Vivian Maier was a street photographer from the 1950s to 1990s. Maier’s work was discovered at an auction in Chicago where she resided most of her life. Her discovered work includes about 100,000 mostly medium-format negatives and hundreds of undeveloped rolls of film. Born February 1, 1926, she died on Tuesday, April 21, 2009. John [...]
Archive of posts filed under the creativity category.
A novel approach to ebooks
Susan Danziger, founder of DailyLit, turns full-length novels and non-fiction favorites into email.
Daily email 1,000-word installments arrive at a time a reader determines. And one can read that portion of the novel or non-fiction book or short story on a desktop, laptop, or cell phone. Danziger, a former staffer at Random House, says users [...]
Insomnia . . .
“…Entangled with each other so, unsleeping one,
together we will outsleep the night.”
Read the complete poem.
“Insomniac” by Galway Kinnell, from Strong is Your Hold. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
* * * *
Inspiration at the online British Library?
Edith Hamilton and aging
“Mind and spirit together make up that which separates us from the rest of the animal world, that which enables a man to know the truth, and that which enables him to die for the truth.” Chapter 1, The Greek Way
When we read Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way in high school, I didn’t grasp the [...]
Changing paths
“Hoo. Hooo-hoo. Hoo. Hoo.
“I lift my head in surprise, my heartbeat quickening at this familiar yet uncommon call. Uncommon, at least, in my neighborhood. I’ve been told that dozens of great horns are scattered throughout the city, most often heard–and occasionally seen–in large, wooded areas like Kincaid and Hillside parks.”
This excerpt comes from one [...]
Seeking equanimity
Enough of my busy worried mind and unnecessary thoughts. I tire of them.
I seek equanimity.
–noun
mental or emotional stability or composure, esp. under tension or strain; calmness; equilibrium.
Origin:
1600–10; < L aequanimitās, equiv. to aequ(us) even, plain, equal + anim(us) mind, spirit, feelings + -itās -ity
Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009
“Equanimity describes [...]
Pure writing flow
“There are millions of distractions that the modern day writer has to put up with in order to get their ideas out there. Twitter, Facebook, your feed reader, they’re all conspiring to distract you from getting your writing down on the page.”
Thus begins an essay on what the author terms a “method of pure writing [...]
Nina Sankovitch reads all day
A colleague writes:
“Several weeks ago I came across a blog [called Read All Day] written by a woman who read a book a day and wrote a review of each book read. After looking at her impressive list I wrote her and asked her to write something for Word Collage. I just posted her piece.
“She [...]
Of six small sentences
A photographer in the UK writes steamy fiction. Peter Davidson’s imaginative writing flashes with wit and humour.
He sent a link to a website titled Six Sentences: What can you say in six sentences. “Need a break from your bigger writing projects?” asks Robert McEvily, the creator and editor of 6S. “Need to [...]
Narrative and nudniks
In an interview with NPR, E. L. Doctorow once said, “To write anything any good you have to have the sense of transgression, of breaking some rule.”
Read more about Reading and re-reading pleasures, Doctorow, and writing at Narrative, by Richard S. Gilbert.
*****
nudnik
: a person who is a bore or nuisance
Etymology: The suffix “-nik” came to [...]