Notes of a Hopeful Scrivener (NSW)

[Chosen One Ephant Mon]

Probably an atypical project, but this story will be a series of (fictional) journal entries of an aspiring writer. It may not interest anybody but me, but I'll throw it up just in case.

 

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I.

 

Shopping””not going to get exactly what you need, or find a gift for a friend, or visit your man behind the counter to snag some swag off the buddy-buddy discount, but shopping shopping, recreational shopping””is something I will never understand. Hopping from store to store, burning hours browsing, perusing, and lusting after overpriced items you know you're never going to buy? That makes no sense to me. Malls, when they're not the stereotypical consumerist blight on America, moving in and plowing over some family farm that's been there for generations (there's always one of those), aren't too bad in themselves. Why drive across town when you can head right down the hall? But the activity has to have some purpose, some end. Shopping to shop...is this really how we're filling our lives?

 

And yet I've been all too like the shopper. What am I doing with my life? Pedaling around eyeing this and that, with no direction and no destination? Waiting for something to fall off the shelf and into my cart, with no price tag? I haven't even brought along the cart. ”œAh, but the displays are so pretty!”

[Jidai Geki]

That's pretty insightful, COEM. I particularly liked this part:

 

How many more times will I go, spinning through the options and committing to none? To be good at everything and great at nothing? That is the ultimate curse. Nothing is more tragic than the wellsprings of moderate talent. They produce no riches””just the constant tease of what lies just beyond. ”œWith just a little more, how great you could be!”

[Tiana Calthye]

Very tragic that people don't write letters anymore. But I think all of us aspiring writers have felt the same way.

 

I remember when I first laid, well... fingers to keyboard. When first I took up a pen I swore and cursed at my mother for having the sheer NERVE to force me to do this thing called writing. I hated it. My hands got sweaty. I hated it so much. Then I took my keyboard and sneakily wrote fantasy and hoped no one would look and a new world was born in my mind.

 

And it was that softest whisper.

 

I wonder how many people stop, and ignore that voice that says this is it.

[Amidala Skywalker]

Love this. Brilliantly written, and even though it went from shopping malls to the meaning of life to writing, it flowed. At least in a stream of conciousness kind of way. It evoked an emotional response, which is what all good writing should do (even if that emotion is only curiosity!).

[Chosen One Ephant Mon]

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the comments and I'm sorry I hadn't responded until now. I intended to keep this going a long long time ago but now after some serious busyness I can finally get back to it.

 

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II.

 

Post tenebras lux.

 

It should not be necessary to repeat my opinions on shopping, but I am compelled now to note that there is one exception. It is so dissimilar that I hardly consider it in the same category, but I don't know what else to call it, and a careful examination has led me to conclude that, by what must be some untraceable technicality, it nevertheless falls under the slick definition. To me it is something so elevated from the empty carnival of dress sales and shopping carts that to slap it with that vulgar tag is almost demeaning. But to give the idea form I must invoke language, the abusive charmer, to come nearest the rosy truth while praying mercy from its thorny distortions. And that idea is what may be called (though still not to my satisfaction) book shopping.

 

There is nothing quite like stepping into a bookstore. It is an almost spiritual experience, walking in and staring out at a sea of possibility. I feel I've just entered a literary cathedral. Let us be clear: libraries are venerable landmarks””a repository of hallowed relics. The cause of libraries is a noble one which I endorse wholeheartedly. But bookstores are the literary lifeblood. They hum with a quiet magic, and they accommodate everything: there are new releases right with the classics, annals of knowledge and even popular trash if you want it. Everything is new, grand, yet inviting, homey: warm lighting along with the fresh-off-the-press smell that hits you hard when you take a book from the shelf and start thumbing through the pages. I can get lost in there for hours and leave without buying a thing, and yet feel like the hours could not have been better spent. At the library you are a blip in a sprawling network of exchange, one participant in the web spun across time and space. The bookstore is something personal; its items are the building blocks for my edification. At the library you share; at the bookstore, for an unfathomably small price (for less than a pack of batteries!), I can access the greatest works and minds of history and make them mine, assemble them into my own library.

 

Without having reflected on it or put it into so many words until today, I have always come away from those book-browsing hours (yes, there it is: a label better than shopping) feeling that I had just drunk the cool crystal offerings of the freshest spring, in the way that a Sunday morning spent at the house of worship rejuvenates the weary spirit (How had I not seen my destiny sooner? My blindness still boggles me). But today I experienced something even more extraordinary. I intended a normal (but always fulfilling) trip to the bookstore, but found that in the light of who and what I had now resolved to be, I saw everything with new eyes. The great wordsmiths of present and past, the writers on whom I had long fed my soul? I was their brother. My vocation had brought me into this exclusive convent. While passing from aisle to aisle I was struck by the magnitude of this truth. On one shelf sat John Milton. Is it inconceivable that I should be mentioned in the same conversation? Why not, when (one day) my name will sit alongside, separated by mere feet of the carpet?

 

It is not that I ”œsaw the light”

[jedi_master_gimpy]

Wow! I'm really enjoying this, COEM. The prose is smooth and descriptive, with well-chosen words. Some sentences I just wanted to stop and study, they were so artistically put together.

 

You've done an excellent job of combining a stream of consciousness flow with sudden observation tangents which I think hit home for any appreciator of reading and/or writing. It made me want to go lose myself in a bookstore or library, something I get to do less and less it seems!

 

The subject's growing awareness of their calling as a writer resonates so clearly with me right now. I'm trying to get more serious about my writing and actually contemplate trying to get something published on the side of my engineering job, as I realize more and more how much I love it.

 

I'm looking forward to further journal entries/reflections!

[Obi-quiet]

Hmm, interesting thoughts. I'd like to see this published. It reminds me of something I might hear on NPR. ^^;

 

I think I have to agree to a certain extent, except when it comes to clothes. Okay, I can't do this for hours on end, but I love looking at clothes mainly because I love to DRAW clothes, and seeing the different styles and different things I can do with them...yes, I can shop. I usually end up getting candy when I do though. ^^:

[Guest]

Editor's note: is life, not just work. Live on its power to do things his father when young hobbies, older still find ways to improve health, threw himself into his back garden well-founded,moncler! In front of my house, there is a small garden. Early time, are the property of the people are eager to plant some flowers, even if it has a lush garden flowers, but not very tender and beautiful, is not very beautiful. But summer came, it would make no reason soaring, it will fall to feel dejected, the lonely garden. Prove that some people never stop I looked, but no one to carefully says, let alone even people watch.

two years ago, my father age increasing. Some command does not move his Tai Chi sword, Tai Chi dance is not up to his fan. That several sets of clothing with flowing tai chi with his sword, hanging on the wall asleep. Father still insisted on the early years of love, finishing his health Digest, Veg Shear, ten feet to this, each is carefully wipe with a word written on a small, old message digest, one of the two ... ... the father to go from the road, it does not as before,doudoune moncler pas cher, although still in good health, but the pace a bit trivial and drag, the father of 84-year-old. Starting from the day do not know, my father began to focus their attention on the front of it a small garden. Do not know where he is from Amoy to a small hoe, some flowers with belongings, but do not know where to buy so many seeds. When spring comes, his father would carefully in the beginning of his farming. Cultivation, planting, watering, fertilizing, after a spring rain, those tender shoots will grow together Shua Shua, two new green leaves, proud stretching in the sun, new life is always like that so that we hearts touched. And his father would not see any of these rubbed different clumps of small leaves, he always took it to a small shovel, carefully to these small leaves are cultivation, watering. That the small shovel so I thought particularly like it,maillot de foot, it is like we are at home when I used that to. At that time, the father tends the early forties of not less than ten square meters of this small garden, it is a large vegetable garden around their houses, as well as south of the village sub-post header on a large garden. At that time, the father of our village primary school, he could play the organ, write calligraphy, but also understand Japanese. Chinese New Year, many people will come to our house to discuss the couplet, and some people wrote to give the Japanese relatives, but also to trouble his father. At that time, the mother will put a square table on the kang, ink, paper and ink for all gracefully, and his father asked to write what people want to say,maillot de football, the pen will be left behind, the detailed written. Letterhead paper that is folded vertical marks, his father fell on top of a very meaningful word handsome, often written, his father would probably mean to read the times, folks always thanked his father took the letter back contented. Tends the garden with his father to carry on his shoulders is a big hoe, and that the little hoe, I brought most of the time, crouched behind his father, a little bit to the vegetable garden weeding and feel the warm earth , inside the nose is filled with the fragrance of the soil.

small garden in front of the meticulous care of his father, the first in the summer, open to the unusual. Pink peony, a large, unusual flowers of these, as full of life and proud, this calm, this lush, this pure, it attracted a lot of people often stood, in the busy life of this gap in experience natural beauty carved vain. When to see someone praise his garden, his father is particularly happy, eyebrows eyes which are all happy.

this spring, when his father's garden more enriched, and there's flowers blooming at once I returned home, back to that flower-filled courtyard. Peony open bright colors more rich, pink, gouache, brilliant purple,polo ralph lauren pas cher, the new chicken grass, rouge beans, small sunflower! Chicken with red flowers, white, single flowers with a double, rouge beans of different colors, a flower, there are several colors. Child, the family's yard on the full of such flowers, in addition to these, some I do not know the name of the flowers, with vivid and very unique.

I like the setting sun, to accompany his father's side, while enjoying this beautiful and pristine gardens, while chatting with his father. His father's thinking is not like the past is so smooth, but very open-minded. Maybe life is a continuous experience enrich the process. Elderly father is calm, not for our children, career and Vanity Fair a few little proud and proud, as usual, he is still teaching me how to work, how to get along with others, how to educate their children, even to see my father He believes that wearing an inappropriate dress would be severely criticized,chaussure football, both father is angry, is plain, is mild, or smiling, standing in his father's side, watching a garden of flowers swaying in the wind I feel in the hands of a treasure among the well-being. The happiness comes from a vest, a love, a attachment.

相关的主题文章：

 

 

并然引发争吵

 

落叶纷纷，一片凄厉和凛冽……

 

今天的心像一滩死水

[Chosen One Ephant Mon]

Yes, I thought so too.

 

 

P.S. Thank you for reading and for the feedback, obi and gimpy. I'm glad it has been enjoyable. This is a pretty easy project to write, so even though I have been incredibly busy and unable to do much independent writing lately, I hope to have a new update posted soon.

[Chosen One Ephant Mon]

III.

 

It is said that Michelangelo would spend entire days staring at a marble monolith, sitting, staring, and doing nothing else. For four months he did this without fail, without lifting the chisel. It became the Statue of David.

 

In whose better footsteps to follow? I have my two notebooks splayed open, the one on the left absorbing these letters, and the one on the right still a neat virgin palette. Should I have expected my Muse to serenade me so soon? Even the greatest ”” even did Michelangelo ”” await the idea. I will leap at her first whisper. Until then, my book remains blank.

 

What is my progress, you (I) say? What have I to show for my resolve, burned into the record with this very ink for all (me) to see? You (I, they ”” whoever) miss the point. This is progress: the tortuous internal toil, the sedulous rubbing together the mind's twin sticks, ever on the cusp of the creative spark. To his friend, Michelangelo's routine seemed pointless. To his quizzical prod, ”œWhat are you doing?”

[Amidala Skywalker]

Loved it! Very muse-like, well-written, and open. You really captured the feel of an artist pursuing his work with dedication (something I do only half-heartedly most of the time).

 

Thanks for sharing!

[jedi_master_gimpy]

Nice! I like the continued desire and struggle so honestly portrayed in these journals. I relate so much, although I certainly don't put in the time and practice I should. I think it's so hard to make the transition from writing for fun to what would be necessary for a career, and since so many of us aren't ready to make that jump (or can't afford to), writing falls to the wayside as we wait for that one perfect, solid idea to form that will put us fully into the world of writing. It reminds me of the advice I've heard about reading the Bible: even the days you don't want to pick it up you should still be reading.

 

As an addition to your collection here this part is just as strong, smoothly written and descriptive as the rest. I'm continuing to enjoy how you have mixed a strongly delivered "product" with the emotions of the writer that come through - passion, struggle, and a deep satisfaction in the writing itself. Well done, and what further thought and resonance it creates in your readers (as writers).

[Chosen One Ephant Mon]

Thanks for the nice feedback, Ami and gimpy. It is certainly true that I draw from some personal and well-shared writerly feelings, but I will also add that this is fictional so the voice is not entirely my own. Over the next few entries, as the arc and character of the writer start to take shape, that may become more apparent.

 

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IV.

 

I have to chuckle a bit at my last entry. In reading back over it, I am more than a little amused at my own expectations, and, perhaps, naïveté. What, I thought, is a more natural sister to writing than reading? They are as paired together as the pen to the page, conjoined in activity and spirit, together infused with the singular magic of the word. I had resolved (I have half a mind to stop recording these forward declarations), now, to a new task: to augment and edify my writer's toolkit by ””what else? ”” reading more. By coming at the latter as training for the former, I would weave seamlessly from one practice to the other, buttressing my current ability with the knowledge and skill that study provides.

 

But what seemed the simplest resolution has delivered its own basket of complications. The task itself is not the problem ”” I am reading more ”” nor that it is any kind of chore (if anything, I am enjoying it too much). No, the difficulty lies in reading as the means to the writer's end. This (I am now finding) is anything but natural. If I had ever given a moment's serious thought to it before it should have been obvious, but my mind glazed over it and was all too happy to recite the conventional wisdom.

 

To be clear, I don't dispute that the two go hand in hand ”” only that they do it quite so easily. The artist, the writer, is a conjurer; the work, creatio ex nihilo. The artist lies in an open field, gazes at the clouds that are very clearly clouds, and, drawing on nothing but the imagination, carves their nebulous amorphies into well-cut figures. Only, as the writer, he must first supply even the clouds.

 

But to read is to give oneself up; or rather, to be caught on a line ”” cast by and from the sea itself ”” tugged, reeled, and plunged into the deep. You swim in the story, immersed in the author's world. It is an invitation to explore, to peer at the exotic flora and fauna ”” otherworldly, without quite being so; undiscovered, but still a part of home ”” though all the while carried along the invisible current to destinations unknown.

 

And that is the trouble, at least for me. To read for the craft (or, at least, to be overly conscious of it) is to be drawn out of the world ”” to pop your head up for air is to break the spell. But am I not to experience the work full, vividly, as it is intended? To be too reflective, too dry and analytic, sapping up one too many motes of technical wisdom ”” in short, a hollow deconstruction ”” threatens a collapse of the world. My project, therefore, rests on a precarious balance. The book is my greatest ally, and it must be. But it is also my slyest tempter. Reading, at bottom, taps a different mode of the mind, burrows itself in and seductively morphs into its own end. How easy it is to forget my notebook entirely! I have already felt it. All of which is to say: I know myself. I can be charmed by a good book, and if I'm not careful, am liable to be swept away and lose sight of my purpose. I must check myself.

 

But all of this is necessary. I suppose I should not even call it a problem. Above all of this, my recent page turning has impressed on me the firm conviction that I am not yet where I need to be. The more I read, the less I find that I am ready to write. Already in drawing up a list of titles I see where the regrettable gaps in my knowledge lie. If I am to write wholeheartedly, I must read the same. And how grateful I am to have discovered this now. I imagine with horror the disasters untold had I begun my own work without these reads under my belt. How ignorant of the tides of literary history, how novel I would have thought my own inventions, blissfully unaware that they had been done a hundred years past. This is a recurring nightmare. Not only to have wasted my time and talents on something unoriginal, but the shame ”” that I could not endure.

 

That is why, for all the traps that reading lays, I must persist. Literature has its own narrative, spanning millennia. I have to know its own story, to be in on the conversation of texts across centuries, if I am ever to contribute something worthwhile. I see now that my ”œtraining”

[Amidala Skywalker]

I'm loving these "entries". Really fun to read, to peer into the character's brain. I find it really easy to relate as well. I love to analyze writers as I read, but in terms of breaking the "spell"--well, I agree with that too, and that's why I normally analyze the book after I've done reading it.

 

But all too often I find myself feeling just so inferior after reading a good book. I despair, thinking I'll never achieve that brilliance, and then it discourages me from writing. I hope your character doesn't fall into the same trap!

[jedi_master_gimpy]

It is so much harder to read under the "spell" or continuing disbelief sometimes when you are focused on becoming a better writer! What a good reminder from the character. I was re-reading one of the older Star Wars novels the other day, Darksaber, and several times managed to ruin parts of the for myself because I was continually distracted by the use of "Jedi powers" (a la "Luke, you must use your Jedi powers to save them!").

 

I'm very interested to see what your character takes away from the classics and what allows them to be so timeless.