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Showing posts from July, 2011

For Henry David Thoreau's Birthday

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I read in the paper today that it is Henry David Thoreau's birthday. Here, from Walden is my favorite Thoreau quote: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Writing from our Lives

I have to return my copy of Writer's Digest to the library tomorrow, but I wanted to leave you with one last quote from an article by Dinty W. Moore (either that is not his real name or his parents had quite the sense of humor!): It's not what happens to us in our lives that makes us into writers; it's what we make out of what happens to us .

Looking for inspiration? Create a soundtrack for your story!

I've been drinking in the pages of the latest issue of Writer's Digest . So many good ideas! So little time! I did come across this great idea in "The Geyser Approach to Revision" by James Scott Bell: "To do the best revision possible, you need to recapture the feeling you had while writing your draft in the first place. One way to do this is through music. Find several pieces that move you to feelings consistent with your book. . . Compile a playlist of songs that evoke the mood - or better yet, a medley of the various moods - you hope to convey in  your story, and use it as background each time you sit down to self-edit."