Showing posts with label Robert Frost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Frost. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

All I Want for Christmas...is more time to read!




Dunno if I like the graphic or the text better in this image!

More than once I've wondered if being the headmaster of a boys' prep school wouldn't be about the best job ever...or, mebbe, better still, being the underutilized librarian at said school! Mmm...books and learning...learning and books, yum!

Are you someone who loves to look around you and see rows or heaps and piles of books? Or, do you buy and read then pass along or resell? Me, I'm by nature acquisitive (and inquisitive!) but am learning to simplify, unacquire, and down-size. Happily, both my wife and I have always been library people...sadly, I tend to salivate to excess in bookstores or libraries! So many books, so little time!

There are some books that just MUST be acquired, read, and reread. Lewis and Tolkien, Scripture, and Robert Frost are life-long keepers for me. Howzabout you?


Friday, August 30, 2013

Laugh or Cry or Gape in Amazement: what great writing is all about.


“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

-Robert Frost
- - = = - - = = - - = = - -


"No fun in the writer, no fun in for the reader" would be my little addendum, if I dare to camp onto the Poet Laureate's words. Not that life is all fun and light and sweetness...but don't we crave moments of light and sweetness and fun and fulfillment? I think those kind of yearnings are there to remind us to fix our eyes on something bigger and better'n we ourselves are.

So, do I cry when I write? Nope. (Sometimes, reading what I've written--oh yeah!)

Am I surprised when I write? Oh, certainly. I adhere to one famous author's suggestion: Take strong characters, throw them into difficult circumstances, and see what they do! Then, throw them into more difficulties...add tension, stir, and repeat.

The critical ingredient in that recipe is STRONG characters. Or, characters who are becoming strong. Or, characters who used to be strong and we wonder--do they still have it? Are they gonna reach way down deep inside and do it, or will they choke? Stay tuned, because, as Scarlett reminds us, "Tomorrah is anothah day!"
..............
"I want to make you laugh.
I want to make you cry.
Even better, both at the same time."
 
(from Stephen King's lapidary opus, ON WRITING: For Love of the Craft.)