Writing is a joy well sometimes

Tuesday, February 05, 2013


January was a very productive month in posting on the blog. My creative juices were flowing. The joy of sitting at the keyboard was something that I have not sensed in a long time.


The reality is that I don’t know what it takes to get me on a roll anymore. Nor can I figure out when I am going to drop into a sloth like state. My guess is that it is always a battle to write. Perhaps I should say it is always a battle to write anything good at least.


To buttress my above feeling I went looking for quotes. I found one that touches on what I mean but it approaches the issues sideways. “Any man who keeps working [at writing] is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer,”- Ray Bradbury. Yeah, like I said this quote seems to imply that writing is work, it is a task or a craft but not a whim.



Thinking on it I am of the mind that to write requires that you constantly be absorbing knowledge. You can’t just start out as a tabla rasa and expect to produce a note that is of value. In my case that requires reading a book or a scholarly journal or at least a detailed magazine with articles that are not USA Todayified. You know what I mean. They can’t end in three paragraphs and have no word longer than three syllables. Harpers or Mother Jones or the Economist or the New Yorker, these are magazines that present well written mind filling information. A writing mind needs to be challenged and then the mind needs to work out the challenge on paper.


There are only two exceptions to maxim from my perspective. These are the Daily Dharma quotes I get from Tricycle magazine and the web sites stumbling takes me to based on my profile. The Daily Dharma quotes are from longer articles dealing with issues in Buddhism. Normally in reading one of these quotes my mind can wander far afield into the area of ethics, morality and spiritual focus. The Stumbleupon links can take my mind anywhere. It stimulates my thought. It presents me with what if scenarios.


My hope is to stay alive and keep writing. My father once told me that he read every night before bed. He stated that if you quit learning you might as well just give up. I think he was right.


http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.tricycle.com/