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I stumbled upon a few interesting things today. I might as well share them here. 🙂

Firstly, 8 Writing Tips from C.S. Lewis. ( I found this on tumblr today, another source of continual inspiration. If you’re unfamiliar and interested in looking at my tumblr blog <blog, hmm, that’s a funny way to put it… more a collection of pretties and stuff> you can see it at unwrittenwords.tumblr.com .) Some of these tips are a bit old fashioned, but I’m sure you can conjure up their modern day equivalent.

So, back to the topic- 8 Writing Tips from C.S. Lewis:

1. Turn off the radio.

2. Read good books and avoid most magazines.

3. Write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

4. Write only about things that interest you. If you have no interests, you won’t ever write.

5. Be clear. Remember that readers can’t know your mind. Don’t forget to tell them exactly what they need to know to understand you.

6. Save odds and ends of writing attempts, because you may be able to use them later. (I’ve read instances in Neil Gaiman’s blog or interviews about how he has frequently be able to resurrect something long abandoned, even if only in part, to fuel something new. Inspiring.)

7. You need a well-trained sense of word-rhythm, and the noise of a typewriter will interfere.

8. Know the meaning of every word you use.

~

I watched the movie Legion again tonight and there’s a scene in it when a character is describing some bit of wisdom his father passed down to him about being able to go to bed knowing that if this day was your last, being confident that your life was something to be proud of. This is a clumsy wording, but what I got out of it was that I need to examine my own life through that lens every so often and remind myself of the things I have always promised and held in keeping for myself and to gauge how distant I am from attaining whatever that was and whether I would be satisfied in my life if this was all there was. In other words. Get Busy, B! Specifically, I want to write. I have always wanted to write. I do write, but not meat, or main course of what I would desire to. At the moment, I tell myself: any writing is good, just do SOMETHING. And that’s true. But if I ever mean to write that great, wonderful whatever, I have got to start putting forth some real effort and discipline. No matter how young I am, time is short. There will never be as much of it as I think there is. I do not want to look at my life and see how vastly it differed from the achievable aspirations I had all because  I was afraid of failure or unwilling to put forth the real effort involved.

The smallest  things can trigger me, thought-wise. I think I have a lot of things stewing and marinating around in my brain and every now and again the right thing comes along to stir me up and ideas float back to the surface, newly formed. Or maybe it’s more of a dusty shelf metaphor- an apothecaries shop or something like that, housing forgotten wonders only newly found useful. Hmm. 🙂

~

Here’s a quote I found tonight that triggered some other thought:

“Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart , but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.”  ~Vladimir Nabokov from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

I had previously been  talking with a friend about getting matching tattoos together. We used to work together every day and since I took a job at a different office in the same company, we don’t see each other nearly as often. We remain in touch, but things have changed, as all things must. We decided to get tattoos to further connect ourselves. Little reminders of each other and the idea that we’ll remain connected. Her husband would tattoo them.

Lately, the design has been formalized into incorporating a heart with wings. For me it symbolizes how our hearts will always be able to cross the distance so that we’re never really separated. But it also reminds me of the work that we’ve both done with children and families, working to help parents get their lives straightened out so that they can be the best parents possible for their kids- giving them wings and heart. It’s hard to put the concept into words and they all sound so clichéd. I know a lot of people have a similar tattoo design, but I’m not one to go with what’s popular. It has to have some kind of deeper personal meaning to be permanently etched on my skin. My other tattoos are unique, so anything I get will have to be. Anyway, I’m excited to see  what her artist husband draws up and the above quote struck me quite fiercely when I read it tonight. I have often felt that way- searching for some words that will give flesh to emotion- to give comfort and reassurance or hope. As much as I adore language, it is still so hard to get it to encompass emotion and intent.

~

I think that’s all I had coalescing in my brain tonight. There’s always something new to ponder over.

B