Entries from January 2010
Jan. 31, 2010
The Anxiety of Finishing
The unease of publishing a book that is flawed.
Tags: David Remnick · J. Anthony Lukas · On Writing · Samuel Beckett · Seth Godin · writing life · writing tips
Jan. 28, 2010
The Importance of Shipping
Seth Godin advises: What you do for a living is ship.
Tags: Defending Jacob · On Writing · Seth Godin · video · writing tips
Jan. 26, 2010
“Little Dorrit”: Dickens’ Teeming World
Why modern realism just doesn’t feel like reality.
Tags: Charles Dickens · featured posts · Little Dorrit
Jan. 23, 2010
Adrienne Rich: “Prospective Immigrants Please Note”
Either you will / go through this door / or you will not go through….
Tags: Adrienne Rich · poems
Jan. 18, 2010
The Value of Failing
“One key element of a successful artist: ship. Get it out the door. Make things happen. “The other: fail. Fail often. Dream big and don’t make it. Not every time, anyway.” — Seth Godin
Tags: quotes for writers · Seth Godin
Jan. 4, 2010
Dickens and the Blacking Factory
At the age of 12, thanks to his father’s bankruptcy, Dickens found himself working in a rat-infested warehouse that produced bottles of liquid shoe polish. The work itself probably lasted for no more than a year, but it left scars on his imagination that never properly healed. His rage at social injustice, his sensitivity to [...]
Tags: Charles Dickens
Jan. 4, 2010
Rest and Re-creation
Reading Little Dorrit the other day, I came across a sentence describing Mr. Pancks as a man who rarely “appeared to relax from his cares, and to recreate himself by going anywhere or saying anything without a pervading object” (ch. XXV). This obsolete sense of recreate, meaning to refresh or energize, obviously shares a common [...]
Tags: Little Dorrit · words