thebookishdragon reblogged
thebookishdragon reblogged
circling back around to the issue of writers being expected to do all their own goddamn marketing via social media these days, because it completely nixes the possibility of writers being weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, or misanthropes. 80% of the literary canon was written by weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, and misanthropes. if you weed out everyone who’s the wrong kind of insane to maintain a twitter presence, who on earth is left
i heard a talk about this by a terrific mystery novelist, John Straley, titled “In Defense of Misanthropes in the Arts.”
I’ll never forget him sharing his candid fear that authors like him, authors who did not want to post on Facebook or Twitter, authors who wanted to be curmudgeonly and left alone, were being steadily squeezed out of the writing world as publishers foisted more and more promotional work directly onto authors. Not everyone is cut out for the spotlight. Not everyone wants to be their own hype man. Not everyone presents well in 280 characters, especially in a space they don’t even want to be present. The time suck, the scrutiny, the punishment for making a “mistake” -- all this extracurricular work is so different from actual writing.
Make room for weird reclusive shut-in eccentric misanthropic artists and writers. Don’t forget those voices are worth your attention, too.
thebookishdragon reblogged
“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.” ― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays
thebookishdragon reblogged
“As far as words go, ‘crying’ is louder and ‘weeping’ is wetter. When people explain the difference between the two to English-language learners they say that weeping is more formal, can sound archaic in everyday speech. You can hear this in their past tenses—the plainness of ‘cried’, the velvet cloak of ‘wept’. I remember arguing once with a teacher who insisted ‘dreamt’ was incorrect, dreamed the only proper option. She was wrong, of course, in both philological and moral ways, and ever since I’ve felt a peculiar attachment to the t’s of the past: weep, wept, sleep, slept, leave, left. There’s a finality there, a quiet completion, of which ’d’ has never dreamt.”
— Heather Christle, from The Crying Book
thebookishdragon reblogged
Stairs of the Villa Carolina by Tomislav Marcijus
thebookishdragon reblogged
“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story
thebookishdragon reblogged
thebookishdragon reblogged
if i bring a book someplace it doesn't necessarily mean i want to read it mayb i just want to take her own a walk. Get her some fresh air and a change of scenery
thebookishdragon reblogged
golden hour in my bedroom☀️ ft. my cute ghost poster that i got from redbubble
thebookishdragon reblogged
Animation by Charlotte Ager
thebookishdragon reblogged
something a bit unusual for what you see from me, it’s some of the cast from the long way to a small, angry planet!!! more art featuring the wayfarers series will be coming soon, so look out for that! :D
thebookishdragon reblogged
Richard Siken, excerpts from “Hansel” in Brothers & Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales
thebookishdragon reblogged
It’s bird watching hours
thebookishdragon reblogged
“It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.”
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers