Blueprints
The morning sky has blue appearing. My allergies have been so severe lately I'm not feeling tempted to venture outdoors, but I just might change my mind if the sky keeps changing. When I write books or teach workshops I like to use terms that convey the practical, working parts of the writing life. I like to dissect stories of all kinds and reveal the skeleton and innards to writers. And I love the term blueprint. It has such a solid ring since it is a map of an architectural or engineering design. So I'm going to run some blueprints from authors and myself that can reveal ideas that just might make writing easier.
I meet lots of writers and have noticed how often that they appear bedeviled by all the rules that confront them, how they’re looking for definitive answers. It’s so easy to become confused and be thrown off course in the writing life. It’s so easy to give up or not even begin at all. One answer is to create a blueprint for writing and living that keeps you balanced and steady, like the captain at the helm of boat on stormy seas.
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy.
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Believe in the holy center of life
Be in love with your life
The jewel center of life interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Write what you want from bottom of the mind
Write for the world to read and see yr exact picture of it
Accept loss forever
Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
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