Writer's Bloq, Inc.
A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.
Will Bloom, Big Fish
Leo: Look – there – another window lit – golden – the rest of the house dark – an incomplete painting, I love incomplete paintings – why do painters always insist upon finishing paintings? It’s unaccountable – life is not like that!
In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) . And neither is literature!
I now understand that love is a rare and valuable thing, and you don’t get to choose its object. You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things – and if the only obstacle in your way is a little extra work, then that’s the wonderful gift right there.
Elif Batuman The Possesed #beenthere?
“Enjoy. Look. Listen - Love, Mom and Dad.” A quote to their children, inscribed on a bench by the Alice in Wonderland statue at Central Park. This subtle reminder to just be present and perceptive of the world around oneself is simple, yet powerful. What three actions could be more valuable to a writer?
To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide— a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere.
Rebecca Solnit (via writersrelief)
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(Source: conflictingheart, via creatingaquietmind)
Top Ten Most Angsty Characters in Fiction
From the Writer’s Bloq team, this week’s Tuesday Tidbit:
*disclaimer: all teasing is done out of love, respect, and just the slightest envy of the characters.
(Alternate title “Top ten Fictional Characters whose lives could be set to a Radiohead Soundtrack.”)
10. Charlie – The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Considering the title explicitly venerates a passively lived life – Charlie has to make it onto the list. His existential woes include unique anxieties over sexuality, coming of age, corrupted innocence, etc. “I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.” Don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry. This uncanny resemblance to a Radiohead song makes Charlie an easy #10 in angsty-ness.
9. Yossarian – Catch 22
Wait so…to be dismissed from combat, I have to be rendered insane…but to be rendered insane, I’d have to request an insane test…and thinking I’m insane proves I’m insane? RUNAWAY.
8. Macbeth – Macbeth, King of Scotland
Just settle for Thane of Cawdor next time, buddy. “You do it to yourself, you do, you and no one else.”
7. Donny – House of Blue Leaves
That awkward moment when your Godfather doesn’t cast you as Huckleberry Finn so you decide to blow up the Pope…
6. Mersault – The Stranger
Basic paraphrase of novel: “Oh no – the sun is too bright on the sand…the effect is blinding…the only way for me to cope is to shoot an Arab five consecutive times. Alas, I remain indifferent…just like the world. But if people yell how much they hate me at my execution, I can find meaning amongst the black hole of meaninglessness.”
Ugh. We liked you more when you just hung out with gangsters.
5. Harry Potter – specifically Order of the Phoenix
Hey Harry….did Voldemort kill your parents? Your 27 speeches delivered in Caps Lock really drive this point home.
4. Gollum – Lord of the Rings series
Classic whining over your birthday present being stolen…
…and then letting your obsessive pursuit of it manifest itself in the form of split personalities for 556 years, eventually leading to your dark, dismal, death…
3. Frankenstein’s Monster – Dr. Frankenstein
“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” #self esteem issues
2. Holden Caulfield – The Catcher in the Rye
Maybe we are jumping to conclusions, but it seems like he hates phonies….
Holden Caulfield, the hipster class’s most highly regarded character, has unique anxieties over sexuality, coming of age, corrupted innocence, etc.
“You ought to go to a boy’s school sometimes. Try it sometime,” I said. “It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.”
Oh, Holden. If only you knew how much your readers uphold this monologue as they listen to “Fake Plastic Trees” on their big state of the art headphones. Yet…are they the Book of the Month Club you so despise? #META.
1. Drum roll, please…
Hamlet
His existential woes include unique anxieties over sexuality, coming of age, corrupted innocence, etc. These elements, along with mommy drama, a fatal misstep of thwarted action, manipulative friends, a suicidal girlfriend, and nostalgic memories of a dead clown really cover every case scenario of angst.
So thanks Shakespeare, for stealing every plot idea ever.
“To be, or not to be, — that is the question”
Yep. Pretty much!
6 Entelehia Cuvintelor: A drinking game for readers
Thomas Pynchon: Drink every time someone has a stupid name, like “Eigenvalue.”
David Foster Wallace: Drink every time a sentence has three or more conjunctions.
William Faulkner: Every time a sentence goes on for more than a page, drink the entire bottle. Then make out with your sister.Joyce Carol Oates: Drink every time there is a home invasion.
Jane Austen: Drink every time someone plays whist, goes riding, or gets married.
J.D. Salinger: Every time there is a symbol of lost innocence, drink a highball. Then spit it all over someone you love.
Emily Bronte: Drink every time you see the word “heath” (Heathcliff counts).
Gabriel García Márquez: Drink every time someone’s name is “Aureliano.” (Note: this only works for A Hundred Years of Solitude)Virginia Woolf: First, go buy some flowers. Then, if you have time left over, drink.
Sappho: Drink every time you can’t tell if something is hot or disgusting.
Ernest Hemingway: Drink every time Ernest Hemingway is boring and overrated. Man, I am so wasted right now.
Raymond Chandler: Drink every time someone drinks.
Dashiell Hammett: Drink every time someone drinks.
Homer: Drink every time someone drinks gross diluted wine.Stephenie Meyer: Drink every time someone drinks blood.
Dylan Thomas: Drink until you are in a coma.
3 Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no… Death is “not.” Death isn’t. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I’ve frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no… What you’ve been is not on boats.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
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“You don’t even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in itall the marvels of creation.”
The Alchemist
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(Source: mycaliforniadream)
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