knows?" they...
More About: Composition , Rage Against the Machine

Who's the boss? That'd be story.
2008-02-02 01:00:00
Click the image to the right to see the full size page.Somedays it's hard to get up. I spent about sixteen hours yesterday at The Big Day Out. It was a very big day out. It's worth considering volunteering as a helper for these events- you get in free, you get a whole new angle on the event and everyone loves you. I was a crowd care volunteer and had people coming up to me, saying, "You're a crowd carer? could I have a hug?" seriously. What does all this have to do with writing you may well ask. This is my answer- it's a big fat injection of humanity. Sitting behind the desk for dickety hours a day, hammering away at the keyboard and writing your brilliant viosionary agnst ridden material can be isolating. 15,000 words a day doesn't leave much time to sit down with friends, meet new people or just lose yourself in the crowd for an hour or too and really enjoy being a part of a collective consciousness. This is only part of the buzz. As a writer you will find the road is lon...
More About: Writing , Faith , Story , Boss , Billy Bragg

And now for something completely different.
2008-01-31 01:50:00
Click on the image to the right to see the full size page.Well, this is a pernicious turn of events, I?m learning a little more about the life of a free lancer everyday. The mission, aside from trying to keep just above water, is to save some money to replace old, tired and broken equipment, maybe equip the Fortress Of Solitude with some fort of communications array, yes, a plasma TV will fit the bill nicely, and a comfortable sofa for taking afternoon naps in. oh, ho, ho, this, would of course all mean less work and more money- it?s the only way I could afford to take nana naps. By the vigorous tortured existence I have come to bend myself into a new shape. ?What if I take the writing and halve it?? I capture a lot of gigs, and write in gig, capture the essence of the thing. It?s good fun, and it produces a sharper experience when you polish it up. These sit in the folder, awaiting some mythical finally meaning to it all that will see them bound in a nice leather bound hard cover a...
More About: Writing

Rites of passage.
2008-01-31 00:54:00
Click on the image to the right to see the full size page.Ah, we've been getting creative with our layout and learning HTML, which should be no mean feat, I have enough experience as an engineer to be able to cut code for most things. I just never got around to HTML. In the mid nineties my type of coder looked down on HTML programming, from the lofty heights of assembly code and so I have discovered I have an Inherent dislike for the idea of learning the language. We are doing, the best I can to add this to my repertoire of skills. So far, so good. This is similar to the attitude some people have to types of writing. Some people won't have anything to do with fantasy/ sci-fi writers, some people think the romance writers deal exclusively in cardboard cutouts and cliches. Blood and gutser mystery writers are disdained by many for their need to plot and still others think those who write the linear narrative are doomed to join, Disco, Heath Ledger and the Dodo. You're in big troubl...
More About: Writing , Inspiration

Misplaced responsibility and bad behavior.
2008-01-30 01:02:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.I have been given the frightening responsibility of being a Crowd care Volunteer at the Adelaide Big Day Out. Which should be no big thing. The Big Day out is an annual music festival held all over Australia, this year Bjork and Rage against the machine are playing, I'm on the am shift, so I get to see these big acts, for free. But more about this little adventure here. I'm quite excited for several reasons- I've been many times before, loved every time, last year stands out for seeing The Violent Femmes. this year though I get a new perspective, and I'm writing about it. It's an interesting story, and something that might have market value- you never can tell. I bring my writing with me to the most inappropriate of places. parties, gigs, private events, I try to keep a pad with me, my short term memory is like a bucket shot full of holes, so I lose things fast if I don't write them down; but it's not just that. there's some...
More About: Behavior

The wrench, blogger and I.
2008-01-29 01:00:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.This is my editing desk- the wrench lives there, for obvious reasons, but some of the other things deserve and explanation. i keep sticky tape there because sometimes the only thing that will help the page is cutting it up and slotting it back together in a different order. i swear there's something wrong with my brain- I can't edit on screen, and unless I see the continuous line roll off the page itself, it doesn't sit with me, not a bit. I also use the sticky tape to put really good pages on the wall in front of me to reference, kinda likes style sheets, I guess.Right now I'm having blogger issues, again, this time with the outage- I work to Australian time, so when it tells me there's a scheduled outrage (sorry, couldn't resist the typo) at 4.oopm PST I say, "Huh?" and keep on working. of course, when I go to try and post my erudite words of wisdom it says, "Hah! not only are we not going to post your clever words, we're n...
More About: Blogger

Note books and Australia day
2008-01-28 01:25:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.Oh, what a day- it's the Australia Day holiday, where Australians of all ilks get together and celebrate being Australian, (whatever that means) mateship (whatever that means), Australian Culture (Banjo Patterson poems anyone?) and drink on average, our body weight in nasty beer that no other country would accept. VB, as we all know, stands for Very Bad, and they call XXXX by that name because you can't write, "Shit" on a can of beer. This all of course, has nothing to do with writing, but has a lot to do with your humble harried writer.I live on the nightclub strip of this city, which by and large is a fairly easy life- Adelaide is not known as the most active or rowdy city in Australia. Some nights are harder than others. it was not the amorous couple making love in my door way (I'm not sure that was love they were making) nor was it the drunken yahoos tooting their horns and screaming, "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi," at th...
More About: Books , Writing , Note , Australia Day

Dialog and Hunter
2008-01-27 01:11:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.Today we slip into dialog. We also slip into me being utterly exhausted and banging on about one of my favorite authors- Hunter S Thompson. Hemingway could have learned a thing or two from Hunter S Thompson on his worst days, the man could write the wheels off a Hummer. Most of us know of Hunter S Thompson for "Fear and loathing in Las Vegas" a fun book to read that paints him like some desperate drunk riddled addict who jumps hotel rooms- which may, more or less have been true, but this only distracts from his writing. Like many others I read "Fear and loathing..." when I was in my teens and thought, "Wow, what a Yahoo," but rediscovered Hunter in my early twenties and writing the way I was then noticed something- he had style. he had style, knew how to get around with the written word and captured your attention. One of the finest political commentaries I've read was and "Fear and loathing on the 72 campaign trail" the Story ...
More About: Writing , Dialog , Dial

Your writing- a happy holiday.
2008-01-25 22:34:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.I've been working on the Anatomy now for nigh on three months, which isn't very long in the life of a blog at all, and make it my priority, every morning. well, most mornings, it's the piece I want to get out first. Somedays it's the piece I want to get out of the way first; I make sure I get it done though. It's the sort of writing that pushes me in directions I'm not used to. It helps my writing grow, it gives me a challenge every day. These things are important.I grew up with a much more wild and wooly Internet, an uncivilised Jungle of Trolls, Lurkers and Flamers waiting to flay the unwary. you walked through this Internet with fear, or confidence and a big book on how to code in HTML- Java? That's was an exotic coffee. Flash? not in public, thank you. This was some time ago though, when we were one of the few (development labs) in the country with access to ADSL.Now I'm no longer and engineer, everyone has ADSL and Tro...
More About: Holiday , Writing , Inspiration , Happy , Happy Holiday

Free writing is still the best.
2008-01-25 00:21:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page. There are some days when things are easy, there are some days when things are hard. Take today- I work freelance, which means I'll write anything for money, a web page, a bio, a rude message on the toilet door- some days those messages reach a frenzied form of high art. My client this morning told me he needed no more done, and wanted no more done, which is OK, saves me time and effort, but leaves me with three hours to fill in my schedule- which is, as Mr Nixon loved to say, "not right," I try to maintain a healthy policy of never catching up on work- I do it in the time I allocate- the free time I get is devoted to my patient and tolerant girlfriend who puts up with all my writerly tendencies. this dead time I give over to something else entirely- free writing.Free writing is where all the good stuff comes out- the political rants, the wonderful new analogies and the things that would see me strung up like some sort of mad Repub...
More About: Writing

It's all about....?
2008-01-23 21:37:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.Themes are a right bugger. Sometimes they are used to beautiful effect (Like the color red in The Sixth Sense) sometimes they are like potholes in the road, jarring slams to the body that make you feel entirely uncomfortable with the vehicle- story. A theme is an idea that is reinforced throughout the story- so in The Sixth Sense red was used to indicate the dead were walking about.The first draft of How To Disappear was written with the idea of bring out the themes that domestic violence was bad and paedophilia was bad- so much so that it became a labor to write this into every chapter, "Screw the story!" I proclaimed proudly and went back to beating the same drum. Forget the reader, for the writer this is a nightmare, the story doesn't move, the story becomes "Domestic violence is bad,"- this sort of thing is a nightmare to write.Theme can be an asset to story though- John Steinbeck pulled it off admirably in To a God Unknown - a...
More About: Writing , Story

Gotta love writing
2008-01-22 22:25:00
Click the above image to see the full size page.There's more to the story of "How to disappear completely," but it's too hot for me to tell at this stage- like all good writing, the events from which it's derived need to decompose a little further. All told the process has taken me five years. it seems writing has never been the problem with writing a book- that's the easy part, it's getting your head into the right space. relaxing, letting your mind do what you know it can, and letting your pen follow your minds lead.When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed any bodies help in in way- no that's something completely different to where I was going. When I was younger, I was involved at an international level with Archery - you know, shooting arrows at a target. Quite honestly it's got to be the most boring sport in the world to watch. It was also incredibly boring to do, the single most boring thing you could imagine. Now I realize in its own way archery i...
More About: Writing , Love , Gotta

Decomposing and Resurrections.
2008-01-21 21:32:00
Click the above to see the full size page.With some pride I'd like to note I'm proud of this page- it looks good, it feels good and says something helpful. Proud is how I felt when I read back over the final draft, polished and edited., which is a big thing if you're anything like me. I'm a jaded Gen Xer, we were told we'd never amount to anything and had no dedication. For years I'd thought a large project was beyond me- A large project that relied on attention to detail beyond impossible, somewhere out there in the realms of ludicrous.When I first looked at the final printed manuscript I put it all in a nice folder and sat and stared at it for a minute. I was in the middle of one of those mall food courts, people were moving all around me and I thought, "They're completely unaware that I'm sitting here with the first look at my completed book manuscript, they have no idea," which retrospectively is a strange thing to think. It was as if there should be ribbons and fanfare ...
More About: Writing , Rect

Jigsaws falling into place
2008-01-21 00:51:00
Click the above to see the full size page.So I had a draft that i couldn't do anything with. I sat down and read it over. the tense changed constantly, past to present back and forth, the stories were exciting, but needed a tighter framework and there was nothing gripping or promising about the opening. So I bound the first draft and used it as a door stop- nine hundred pages single spaced in ten font is too much for anything but.Starting again was hard. I sat for hours thinking on the perfect opening line. Writing the line, re writing the line, over and over and over, until I had something I was happy with. After that, the rest was easy. I didn't want to write from the beginning, that's never any fun, instead I jumped to the middle, back to the beginning and took the tense changes with me and worked them in, making the first half of the book a flash back to explain the introduction, and the second half the dramatic spiralling tumbling fall. It only took me about two weeks to rew...
More About: Place , Description

Joing the dots.
2008-01-19 00:21:00
Click the above image to see the full size page.Ah, where were we? Avoiding drifting into negativity, that's where. Writing at the stage was helping me get a very good handle on things that Needed To Be Understood. The first thing I needed to deal with was why the police wouldn't do a thing. One female officer laughed at me when I explained what happened (The victim of domestic violence thing), and added, "You're a guy! You should have just dealt with it," A representative of the White ribbon foundation told me that domestic violence against men by women was not really a problem. Try telling that to a man trying to pull his scissors out of the grinding painful ball joint in his shoulder.Telling drunks in bars the horrific story was not cutting it.Drunks in bars couldn't help me reconcile the idea's- I was the victim, my girlfriend was psychotic, and aided in her psychosis by the copious amounts of dope she was smoking. I lived in the most notorious block of Flats in Adelaide ci...
More About: Dots

What are we trying to do?
2008-01-18 01:38:00
I love my job. I get to write, almost all day, and defiantly everyday. Originally, I was an engineer, working pretty much the same hours I do now (an eighty hour week) for much better pay. The work was equally challenging, on a daily basis. I left engineering for a couple of reasons.I worked in research and development, telecommunications and automation. One night I was sitting at a party and five people there had been put out of work as a consequence of one of the products I worked on. these were factory workers, guys who had set themselves up with mortgages and families and hopes and dreams and futures. Now they had nothing, nowhere to turn (we were in the grip of an endless recession). All that came to mind was the line from the Johnny Cash song, "The Ballad of John Henry's hammer,"- "Well I feed four baby brothers, and baby sister's crawling on her knees. Did the Lord say machines ought to take the place of living? And what's a substitute for bread and beans? I don't see it-...
More About: Writing

Why with the modalities?
2008-01-17 02:14:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.Why do I bang on so much about modalities? With writing we?re trying to get through to people- modalities are a way of ensuring you?re accessing the largest possible audience in every possible fashion- giving the reader a more visceral experience. Not everyone will be receptive to particular types, and it?s not something you can really deliberately work into your writing without a lot of practice (bum glue being the most important tool in any writer?s arsenal). If you are aware of the idea though you can let it bleed into your writing, let it bleed into your subconscious.I?ve got a question for you all though, curious you understand. How much do you write? I know I aim for fifteen thousand words a day, over various projects, but what about you?TomX

More on modalities
2008-01-15 22:25:00
Click on the above image to see the full size page.Before I chat about the photo, what does today's post mean for the practice of writing a character? nothing, it's just another thing to bear in mind. writing is an ongoing development. when you were learning to write you had to remember the shapes of letters, then you could remember the shapes of letters, but had to remember to capitalise words and use full stops- slowly,. you make all the things part of your memory, part of your body. just think about it as you're writing about a character, and then let it slow into your work.Too much focus on this sort of detail produces stilted writing.I love these photos. I brought a real cheap little digital camera, it's a Kodak C513, AU$98, bargain! I have it with me all the time as I walk about there are so many great photos waiting to be taken (and they inspire me to write)I took a shot of this homemade sticker- it's outside Jive in Hindley Street, Adelaide, and originally read " In the...
More About: Cassidy

Shaping ideas
2008-01-15 01:18:00
Click the above image to see the full size page.Shaping ideas into a cohesive story is the hard part of our art. A book is just a series stories linked together with a common theme, written so there is a climax, a conclusion to that underlying theme. organising those little stories into something you want to read is harder than you might think. This is the first in a string of posts designed to focus on modality based tools. Each of us thinks either in visual, auditory, kinesthetic or olfactory terms or even a synesthesia of these methods. we work best when we tailor the tools we use to the way our minds work.This is the same idea many teachers have tried to bring to the class room when they've argued, "Each child has their own way of learning,"- I'm arguing each writer has their own way of writing- Enjoy.It's a wonderful day out, my face feels like a bruised and rotting pear and the only thing I can think of doing is sitting down for a nice long typing session = )TomX
More About: Ideas

Writing from a different angle
2008-01-14 01:12:00
Click the above to see the full size page.Below is the chapter, the Not-a-sex-scene I refer to above. this is the third to last draft of the thing, so it's not perfect (by a long shot) but it doesn give a fun example of how I went about writing a sex scene obliquely. This is all part of my book, "How to disappear" I hope you enjoy it....TomXCHAPTER Twenty-oneShe?d walked casually in through the back door while I was in the shower and now Tammy was sitting on my sofa and pulling a bong.Didn?t I tell you to leave? I ask, my face a mask of dismissal. Tammy tells me how she didn?t have anywhere else to go, and then adds, You?ve got heaps of weed, why wouldn?t you give me a cone before?We can often grasp at the straw that broke the camels back and say, ?This is important, this is significant, this straw broke my camels back,? and we neglect to think on the thousands of straws that we laid on before.The mass of straws I?d lifted from Tammy?s back broke the final gates open. The sobbing w...
More About: Writing , Erotica , Thom Yorke , Angle , Diff

What do I dislike about writing?
2008-01-13 01:19:00
Click on the above to see the full size page.Time to admit my sins... I hate editing- I hate it soooo much. I have a fresh idea, I reel it in, then drop it, move onto the next one. If I were some sort of idiot other than the idiot I am, I'd say it's because I'm and ideas man- that's not the case though.I just don't like editing.As with everything in life, sometimes to achieve the things we want to, we have to do some things we don't want to do- like proof reading. So how can I do it? I'm gonna make editing fun, get a virulent red magic marker for eliminating words (I can only edit on paper- am I the only one with that problem?), and I'm going to get a nice Russian hat with those furry ear flaps for editing in. Hey, if it works, I'm going with it, anything to make editing easier.I dug this up while searching for editing tools and tricks, "Murder your darlings" It's a phrase I've heard both Nick Cave and Stephen King use, it's a really good article on editing.Writing while...

The need to read
2008-01-12 00:49:00
Click the above image to see the full size page.I spent last night at a Hawksley Workman gig- dang, that guy is the epitome of cool. I love live music, but I can't help but be writing almost constantly.So I combined the two.Gonzo writing is the art of capturing the experience ont he fly- I sit in these gigs and write, let the environment, atmosphere and music wash up on the page. When I first did it I was surprised at the result (You can see the first one here) you end up with a slightly straighter, cleaner version of yourself, your writers voice and your impressions of the gig. What I'm doing with it isn't Gonzo thouhg, I take the notebook, type it out straight, and then polish- so out of four, four and a half thousand words, I try to get the final product down to about eight hundred words.It's imperfect Gonzo, but teaches me a lot. It teaches me how to be a brutal editor, how to let my senses absorb the environment, and how to let go and just write.Everything new we try with o...
More About: Writing , Inspiration , Read

Why do we write?
2008-01-11 00:56:00
Click on the above for the full size image Oh, having a weak day; it's one of those days where I don't want to write, don't think I've anything worth writing and have a serious urge to go out, get a nice tie, get my hair care products together and go back to engineering- but lets not drift into negativity just yet....Success in writing, like anything else in life is based on overcoming obstacles, and the biggest obstacle you can be forced to wrestle with is your own, too human failings. I've used my moment of weakness today to come up with an exercise that's not only writing, but a way of reinforcing my love for writing- I've posted it, because we're all human, and it might be of some help to you too.Hope you're faring better than I today...TomXPS, it wasn't blogger screwing with my piccies, it was the darn terminal- there's a reason why it's called a terminal, I'm sure... X
More About: Writing , Inspiration , Write

Steve Poltz, writer extrodinaire
2008-01-10 00:53:00
Click on the above to see the full size image Steve Poltz, woo hoo! Steve Poltz is a singer song writer, he's worked with Jewel, he's toured both with his band, the Rugburns, Jewel, and in his own right as a solo musician.Writing is a black art, and if you're anything like me you can get a little bit precious about your darlings- this guy is full of humuility, grace, courage and humour- he seems to know that you can't laugh at anyone if not yourself.Writing is important. Politcians, media personalities, Film stars, singers, any number of professions you care to name all rely on writers, and good writers- there's a place in the world for us. This is the good news; the great news is every single person in this world relies to some extent or another on that stories of others to inform their experiences, be it in warning humour, clever moral illustration, gentle guidance or simply stories that tell us we're not alone- we all need stories.We all need stories, and we're al story te...
More About: Inspiration , Writer

The pursuit of "IT"
2008-01-09 00:57:00
A number of people have asked me about creating commercially successful writing; ?What audience should I write for?? ?What is it that makes someone read a book?? ?How do I write for this audience??I?ve got no idea how to answer those questions. When I write, I try to capture ?It??It? is what we pursue in writing; ?It? is not something you can mechanically add, like eggs to a cake mix; ?It? is the life and spark that appears in a story after it?s finished; ?It? is the crystallization of the love you hold for the story and its telling. ?It? is not visible or measurable- or is, but only to an observer seeing you hunched over the keyboard, typing reverently like a monk in prayer. ?It? is there in the sunset that gives you cause to pause and the elderly couple walking hand in hand that fill you with a love for their history. You can?t make ?It? appear, but you can coax it out of hiding in your writing.You can?t buy ?It?.You don?t speak for ?It?- ?It? speaks through you.So what is ?It?? D...
More About: Writing

The "I" word
2008-01-08 01:09:00
And now a little more about inspiration.I was walking through a sunny alleyway this morning (I couldn?t find any dark ones) and was asked, ?Do you have a light?? I had matches, and offered them to the young lady, and we fell to chatting. She asked me what I did, and I told her that I was writer. She told me she was a cleaner, but had written several books of poetry, and went on to explain how publishers were crap, and didn?t understand or appreciate her work and the educational value it held.This is always true when you?ve not been published.She then went on to reveal this absolute pearl of wisdom, ?I only write about the things that come to my head- I mean, when I try to think of ideas I can?t come up with anything,?Inspiration is the art of reaching up into the thoughts that rattle around in our heads and plucking them like ripe cherries, arranging them on a plate in a delightful fashion and sharing those cherries with the rest of the world.I?m off to learn how to present cherries...
More About: Writing , Word