#17 Writing, jazz and cats
Get inspired by these findings
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This week is all about reading and writing. There isn't a right way to approach either of them. The more you read and listen to other artists and their way of creating, the more you understand that. I hope this selection inspires you.
Haruki Murakami's "Peter Cat"
"If you don't know what you love, you are lost."
Haruki Murakami has written more than 30 novels and is the most widely-read Japanese novelist in the world. He has won virtually every prize Japan has to offer, including its greatest, the Yomiuri Literary Prize, and is a regular on the list of possible recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
But before all of his fame and literary contributions, he was a bar owner who was obsessed with jazz and cats.
Every Sentence Felt as if it had Been Wrung Out of My Very Soul
My journey into personal writing.
I’d been writing about my life without writing about my feelings, but when he died I was nothing but feelings. I could have stopped writing for a while. I could have released my jumbled thoughts into my journal, where nobody but me would ever see them, but I didn’t do that. I decided to put it all out there.
The Reading Lounge
Why I love reading "sad books" and 12 of my all time favorite emotional reads
You know the ones - the tearjerkers, the heartbreakers, the stories that tug at our heartstrings and leave us reaching for the tissues. It might seem a bit counterintuitive to actively seek out stories that make us feel melancholic, but there's something compelling about exploring the depths of human emotions, even the sadder ones. I’ve compiled and condensed some thoughts below based on research from various sources. A few of the reasons definitely resonated with me, how about you?
On Happy Endings
It's about the journey, not the destination
Sometimes, I tell them that a romance without a happy ending would be like a mystery where you never find out who did it. I often think about romance and mystery in conversation with each other, as genre fiction that comes in a vast array of flavors and abides by certain conventions. At the end of a mystery, the crime will be solved. At the end of a romance, the central couple will be happy together. In both, a sense of order is restored. Justice is served. (Often in romance as well as mystery.) Broken things are repaired and some little part of the world comes back into harmony.
Writing vs. Having Written
+ Upcoming Workshops for Kids and Adults
They say some writers love writing, some love having written. I am more the former. I really enjoy solving the puzzle of a story. Sometimes I feel like it’s garbage, but even on the bad days, I’ll usually stumble across something that gives me hope and energizes me to keep going. I’m in the early stages of something new right now, and everything about panel three above is ringing true.
Thoughts on: Writing
From Maggie Smith to Alexander Chee, here are incredibly wise nuggets on the art and craft of writing
Welcome to Thoughts On, a series of bite-sized, soul-nourishing insights from our time’s greatest heart-centered minds. Culled from my interview series, these are the can’t-miss excerpts on the deeply personal craft of writing.
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