ACHILLES AND THE LONDON BOY:

I’m not sure if I’m going to continue working on Achilles and the London Boy.

I’m not sure where the plot is going, and I don’t think my characters are really thought-out, so I think I’ll scrap the project. But, I’ve really enjoyed working on it, and I think that a lot of the scenes have promise on their own. Well, I just wanted to let you all know.

Quotes from famous writers (on the process of creating)

1. "You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it." - Octavia E. Butler

2. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner

3. "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

4. "I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles." - Shannon Hale

5. "Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer." - Barbara Kingsolver

6. "It is perfectly okay to write garbage as long as you edit brilliantly." - C. J. Cherryh

7. "Write your first draft with your heart. Rewrite with your head." - Mike Rich

8. "If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write." - Somerset Maugham

9. "If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it." - Wally Lamb

11. "You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write." - Annie Proulx

12. "As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand." - Ernest Hemingway

13. ''One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.'' - Lawrence Block

14. ''Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.'' - Ray Bradbury

15. ''This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.'' - Neil Gaiman

16. ''Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.'' - William Faulkner

17. ''You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don’t know everything about it. You can’t.'' - Anne Rice

18. ''There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.'' - W. Somerset Maugham

19. ''I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.'' - Tom Clancy

20. ''People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.'' - R.L. Stine

21. ''Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.'' - Barbara Kingsolver

22. ''No person who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.'' - CS Lewis

Hmmm maybe not Mr. Elton, but Mr. Knightley?

This very morning, my history professor picked up the book I was reading, looked me in the eye, and said “Don’t read Wuthering Heights.” He then proceeded to walk away and continue class.

Ahem, I may or may not have read far too many novels recently. How do I know this? I have now developed a slight crush on my academic rival in school. Goodness.

It's always: "wanna hang out" but never "hey let's create a secret society and read literature and poetry"

“Vive vitam tuam, nam morte tua morieris.”

Live your own life, for you will die your own death.

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Naunces. If you take framboise in French, for example, it’s a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it’s a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

Take care of your costume and your confidence will take care of itself.

ig: l_reads.

current favourite words:

• esoteric: likely to be understood or enjoyed by only a few people with a special knowledge or interest

• hubris (greek tragedy): excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis

• trepidation: great worry or fear about something unpleasant that may happen

• hedonistic: based on the belief that pleasure is the most important thing in life

• decadence: moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury

• writhe: respond with great emotional or physical discomfort to (a violent or unpleasant feeling or thought)

• acerbic: (of a person or what they say) critical in a direct and rather cruel way

• sanguine: blood red