http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?em=&pagewanted=all

From http://www.wordstockfestival.com/cms/ :

Writers are often asked how they go about their writing. Over the past few years I’ve developed a highly efficient, effective process that I will now share, as I’m certain it will be of great interest and benefit to aspiring writers. It can be broken down into the following important steps:

1. Inspiration: idea for new book arrives. First love, angels singing, all is right with the universe. Burst of enthusiastic writerly activity, the words cascading forth effortlessly. This glorious period lasts for several minutes.

2. I hate this crap—what was I thinking?

3. Procrastination, self-recrimination, unhealthy meta-behaviors to avoid actually working.

4. Time passes.

5. Equilibrium is achieved between desire to procrastinate and self-loathing due to desire to procrastinate. Self-loathing eventually becomes more painful than actually sitting down and writing.

5. Sit down and write. No excuses.

5a. But first watch So You Think You Can Dance, but just this time, and definitely don’t linger to watch Ultimate Fighter.

5b. Watch Ultimate Fighter, convincing self that it’s a necessary counterbalance to preceding show.

5c. Do not watch Project Runway!

5d. …again.

6. Sit down and write, this time for real.

7 – 12. Facebook/Twitter/desultory blogging.

13 – 427. Check Amazon sales ranking of current novel.

428. Bedtime.

429. More time passes. Does the oven need cleaning? Isn’t it time I learned Wolof?

430. Repeat step five.

431. You know, this thing isn’t so bad.

432. Flurry of work. Show WIP to carefully selected friend, secure in the knowledge that they’ll fulfill their role as cheerleader.

433. Decide to agree with friend’s critique: I am a genius.

434. Coast on sugar high, cranking through chapter after chapter. The evil spell is broken.

435. This is crap.

436. See step three.

Beethoven

The following is a poem written from composer Ludwig van Beethoven to his “unsterbliche Geliebte,” or his Immoral Love.

Good morning, on July 7

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

What's in a name?

I am currently working on editing a largely unedited copy-text of Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, which has, at one point or another, been attributed to Shakespeare. I've included just a bit below - very clever, but in my humble opinion not from Shakespeare's hand.

Valingford. Sir, may a man be so bold,
As to crave a word with you?

Manvile. Yea, two or three: what are they?

Valingford. I say, this maid will have thee to her husband.

Mountney. And I say this: and thereof will I lay a hundred pounds. 95

Valingford. And I say this: whereon I will lay as much.

Manvile. And I say neither: what say you to that?

Mountney. If that be true: then are we both deceived.

Manvile. Why it is true, and you are both deceived.

Marques. In mine eyes, this is the most proper[1] wench. 100
Might I advice thee, take her unto thy wife.

Zweno. It seems to me, she hath refused him.

Marques. Why there’s the spite.[2]

Zweno. If one refuse him, yet may he have the other.

Marques. He will ask but her good will, and all her friends. 105

Zweno. Might I advise thee, let them both alone.

Manvile. Yea, that’s the course, and thereon will I stand,
Such idle love henceforth I will detest.

Valingford. The fox will eat no grapes and why?

Mountney. I know full well, because they hang too high[3]. 110

[1] proper: proprest; OED: no entry.
[2] spite: an annoying matter or affair; OED.
[3] “The fox…high” is a reference to the Aesop fable “The Fox and the Grapes.” See appendix.

What's up with the airlines?

"American cancels 850 more flights" http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/04/09/american.airlines.ap/index.html

According to CNN, American Airlines cancelled 850 more flights today, which makes the running total 1,350 total flights canceled if added to the 500 put through the gauntlet Tuesday. The average plane holds about 200 people - so that's 270,000 flightless people. And with the way the rest of the airline industry is running it's becoming quite evident the near future impossibility of being able to fly anywhere. This rampant canceling of flights coupled with rocketing gas prices and customer complaints ("Airline Complaints Soared in 2007," http://s7y.us/1889) gives travelers less and less plausible ability to travel by plane.

But then what's left? The price of gas practically eliminates the option of driving. I can't drive through town without thinking about how I'm going to pay for it, and I've heard many a friend complain that they feel like they're working to pay for gas. Hardly makes traveling even a possibility. Trains are great but less accessible and practial than planes or automobiles. So...our options are to walk...or stay home.

Great.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

- ee cummings

The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramaist, and one of the foremost pilliars of 20th century literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and, along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, was a driving force in the Irish Literary Revival, together founding Abbey Theatre. He is considered a modern writer, dealing largely with the spritual and absurd in many of his works.