37 posts tagged with "thoughts"

It’s not writing that I’m geared for. I guess I’m not really a “writer,” if that’s the case.

My friend talked about having the muscles/strengths necessary to be a good writer, and you can learn the craft of writing even if you don’t have the strengths to be a good one (6/13/2017 Good as in above average, having whatever it takes to make such a writer worth reading in comparison to other writers). That is, those muscles include things like thinking metaphorically, being able to find and make complex patterns, being able to imagine scenes and sensory items, and a desire to create and share emotive things.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m worried about being a good writer. Or really even just being “a writer,” as if it’s some special breed of human. Indeed, it seems like most articles raise them up, along with other artists, to a pseudo-deity, much the same as celebrities. It draws all my ambition.

A godly man would view fame and wealth as all but worthless—at least for the normal reasons I pursue them. Tolstoy did, but only after discerning their worthlessness from experience. They are utility. Reach more people. Help more people. They carry the responsibility of the Talents,

You don’t have to want to do it for it to be worthwhile, wholesome, to enjoy it, to do it well or get into it (this can come even when you don’t want to do it to begin with).

The wanting to do it and the doing are not necessarily connected, especially if the not wanting occurs before and not while you are doing it, I would think. Sometimes if you make yourself do it anyways, you end up having a completely different attitude as you do it.

The thing about the tower of Babel is that they probably would have finished it. The issue wasn’t that God was stopping them from failure. He was stopping them from success, lest they succeed in what would have been a small thing, in reality, but that would have convinced them of their greatness. God stopped them and scattered them lest they convince themselves that they didn’t need him.

Connect this with my own towers. I may actually be able to do these things.

“Brain. I need a word to describe darkness.”

“What quality would you like to modify?”

“It’s night, and there are no stars, so how about just ‘really dark?’ So, intensity.”

“Would you like a modifier of the same category of contextually-determined primary-quality as ‘darkness?’ Or would you rather something of a different primary quality?”

Learning to art

Is like tending a thistled field.

Until you plow, it chokes its fruit.

But thorns scratch

And catch

I’ve been pretty lax about posting for the past half-year. After unloading my first armful of vignettes, publishing drew my attention, and I have since been more interested in submitting than posting. The logs I still carry await the publishing fire.