06 27,2010
Are you writing about what you dream or do you dream of writing…decide and tell your story…
Featured Quote:
“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”
William Faulkner
Featured Poems:
There is No Frigate Like a Book
By: Emily Dickinson
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Read More…Tags: author conversations, belief, characters, Emily Dickinson, inner voice, inspiration, Langston Hughes, poetry, Skyler Wolf Jones, William Faulkner, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
06 11,2010
Poems from our forums and relationships found…
Featured Quotes:
“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.”
Leo Buscaglia
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust
Featured Poem: One Word Is Too Often Profaned
By: Percy Bysshe Shelley
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it;
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother;
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
Read More…Tags: author conversations, belief, characters, inner voice, inspiration, Lamar Cole, Leo Buscaglia, Marcel Proust, Percy Bysshe Shelly, poetry, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
06 02,2010
Choices for you and choices for your characters…End where you began but make it a good one…
Feature Quote:
“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
Featured Poem:Traveling Through the Dark
By: William Stafford
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason–
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all–my only swerving–,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
Read More…Tags: author conversations, belief, inner voice, inspiration, Frank Lloyd Wright, Love is a Fallacy, Max Shulman, poetry, Traveling Through the Dark, William Stafford, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
05 19,2010
More podcasts and thoughts to get your writing moving and your creativity flowing…John shares one last handful of his favorite audio inspirations…
Featured Quotes:
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
By: Robert Frost
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
By: Robert Frost
John shares some more of his favorite podcasts that help inspire and influence him.
Check out these great shows and sites:
Read More…Tags: author conversations, belief, characters, inner voice, inspiration, poetry, Robert Frost, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
05 10,2010
Podcasts and thoughts to get your writing moving and your creativity flowing…John shares a handful of his favorite audio inspirations…
Featured Quote:
Belief, by definition is an assent to a proposition. It is any cognitive content that is held true. It is some expression or a vague idea in which some confidence is placed. Thus, it defines some sort of an agreement with the world view. It may be unproven assertion based on some of the fundamental assumptions. Belief is a form of judging something to be true, intermediate between mere opinion and certain knowledge. To believe something in this sense is to judge that it is true by virtue of “a ground that is objectively insufficient but subjectively sufficient”; in mere opinion neither is sufficient, in knowledge both conditions are met.Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
By: George Orwell
Read More…Tags: author conversations, belief, characters, George Orwell, inner voice, inspiration, poetry, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
05 02,2010
Do you believe in your characters? OK, but do you have faith in your characters to live beyond the time you put them on paper? Is there a difference? Listen and engage in the writing prompts.
Featured Quote:
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Edith Hamilton
Inspiration for this week’s conversation:
Six Characters in Search of an Author is the most famous and celebrated play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello
Read More…Tags: author conversations, belief, characters, Faith, healines, inner voice, John Donne, poetry, short story, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
04 20,2010
John releases some inner voices…what do you release in your writing…
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.
Featured Quotes:
“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”
Henry Miller
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.”
William Shakespeare
Read More…Tags: author conversations, healines, inner voice, inspiration, poetry, short story, William Wordsworth, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
04 07,2010
A look at a better story driven character and your connection as a writer…
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
This week’s episode was brought to you by Enchanted Travel Tales (www.enchantedtraveltales.com), bringing travel, magic, and fun to your holidays.
Featured Quote:
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), (Sherlock Holmes) Valley of Fear, 1915
Featured Short Story:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Adventure 4 – The Boscombe Valley Mystery
By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Read More…Tags: author conversations, healines, inspiration, poetry, mystery, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, short story, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
03 23,2010
Grab that paper and write…a newspaper that is…
“If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play at it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s golf.”
~ Bob Hope
Headlines to help you with thoughts, ideas to a provide realistic writing prompts:
“Run over on a Florida beach: can’t Americans walk anywhere at all?”
“No Flat for Cats”
“App Tells You Whether Your Date is a ‘Keeper’ or ‘Crazy'”
“Talking about a stinky subject”
Look up these headlines, of merely use them to help you come up with subjects for your storylines. What direction will you choose? Have you found other stories out there? Share them here or elsewhere, but write and enjoy. Read More…Tags: author conversations, Bob Hope, healines, inspiration, poetry, short story, writing methods, writing, writing podcast, writing tips
03 14,2010
Connecting Your Storyline with Your Storyline…
If you are an author in search of readers or have comments about our show, contact us:
ramblingverser@storyinstitute.com
615-431-WRIT (9748)
Featured Quotes:
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
~ Fred Rogers
“Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.”
~ Beverly Cleary
Read More…Tags: author conversations, Beverly Cleary, childhood, Edgar Allan Poe, Fred Rogers, inspiration, poetry, short story, rhyme, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
03 08,2010
Reflect on your Knowledge and Imagine a new world…oh yeah, and write about it…
Featured Quote:
“I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.”
“Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”
~Immanuel Kant
Featured Poem:
Ode on a Grecian Urn
~ John Keats
Read More…Tags: author conversations, Anton Chekhov, Immanuel Kant, inspiration, John Keats, poetry, short story, rhyme, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
02 28,2010
Childhood connections or Nada…Your path defined by you, the poet, writer, creator…
Featured Quote: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.”
~ William Faulkner in his speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950
Featured Poem:
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
~ William Wordsworth (1807)
Read More…Tags: author conversations, Earnest Hemmingway, inspiration, poetry, William Faulkner, William Wordsworth, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, rhyme, writing tips
02 21,2010
Style and Story – Has the muse moved…Or, is man really a friend of the vultures…
Featured Quote: “Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of “truth” and the language of “creation.” (from Littérature, 1929)
~ Paul Valéry
Featured Poem:
A fit of rhyme against rhyme
~Ben Johnson
Read More…Tags: author conversations, Ben Johnson, inspiration, Muse, Paul Valery, poetry, rhyme, Samuel Johnson, vulture, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
02 14,2010
Time Back from Beyond…New focus and new writing prompts…
Quote of the week: “I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”
~ Samuel Beckett
Short Story Focus and Topic: “The Open Boat” ~ Stephen Crane
Read the entire short story here: Stephen Crane – Open Boat
Write a modern version of the “Open Boat”. What changes? Is there technology? Is the boat bigger or smaller?
Poem and Poetry Topic: “The Flea” ~ John Donne
The Flea
by John Donne
Read More…Tags: author conversations, inspiration, John Donne, poetry, short story, Stephen Crane, writing, writing methods, writing podcast, writing tips
