Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
J.P. Donleavy, an early literary hero of mine, was quoted in Playboy (May, 1979) as saying, “Writing is turning one’s worst moments into money.”
Would that this were so. Meanwhile, another spin on the essence of writing is going the rounds on Facebook:
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In other quarters, writers instead turn whiskey into piss and engage in binge writing in the intervals between their alchemical endeavors. (I encountered the expression “binge writing” listening to a Letterman interview … Read more
So I’m sitting here on my balcony with this commanding view of rich folks’ gardens, assailed by birdsong from left and right, and I’m bonding with my Bali pig.
In fact I’m multitasking. I’m reading in the sun, improving my mind though not so much I know better than to work on a tan at the same time.
I’m drinking tea—my souvenir sencha from Japan—a rumored antidote to damaged chromosomes. I remain skeptical in this regard, but trust the placebo … Read more
Back before New Year’s, I posted a couple of blogs that meant to ease writers into the process of writing, rather than only talking about writing. I was subsequently sidetracked by the need to outline some flaws in the Scheme of Things, but now I’m back into this solipsistic writing workshop. But all we’ve discussed so far is only part of the story. Now I’m going to talk about The Muse Effect.
“Wherever do you find the discipline?” they ask. … Read more
In I Am a Strange Loop, an attempt to show how consciousness arises, Douglas Hofstadter at one point is explaining how Kurt Gödel deflates the grand ambition of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica.
I’m reading this explanation, and not following it at all—I’m that mathematically adept I still have problems with fractions—when I come across the following passage, which teases me with the notion I might finally be getting a glimmer.
“This may sound a … Read more
Scratch the Mayan Apocalypse. One less thing to worry about, eh?
Of course we still have all the political issues du jour—left vs right, conservatives/conservatives1/conservatives2 vs liberals/liberals1/liberals2, pro-gay marriage vs anti-gays, legalize ganja vs leave the trade to the mobsters, red vs yellow, orange vs chartreuse, etc., etc.
Beneath these lurk more fundamental issues, among them these:
