Tea at Trianon: The Struggle That Most Writers Never Talk About

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, September 24, 2016

The Struggle That Most Writers Never Talk About

From Emerging Writers Studio:

The journey from imagination to page is inherently fraught with what Twyla Tharp calls, “divine dissatisfaction.” In the theater of our mind, our story is a multi-dimensional, techno-color, high-def world teaming with life. But inevitably, in our early attempts to transfer that vision onto the page, that world disintegrates. It’s where a lot of writers get lost. Or stop writing altogether. But the truth is, every writer worth his or her salt grapples with this very same struggle. (Read more.)

Hans Georg Lundahl said...: If my own novel is not progressing, it is not that.

I simply am overburdened by too much sugar*, too little sleep and some days too many stupid questions posed on quora.

As if some network were deliberately trying to overburden me and poking in very different but all of them sensitive spots of my life and activity.

* You do realise that a homeless man can be given sugared products as alms, especially if suspected of being an alcoholic? And that with 10% Muslims in France and Paris region being Muslim denser than some others, this is easily the case without such a suspicion being true?; September 24, 2016 at 5:36:00 AM EDT
Hans Georg Lundahl said...: "In the theater of our mind, our story is a multi-dimensional, techno-color, high-def world teaming with life. But inevitably, in our early attempts to transfer that vision onto the page, that world disintegrates."

No. You simply start in all the bright spots. Like the first four chapters I wrote (not same as first four you read) of my Chronicle of Susan Pevensie.

Overview of all chapters

This aside was inserted into middle of the then only 22 chapters, and underlines the first four written

Inserting chapters between the extant ones works very well, if I have the leisure and well being for it.; September 24, 2016 at 5:41:00 AM EDT