Entries from April 2010
Apr. 28, 2010
The Price of Procrastination
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” — William James
Tags: procrastination · quotes · quotes for writers · William James
Apr. 28, 2010
Not-So-Random House
What is that little house in Random House’s logo?
Tags: Candide · logo · Random House · Rockwell Kent · Voltaire
Apr. 27, 2010
Sven Birkerts: “the Internet and the novel are opposites”
Sven Birkerts on reading in a digital age in which “the novel is the vital antidote to the mentality that the Internet promotes”: We always hear arguments about how the original time-passing function of the triple-decker novel has been rendered obsolete by competing media. What we hear less is the idea that the novel serves [...]
Tags: reading · Sven Birkerts
Apr. 26, 2010
Portrait: Philip Roth
Photo: Philip Roth at his home in rural Connecticut, 2004. Photo by James Nachtwey.
Tags: Philip Roth · Portraits of Writers
Apr. 25, 2010
Novels like letters
“A novel, like a letter, should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of mortality and decay.” — Saul Bellow, letter to Bernard Malamud (1953)
Tags: quotes for writers · Saul Bellow
Apr. 19, 2010
How Writers Write: Ian McEwan
A peek into the process of one of one of my favorite writers, Ian McEwan.
Tags: How Writers Write · Ian McEwan
Apr. 17, 2010
Tweet of the Day
“The only mood in which to start writing is self-disgust. Writing becomes an act of atonement for procrastination — and ‘self-waste.’” — Alain de Botton, master Twitterer
Tags: Alain de Botton · quotes for writers · Twitter
Apr. 15, 2010
Only Disconnect
Two recent tweets by Alain de Botton capture the way I’ve been feeling lately: Awkward mathematics of my profession: for every one hour of actual writing, I need four hours of daydreaming. So cruel that the machine I use for concentrated, slow thinking is also, in another window, more exciting than any TV could ever [...]
Tags: Alain de Botton · web fatigue
Apr. 14, 2010
Flickr Find of the Day
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from the Library of Congress Flickr photo stream. The photo apparently dates from 1913 or thereabouts. I always imagined Conan Doyle as a less modern, more Victorian character than this — more like Holmes. Flickr has lots of wonderful vintage images like this one, not all book-related obviously. I recommend the [...]
Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle · Flickr · Portraits of Writers
Apr. 13, 2010
Writing Is Play
Writing is a form of play, which is not to say it is easy
Tags: writing life · writing tips
