Throwing myself off a cliff

[pjthompson]

Quotes of the day:

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."

—Ray Bradbury


Love this one. He also said one of my favorite quotes about risk-taking and the creative act:

"Throw yourself off a cliff and build your wings on the way down."

He apparently liked that quote, too, for when giving speeches over the years he used several variants:

“Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”

“Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.”

"First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down."


I think I prefer the simplicity of the first one. Or maybe I just like that one better because it was the first variant I heard and because it was quoted to me by my departed friend, Stephan. It has become something of a mantra for me in my creative process, anyway.

Writingness of the day:

It's official. I'm going to do another rewrite of Shivery Bones before sending out my next batch of agent queries, see if I can cut 20k. There are a number of things killing me on that book, I suspect, but surely the 143k length is one of them.


SURVEY (as opposed to Monday poll):

How many of you read Evil Editor?

Comments

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."

That is a great quote. Awesome. You always have the best quotes. Where do you come up with them?

Never read the Evil Editor. What is it?

Do you belong to a writers group or anything?

[pjthompson]

Thanks. I get them from all sorts of places: books I've read, quote in books I've read, people send them to me, I steal them from people's sig lines, interviews I've heard or read, etc. The one place I don't get them is from quotation books or quotation sites because what would be the point? I love the randomness of coming across them, throwing them into the file, and rediscovering them at random years later.

Never read the Evil Editor. What is it?

http://evileditor.blogspot.com/

Do you belong to a writers group or anything?

http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/

Otherwise know as OWW.

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... I've heard of OWW before. How do you like it?

[pjthompson]

It's been very helpful. Really helped me hone the ol' writing machine, build writing relationships with other writers, gave me information and perspective on the publishing/writing/agent thing. You get out of OWW what you put in. So if you're willing to get in there and crit a lot, build critting relationships, etc., then you're going to get a lot of valuable feedback. And the old saw is true: you learn as much or more from doing the critiques as you do from being critiqued.

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

Oh I totally agree that you learn more about your own writing by doing critiques for others. I absolutely agree with that. I was asking because I've run a small online writing community for about 5 years now. Things tanked over the last 6 months or so and I'm trying to get it up and running again, so I was trying to see what else I can do, using the experiences of others in writing groups, to pick things back up and get it running again.

[vayenne.livejournal.com]

Um... I kind of ... skim Evil Editor. His rewrites of queries are informative and often hilarious, but at this point, they're not doing much for me. I'm more focused on the writing of the material to be queried than the writing of the query itself.

Plus, it's a time thing. :/

PS: Thanks for the help about Worldcon. I think I may try to go for one of the days.

[pjthompson]

Glad to help!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I love Bradbury.

[pjthompson]

Yes!

Cup of what?

[hkneale.livejournal.com]

In my flist, your post came after one that was talking about a Diva.

It took me a while to reparse the sentence to what it originally meant.

I think you've scarred me for life. :)

Re: Cup of what?

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

Some of us are still lemons, some are lemonade, and some have transubstantiated to wine. . . . :)

drinker beware.

Re: Cup of what?

[pjthompson]

Me, I'm a white chocolate java freeze.

Re: Cup of what?

[pjthompson]

ROFL! Ain't synchronicity grand?

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I read Evil Editor, but I tend to skip the rewrites. :)