Go Dreamers
I'm just a girl having a passionate affair with her dreams.
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Still working on it but…
I started writing this months ago and found it today while going through my journals. I had an experience last week where I woke up very sad. I went raking through my thoughts to find what the reason could be, but nothing fit the energy. The day went on, I met up with “him” and the sadness was gone just like that. It could have been that he was missing from me, (I won’t rule it out) but the lesson was so much more profound.
When these energies pass through us, I think we have a tendency to attach things to them: past memories, past hurts, and of course, all of our fears. However, I think we’re supposed to remember that, “This too shall pass.” The energies and the emotions are going to pass. And if we remember that they are just passing through, we won’t load it with so much baggage. It’s our baggage (incessant thoughts) which causes pain to stay and to get heavier. This leads to stress, depression, and the addictions that we adopt to cope.
It’s like being at the ocean. Imagine that you are the water and for the most part you’re in the current, but then your waves crash on the dry coarse sand. It’s dry, hot, and is a block to your momentum, but because of the nature of things you will eventually draw back to the vastness of the ocean and return to the current. It’s up to you how much sand you carry back into the flow.
While I am the first to acknowledge my poor analogies, I hope this makes sense. The point is sometimes you’ll be sad because you’re sad. If it takes you more than a minute to assign a reason to your emotion, then rest assured that it’ll pass…all you have to do is let it go. Don’t give it room to grow.
1. Stephen King. In his book On Writing, King says that he writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays. That’s a lot of writing each day, and it has led to some incredible results: King is one of the most prolific writers of our time.
2. Ernest Hemingway. By contrast with King, “Papa” Hemingway wrote 500 words a day. That’s not bad, though. Hemingway, like me, woke early to write to avoid the heat and to write in peace and quiet. Interestingly, though Hemingway is famous for his alcoholism, he said he never wrote while drunk.
3. Vladimir Nabokov. The author of such great novels as Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada did his writing standing up, and all on index cards. This allowed him to write scenes non-sequentially, as he could re-arrange the cards as he wished. His novel Ada took up more than 2,000 cards.
4. Truman Capote. The author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood” claimed to be a “completely horizontal author.” He said he had to write lying down, in bed or on a couch, with a cigarette and coffee. The coffee would switch to tea, then sherry, then martinis, as the day wore on. He wrote his first and second drafts in longhand, in pencil. And even his third draft, done on a typewriter, would be done in bed — with the typewriter balanced on his knees.
5. Philip Roth. One of the greatest living American writers, Roth works standing up, pacing around as he thinks. He claimed to walk half a mile for every page he writes. He separates his work life from personal life, and doesn’t write where he lives — he has a studio built away from his house. He works at a lectern that doesn’t face the view of his studio window, to avoid distraction.
6. James Joyce. In the pantheon of great writers of the last century, Joyce looms large. And while more prolific writers set themselves a word or page limit, Joyce prided himself in taking his time with each sentence. A famous story has a friend asking Joyce in the street if he’d had a good day writing. Yes, Joyce replied happily. How much had he written? Three sentences, Joyce told him.
7. Joyce Carol Oates. This extremely prolific writer (see her bibliography on her Wikipedia page!) has won numerous awards, including the National Book Award. She writes in longhand, and while she doesn’t have a formal schedule, she says she prefers to write in the morning, before breakfast. She’s a creative writing professor, and on the days she teaches, she says she writes for an hour or 45 minutes before leaving for her first class. On other days, when the writing is going well, she can work for hours without a break — and has breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon!
(via luvvdivine)
Interviewer: You want your art to live on long after you?
Nina: Oh yes.
Interviewer: And your music says this, and it speaks to black people. I want you to tell me what your, you know, gut feeling is about this.
Nina: Well, look, off the top of my head as far as I’m concerned,…
