Rat's Country: Stephen King: On Paragraphs, of all things...

"You can tell without even reading if the book you've chosen is apt to be easy or hard, right?  Easy books contain lots of short paragraphs--including dialogue paragraphs which may only be a word or two long--and lots of white space.  They're as airy as Dairy Queen ice cream cones.  Hard books, ones full of ideas, narration, or description, have a stouter look.  A packed look.  Paragraphs are almost as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent."

              from On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft

Rat's Country: Writing in a journal has been my way...

Writing in a journal has been my way of talking myself off the ledge, through the window, back into the room.

Rat's Country: Another Stephen King quote from On Writing ...

"I am approaching the heart of this book with two theses, both simple. The first is that good writing consists  of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instuments.  The second is that while it is impossibe to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it  is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one."

Rat's Country: The difference between "in" and "at"

I was reading some words of wisdom by a new age philosopher, who wasn't Eckhart Tolle but similar,  and he was reminding me of the importance of "being in the present moment."  So true.

I thought of a college student of mine, a  basketball player from somehwere in the South, who would answer roll by saying, "Here!  At the present moment."  Even truer.

Rat's Country: Stephen King, On Writing, quote du jour

"There are the really good writers.  Above them--above almost all of us--are the Shakespeares, the Faulkners, the Yeatses, Shaws, and Eudora Weltys.  They are geniuses, divine accidents, gifted in a way which is beyond our ability to understand, let alone attain.  Shit,  most geniuses aren't able to understand themselves, and many of them lead miserable lives, realizing (at least on some level) that they are nothing but fortunate freaks, the intellectual version of runway models who just happen to be born with the right cheekbones and with breasts which fit the image of an age."

Stephen King, On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft

Rat's Country: What Would Fido Do?

What Would Fido Do?

Don't succor your  grievance
 the way a dog does
with  self-absorbed licking
of nicks and scratches.

Shed your  annoyance
the way  a wet dog
shakes off the rain,
then curls into a ball,
 falls asleep.

Rat's Country: The saddest suicide in literature

"And just at the moment when the midpoint between the two wheels came even with her, she threw the red bag aside and, drawing her head down between her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and with a light movement, as if preparing to get up again at once, sank to her knees..."Lord, forgive me for eveything!" she said, feeling the impossibility of any struggle."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Rat's Country: Quit yearning...

Quit yearning!  It is like bleeding, a seepage, a slow draining of hope.  It weakens you.  You could die from yearning and not even notice.

Rat's Country: "I want to tell you a really, really sad story..."

Me:  "I want to tell you a really, really sad story about someone who died tragically..."

Ninety-five year old mother:   "If they died, that's not a sad story."

Rat's Country: Easy for you to say, William Stafford

"Ideally, for me, poems are nothing special.  They are just the language without any mistakes."

Rat's Country: which is it?

We are all in the same boat.  No, each of us sails around the world alone.

Rat's Country: When I See Women Kiss...

"When I see women kiss, I think they hate each other."

A great quote from a Trollope novel, but I forgot to write down which one.

Rat's Country: When We Judge Distance...

"When we judge distance desired objects seem nearer..."
      
          Valerie Ross, "Closing the Gap," Scientific American Mind, July/August 2010

Oh, the implications...

Rat's Country: Blank Slate

"In a book he wrote about his beliefs, he left every other page blank so that if readers had better ideas than his they could write them in."
      
            from "Bachy and Visionaries," NYTimes Book Review, August 20, 1995