Every Writer Knows The Pain Of Having An Idea That’s “too Good” To Write Because You Know You Can’t

The Sissy Strikes Back

I’ve lost faith in the saying “You’re only as old as you think you are” ever since I got old. It is a saying with a fine heritage. It goes right back to the idea of the Power of Positive Thinking, which is so strong in America because it fits in so well with the Power of Commercial Advertising and with the Power of Wishful Thinking aka the American Dream. It is the bright side of Puritanism: What you deserve is what you get. (Never mind just now about the dark side.) Good things come to good people and youth will last forever for the young in heart. Yup. There is a whole lot of power in positive thinking. It is the great placebo effect. In many cases, even dire cases, it works. I think most old people know that, and many of us try to keep our thinking on the positive side as a matter of self-preservation, as well as dignity, the wish not to end with a prolonged whimper. It can be very hard to believe that one is actually 80 years old, but as they say, you’d better believe it. I’ve known clear-headed, clear-hearted people in their nineties. They didn’t think they were young. They knew, with a patient, canny clarity, how old they were. If I’m 90 and believe I’m 45, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub. Even if I’m 70 and think I’m 40, I’m fooling myself to the extent of almost certainly acting like an awful fool. Actually, I’ve never heard anybody over 70 say that you’re only as old as you think you are. Younger people say it to themselves or each other as an encouragement. When they say it to somebody who actually is old, they don’t realize how stupid it is, and how cruel it may be. At least there isn’t a poster of it.

But there is a poster of “Old age is not for sissies”—maybe it’s where the saying came from. A man and a woman in their seventies. As I remember it, they both have what the air force used to call the Look of Eagles, and are wearing very tight-fitting minimal clothing, and are altogether very fit. Their pose suggests that they’ve just run a marathon and aren’t breathing hard while they relax by lifting 16-pound barbells. Look at us, they say. Old age is not for sissies. Look at me, I snarl at them. I can’t run, I can’t lift barbells, and the thought of me in tight-fitting minimal clothing is appalling in all ways. I am a sissy. I always was. Who are you jocks to say old age isn’t for me? Old age is for anybody who gets there. Warriors get old; sissies get old. In fact it’s likely that more sissies than warriors get old. Old age is for the healthy, the strong, the tough, the intrepid, the sick, the weak, the cowardly, the incompetent. People who run 10 miles every morning before breakfast and people who live in a wheelchair. People who work the London Times crossword in ink in 10 minutes and people who can’t quite remember who the president is just now. Old age is less a matter of fitness or courage than of luck equals longevity. The leafy greens and the workouts may well help that old age to be healthy, but unfair as it may be, nothing guarantees health to the old. Bodies wear out after a certain amount of mileage despite the most careful maintenance. No matter what you eat and how grand your abs and blabs are, still your bones can let you down, your heart can get tired of its incredible nonstop lifelong athletic performance, and there’s all that wiring and stuff inside that can begin to short-circuit. If you did hard physical labor all your life and didn’t really have the chance to spend a lot of time in gyms, if you ate mostly junk food because it’s all you knew about and all you could afford in time and money, if you haven’t got a doctor because you can’t buy the insurance that stands between you and the doctors and the medicines you need, you may arrive at old age in rather bad shape. Or if you just run into some bad luck along the way, accidents, illnesses, it’s the same. You won’t be running marathons and lifting weights. You may have trouble getting up the stairs. You may have trouble just getting out of bed. You may have trouble getting used to hurting all the time. And it isn’t likely to get better as the years go on. The compensations of getting old, such as they are, aren’t in the field of athletic prowess. I think that’s why the saying and the poster annoy me so much. They’re not only insulting to sissies, they’re beside the point. I’d like a poster showing two old people with stooped backs and arthritic hands and time-worn faces sitting talking, deep, deep in conversation. And the slogan would be: Old Age Is Not for the Young.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters - Ursula K. Le Guin

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

When you can make it out in time to write them shower thoughts can actually be life changing

You followed me. Means you’re online. Go work on your novel. Lol.

U_U OK, OK, You got me. I'll write a few lines...

oh, that’s fluff. that’s fluff of my character that I think should get run over by a bus.

"Then Zoey finally realized he was looking for food because she hadn't fed him, because she was horrible at everything. She dug two cans of cat food out from her suitcase -- yes, she traveled with cans of cat food in her luggage, like the crazy cat lady she was destined to become--and looked around for a fork. Stench Machine ate a mixture of two different brands and she had to mash them together. She was pretty sure it was some kind of chemical reaction from the combination that made him smell so bad, but it was the only thing he would eat without following the meal with two hours of disapproving looks that would devastate Zoey in her current emotional state."

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits - Jason Pargin

Rites of Winter

We’d been feasting on the famous foods of winter: squash, potatoes, a steamed pot of dark greens. And after, we danced in Glenn’s living room above Crystal Creek, barefoot on the Persian rug, eating chocolate cake, and almost knocking over the candles. So when the frogs in the pond out front began to sing—a bass note followed by a high-pitched exclamation—we slid out the door and past the tall clusters of bamboo, over the wooden bridge, moving to the frenzied rhythm of the frogs, who—it seemed— grew louder and more intent the more we rocked to their cacophony. So it was frogs and moonlight and dancing under the bare bones of the trees, the creek suddenly swollen after six years of drought. And Glenn—one year older and nearing (though he didn’t yet know it) the end of his greatest love. And we were calling out to the frogs, who called back to us as we stumbled, nearly into the bracken water, and leapt up onto the pond-side boulders, hands in the air, a light mist falling on our arms, our upturned faces. And I couldn’t decide: was the world enamored with itself?— all this riotous back and forth? Or had we only invoked alarm, amphibian for get-back! get-back! I didn’t know. But how happy we were, for that hour, to believe we were one marvelous body, in our smooth and slippery skin. Even if the frogs did not want us. Even if our joint fates are written, already, in the tainted water, the dark and opulent mud.

Bonfire Opera : Poems. -- Danusha Laméris.