The Lesser Writer Will Haul Up the Moon.

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening. Look at a point of land over which the sun is certain to rise, Coleridge said. If the moon rises there, so what? The senses are startled, that’s all. But if we know the point where the sun will rise as it has always risen and as it will rise tomorrow and the next day too, well, well! At the beginning of “Hamlet” there can be no doubt that by the play’s end, the prince will buy it. Between start and finish, then, we may concentrate on what he says and who he is, matters made more intense by our knowing he is doomed. In every piece of work, at one juncture or another, a writer has the choice of doing something weird or something true. The lesser writer will haul up the moon.

-Roger Rosenblatt

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50 Words from India

• A – atoll, avatar
• B – bandana, bangle, bazaar, Blighty, bungalow
• C – cashmere, catamaran, char, cheroot, cheetah, chintz, chit, chokey, chutney, cot, cummerbund, curry
• D – dinghy, doolally, dungarees
• G – guru, gymkhana
• H – hullabaloo
• J – jodhpur, jungle, juggernaut, jute
• K – khaki, kedgeree
• L – loot
• N – nirvana
• P – pariah, pashmina, polo, pukka, pundit, purdah, pyjamas
• S – sari, shampoo, shawl, swastika
• T – teak, thug, toddy, typhoon
• V – veranda
• Y – yoga

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Mark Twain on Creating Characters

“I never deliberately sat down and ‘created’ a character in my life. I begin to write incidents out of real life. One of the persons I write about begins to talk this way and one another, and pretty soon I find that these creatures of the imagination have developed into characters, and have for me a distinct personality. These are not ‘made,’ they just grow naturally out of the subject. That was the way Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and other characters came to exist. I couldn’t to save my life deliberately sit down and plan out a character according to diagram. In fact, every book I ever wrote just wrote itself. I am really too lazy to sit down and plan and fret to ‘create’ a ‘character.’ If anybody wants any character ‘creating,’ he will have to go somewhere else for it. I’m not in the market for that. It’s too much like industry.”

– “Mark Twain

Songwriting : Bob Marley

“Well, it grow together. Is like, first time mi try to write a song is the first time mi try to play the guitar. And soh mi can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. Mi really like stay with mi guitar. But it just happen, is Jah inspiration come thru man. Because, I personally, it look like, could ah write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune fi write. ‘Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.”

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G.K. Chesterton : Poetry Slam

In 1910 Frances Cornford published “To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train”:

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

In 1933 G.K. Chesterton felt moved to reply:

Why do you rush through the field in trains,
Guessing so much and so much?
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves and such?

Vito Aiuto on Sincerity

“I’m really tired of irony. I’m tired of sarcasm. I’m tired of interacting with my friends, where we make fun of each other to show each other that we love each other. I’m totally scarred by that. I’m tired of it and I don’t want to do it. I really just want to make music that’s really honest and is almost embarrassingly sincere.”

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