№ 729. Creative Writing

With his customary wisdom and wit, Vonnegut put forth 8 basics of what he calls Creative Writing 101:


1.  Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2.  Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3.  Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4.  Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5.  Start as close to the end as possible.

6.  Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7.  Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8.  Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

№ 283. Reading for Wisdom and Folly

"Deep reading cuts into your soul and shapes you like real life experiences. Few of us have deep experiences but we can all read about them and thereby experience them; in my view better—with the wisdom of those who actually lived them and the luxury of reflection."

№ 214. A Day in the Life

"I’ve always told myself to treat it like a 9-to-5 job. You just go do it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re feeling good that day. I don’t think writers or artists can afford to have a “creative temperament” or to wait for inspiration to descend. You have to simply sit there and make yourself do it. And over the years that’s a discipline I really developed. I can sit down at my desk every day and do my work, never give myself permission not to do it. Once your mind understands that it has no excuses, it’s remarkable how it begins to play along." (Harvard Business Review)

Life after Law School, Circa 2005-2006

№ 182. Facts Wrapped in Fiction

A morning rummage through the pages of web yields a find worth a pause.

Hola Escolta, Saturday Market, July 2014

№ 101. "Really, can these puns go any Führer?"*

"Somebody said, grammar is already a pain so why should you be so, too?" (Source unknown)

"Well, it's good to be right and it's fun to be a schmuck about it, too." (Source withheld upon request for fear of cyber bullies)

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"Q. I answer our company’s main phone line, and frequently get calls for myself. Today when someone asked for me saying, “Is Charlotte available?” I responded, “This is she.” The caller promptly corrected me, informing me that I should have said, “This is her.” Which is correct?

A. Your response was the correct one. “This is she” is grammatically correct. The verb “to be” acts as a linking verb, equating subject and object. So this is she and she is this; “she” and “this” are one and the same, interchangeable, and to be truly interchangeable they must both play the same grammatical role—that of the subject.

However, this rule gets broken all the time. I suspect that people expect an object (as is correct for constructions such as “you slay me” or “what’s wrong with me?” or “go talk to her”) so they choose an object, unaware of the nature of a linking verb. Now both forms have come to be accepted if not acceptable; it’s a matter of how formal you want to be. If you’re a 1950s-style Hollywood garage mechanic who grudgingly picks up the phone, with greasy hands, when nobody’s “manning” it, the conversation might go like this:

Hullo?
Hey, Charlie?
That’s me, Mac. Whaddya want?

You can try to avoid the issue by using your own name, rather than a pronoun: “this is Charlotte” is never wrong.

The who/whom question is similar. Though “whom” is correct when the objective form is called for, it can sound put on; it seems to draw attention to its own correctness. In any case, if we were all as proper as you are, proper grammar wouldn’t sound wrong to anyone." (Chicago Manual of Style)

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ebaumsworld

Bento Box:

*The title is lifted from Frazel's YouTube comment.

№ 28. Manila Extract (after Ondoy)

Design Anthology

You are dense.
An equation of salty noodles 
steaming in my cup.


You are stained.
A peppered whisper
left by the ketchup on my lips.


You are Manila.
A name seasoned by monsoons
stirring needles in my gut.

№ 22. Minding the Gaps

I won't fall because
My steps will mind the pavement,
By peeling off illusions.



Bento Box: "Minding the Gaps" is from the reminder to London commuters, "Please mind the gaps...". When I first heard it spoken in a very English accent, in the tube, in Islington station, I thought COOL. Way cooler than the 7*C spring weather, then. I shall return.

№ 15. Conversations

Excerpts from the conversation between the angels Damiel and Cassiel in “Wings of Desire”:

Damiel: It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. 

№ 12. Love After Love

Viewing Jackson Pollack at the MOMA, New York

№ 11. Rilke at the Delta Quadrant

I stumbled upon this poem while, again, conducting a space exploration deep in the Delta Quadrant.

Thankfully, I skipped the Borg corridor. I didn’t want to be assimilated and forced another round of Talaxian beer and who knows what other nano ales.

In Celebration of Me (1909)

Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am so afraid of people's words.

They describe so distinctly everything:

And this they call dog and that they call house,

here the start and there the end.

I worry about their mockery with words,

they know everything, what will be, what was;

no mountain is still miraculous;

and their house and yard lead right up to God.

I want to warn and object: Let the things be!

I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.

But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.

That's how you kill.

Bento Box:

"René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. Among English-language readers, his best-known work is the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographicalThe Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland."

Chapter 1: In the Beginning….

The email thread below began the big bang (or perhaps, more accurately, the small blip). The idea of a blog had been with me for years now. I just wasn’t prepared with the contents, visuals and the commitment.

As some force would will it, the edited conversation pushed this idea into the blogosphere. I stirred the primordial soup, ignited the burner and… 


*KABLAM!*