“…at birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow the child with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Photo: This 1919 photo shows future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945; in office from 1933-1945), wife Eleanor, and five of their six children, along with Roosevelt’s mother Sara.
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” STEPHEN KING
“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.” PETER DE VRIES
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” JACK LONDON
Painting: “Lightning” by Kevin Gritzke
“Believe in the holy contour of life.” JACK KEROUAC
Photo: Tom Wolbers, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Since February 2nd is Groundhog Day, today I’ve been exploring all things groundhog-related. One of my finds was The Magic of Groundhog Day: Transform Your Life Day by Day, a 2008 book by Paul Hannam with a foreword by screenwriter Danny Rubin.
Here’s a blurb about the book from Library Journal Review (2008): “Using the 1993 movie Groundhog Day as a springboard to illustrate the principle of repetitive thought patterns, professional entrepreneur and lecturer Hannam (Oxford University) discusses how to change one’s inner life to see the beauty in the world. According to Hannam, the ‘groundhog effect’ is the force that keeps people feeling stuck and powerless to change. Only by breaking free of this looplike effect, he posits, can they liberate themselves to enjoy healthy habits, relationships, and careers.”
Find the book at Amazon.com.
From SNOOPY’S GUIDE TO THE WRITING LIFE
Anthology Contribution by Ray Bradbury (Excerpt)
…Snoopy has written me on many occasions from his miniature typewriter, asking me to explain what happened to me in the great blizzard of rejection slips of 1935. Then there was the snowstorm of rejection slips in ’37 and ’38 and an even worse winter snowstorm of rejections when I was twenty-one and twenty-two.
That almost tells it, doesn’t it, that starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn’t realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn.
Then, during the late forties, I actually began to sell short stories and accomplished some sort of deliverance from snowstorms in my fourth decade. But even today, my latest books of short stories contain at least seven stories that were rejected by every magazine in the United States and also in Sweden! So, dear Snoopy, take heart from this. The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.
Cartoon: Charles Schultz, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life is on my holiday “must read” list. Sounds like the perfect read — humor, writing advice, plus the charming, incomparable Monsieur Snoopy in his atelier (i.e., doghouse roof) writing about dark and stormy nights.
Here’s a blurb about the book from Library Journal: Using the many Snoopy “at the typewriter” strips as jumping-off points, 30 famous writers as disparate as Ray Bradbury, Elmore Leonard, Budd Shulberg, Dominick Dunne, Danielle Steele, and Sue Grafton have written short pep talks, amusing anecdotes, or just useful advice to would-be writers based on their own experiences. Witty and charming, the essays offer much creative and practical wisdom. But the highlight of the book is the touching foreword by Charles Schulz’s son, Monte, who offers some striking insights into his father’s life, giving the reader a glimpse of the legendary cartoonist as a reader as well as a writer.
It appears that Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life is out of print, but copies are available at libraries — and used paperback editions are available at a reasonable prices (starting at $7.32) on Amazon.com.
“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” ALBERT SCHWEITZER
ILLUSTRATION: Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet by E.H. Shepard
Silver Birch Musings: I’ve come to believe that the most important thing for any writer — and what keeps you writing — is belief in your work, despite what others may say about it. Sometimes, other people don’t understand what you’re trying to do — or your style and subject matter is just too different from what people have seen before. I’ll admit I’ve been on both sides of this fence — I’ve misunderstood other people’s work and have had readers dismiss mine. The main thing is to keep writing — and never let anyone else’s opinion discourage you.
To make my point, here is a rejection letter Ursula K. Le Guin‘s agent received in 1968 from an editor regarding Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness:
Dear Miss Kidd,
Ursula K. Le Guin writes extremely well, but I’m sorry to have to say that on the basis of that one highly distinguishing quality alone I cannot make you an offer for the novel. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith.
Yours sincerely,
The Editor
21 June, 1968
The following year (1969), Walker and Company published The Left Hand of Darkness to overwhelming critical acclaim. The novel also won the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards. Here are some of the reviews Le Guin has received for the book:
“[A] science fiction masterpiece.”—Newsweek
“A jewel of a story.”—Frank Herbert
“As profuse and original in invention as The Lord of the Rings.”—Michael Moorcock
“An instant classic.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Like all great writers of fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin creates imaginary worlds that restore us, hearts eased, to our own.”—The Boston Globe
“Stellar…Le Guin is a superb stylist with a knack for creating characters who are both wise and deeply humane. A major event in fantasy literature.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Find The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin at Amazon.com.
Trivia Tidbit: Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick were in the same high school graduating class — Berkeley (California) High School Class of 1947
