The Writing Life
"My way is to begin with the beginning."--Lord Byron . . .
"The only end of writng is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it." -- Samuel Johnson . . .
"I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say."--Jean Cocteau . . .
"There is on subject so old that something new cannot be said about it."--Fyodor Dostoyevsky . . .
"To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too."--Walt Whitman
Wikipedia
Writing defined
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system). It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as magnetic tape audio.
In Eurasia writing began as a consequence of the burgeoning needs of accounting. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form (Robinson, 2003, p. 36). In Mesoamerica writing may have evolved through calendrics and a political necessity for recording historical events.
Wordsmith
Learn a new word.
Word . . . Word . . . Word . . . A word.
- provender: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
- provender: food or provisions.
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Novel Bookmarks
Writers Handbooks
For authors from authors.
- The Writer's Chapbook
- A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers (Modern Library).
- Letters to a Young Poet
- "Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside." -Rainer Maria Rilke
- Ernest Hemingway on Writing
- "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."--Ernest Hemingway
- Henry Miller on Writing
- "Every line and word is vitally connected with my life, my life only, be it in the form of deed, event, fact, thought, emotion, desire, evasion, frustration, dream, revery, vagary, even the unfinished nothings which float listlessly in the brain like the snapped filaments of a spider's web."--Henry Miller
A Poem before the Prose
About you I would write lines enough
To fill an Encyclopedia
If I thought that could encompass you,
But I know it can not, and so I do not
Put word on word on word to no avail,
But write only this little verse,
Which says everything,
Without saying anything.
Copyright 1997 Scott Michael Gallagher
Amazon Spotlight: My Life
Geneva: A Novel
"Finished the book yesterday--it was excellent. Parts were happy, parts were sad and some were very humorous; I guess that's life. In some sections I could see myself in many of the character's comments, feelings, actions and reactions." Amazon.com
Geneva
It took years and tears to write and what is a book without readers?
Release Date: 11/19/2007
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Reading is Beautiful!
My Novel Impressions
Squidoo classics?
We all have read something that has left an indelible impression. Do any of these ring true? Which would make your Lens bookcase?
Lolita (Penguin Modern Classics) by Vladimir Nabokov
"The only convincing love story of our centur more...1 point
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Memorable%u2026certainly one of the finest r more...1 point
Under the Volcano (Penguin Modern Classics) by Malcolm Lowry
"One of the towering novels of this century.& more...1 point
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics) by James Joyce
Published in 1916 to immediate acclaim, James Joyc more...0 points
Tropic of Cancer (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Henry Miller
Maybe the most honest book ever written, this auto more...0 points
Journey to the End of the Night (New Directions Paperbook) by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
When it was published in 1932, this then-shocking more...0 points
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Novel by J.D. Salinger, published in 1951. The inf more...0 points
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
"Simply one of the two or three funniest work more...0 points
Carpenter's Gothic (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by William Gaddis
"Everything in this compelling and brilliant more...0 points
Patrimony: Original Roth page edit.
Writer's Challenge
Random Facts
Strange what you can learn today!
Geneva
Geneva: Opening quotes
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life--and one is as good as the other.--Ernest Hemingway
But I showed no foresight at all concerning the significance and possibility of a marriage for me. The child had developed so slowly, these things were outwardly all too remote; now and then the necessity of thinking of them did arise; but the fact that here a permanent, decisive, and indeed the most grimly bitter ordeal loomed was impossible to recognize.--Franz Kafka
Which is your favorite non-fiction book?
Let squidoos know which is the best of the lot.
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
A meditation on Styron's ( Sophie's Choice ) serio more...1 point
Speak, Memory (Penguin Modern Classics) by Vladimir Nabokov
The late Vladimir Nabokov always did things his wa more...1 point
The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
Many great artists have had at least intermittent more...0 points
Aspects of the Novel by E M Forster
"We discover, under [Forster's] casual but ac more...0 points
The Autobiography of Malcolm X : As Told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X's searing memoir belongs on the small sh more...0 points
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper Perrennial Modern Classics) by Annie Dillard
"The book is a form of meditation, written wi more...0 points
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The resulting chronicle is a masterpiece--agonizin more...0 points
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
This new edition of Carson's classic features a ne more...0 points
The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
A BRILLIANT PIECE OF MILITARY HISTORY which proves more...0 points
Notes of a Native Son (Beacon Paperback) by James Baldwin
'He named for me the things you feel but couldn't more...0 points
A Literary Debate
First Editions
Search Your Self
My First book
"A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it."--Michelangelo
...And so we have David and the Sistine Chapel, two of the world's greatest artistic triumphs, works of such grace and striking beauty, such wondrous and powerful dignity that none have passed by pained from having failed to look at them, for these works draw the heart of the eye, and require from each who come into their presence some measure of appreciation, if not awe. A failure in terms of beauty unappreciated, passed-by, unheard or ignored is a tragically human failure; perhaps the worst failure a human being can endure. Let us, therefore, be vigilant, and endeavor to appreciate the singing sparrow, the glowing yellow- rose, the swaying eucalyptus, the poems of Whitman, the pictures of Monet, the music of Mozart, the smiling face, the pink sunset, the white half-moon, the sonorous waves, the cumulous clouds, and the simple sound of our own heart beat.
Search Your Self: 365 Meditations For The Mind, Body, And Soul
Amazon Price: (as of 11/26/2009)
365 Meditations for the Mind Body and Soul
Turn Over
green eyes
Turn over. I need again to see your face, your stomach and thighs, I need somewhere to lay my eyes.
It doesn't matter if you're not here. I'm sick of looking backward, at your back, as if you're only a phantom a step behind, an apparition nauseatingly out of reach-out of my reach.
Turn over I said. Give me a chance to front you. Perhaps I don't deserve another. Turn over, anyway.
Despite ourselves and the years, the miles and the tears, the tears shed and left unsaid, despite the loneliness and indecision and all, our raw nerves, like starlight to starlight, will touch--dare I say it--tonight.
You, that violet soaked in spring rain; you, that moist flower of unforgivable beauty whose pulse and scent I lost myself in; you, that color I faded--or should I say dissolved--away into with a keen and sharp pleasure, a keen and sharp pain--but I repeat myself.
And to think I used to consider plucking flowers child's play.
(Now I know viscerally the indescribable strength of fragility.
There's something almost demonic in its ability to resurrect.)
As your ample, bell-shaped breasts heave and your thighs quiver like hunger, my past shudders . . .
Your face is just now coming into focus, but I still fail to comprehend its significance. It's an oval face with a stony white cast, shaped by those endless flaxen curls. The eyes, a fiery green, like wild grass on a summer afternoon, still betrays something in disarray, something untamable and forlorn yet completely driven. Your lips . . . ? I can't see them. Are they thick or thin, your lips? I can only feel them burning me like hot candle wax . . .
Do you know I've never even had the common sense to take the time and sit next to a river? Not once have I lingered near one long enough to hear its story--and they all have a story. I've swum, floated, boated, rafted and played in rivers, but not once have I listened to them. I don't know why, exactly, I bring this up now, save to say that it appears important.
Turn over, I want to rub your back.
Copyright 2000 Scott Michael Gallagher
Whitman's Notebook
Prize Winning Novels
Must Reads!
Tree of Smoke: A Novel
To write a fat novel about the Vietnam War nearly 35 years after it ended is an act of literary bravado. To do so as brilliantly as Denis Johnson has in Tree of Smoke is positively a miracle.-- From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by David Ignatius
Amazon Price: $9.75 (as of 11/26/2009)
On Chesil Beach: A Novel
This beautifully told sad story could have been conceived and written only by Ian McEwan. --Valerie Ryan
Amazon Price: $14.96 (as of 11/26/2009)
The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth.--Dennis Lehane
Amazon Price: $9.47 (as of 11/26/2009)
The Shadow Catcher: A Novel
There are passages in Marianne Wiggins's eighth novel so piercingly beautiful that I put the book down, shook my head and simply said, "Wow."--From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Wendy Smith
Amazon Price: (as of 11/26/2009)
Sacred Games: A Novel (P.S.)
Sacred Games is a novel as big, ambitious, multi-layered, contradictory, funny, sad, scary, violent, tender, complex, and irresistible as India itself. Steep yourself in this story, enjoy the delicious masala Chandra has created, and you will have an idea of how the country manages to hang together despite age-old hatreds, hundreds of dialects, different religious practices, the caste system, and corruption everywhere. The Game keeps it afloat. --Amazon.com
Amazon Price: $13.22 (as of 11/26/2009)
Selling Geneva?
Please.
"As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg."--Oscar Wilde
If you feel the Squidoo community spirit and would like to sell "Geneva" at Your Own Squidoo Page (Naturaly, I would reciprocate), then:
Simply add this link to an Amazon module: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/142419184X/ref=cm_plog_item_link
Not a Squidoo member? Click the Make Your Own Page link at the top of this page and sign up - it's free!
P. S. Walt Whitman (Not making a comparison) printed Leaves of Grass himself and then sold it door to door. Well, squidoo is our door to door.
Chapter 10 of Geneva: Impassioned excerpts
Get the context by supporting your local bookstore
One is very crazy when in love. --FreudShe took a few more leisurely sips from her beer, shook her head like a dog, and then slipped back underwater. Face down once again, her arms and legs dangling, she floated toward me backward. This time, I didn't wait. On my unsteady legs I rose, took a step forward, wrapped my arms around her
GENEVA
105
waste and lifted her out of the water in such an abrupt and aggressive manner that one would have thought that she really had drowned and I was now administering the Heimlich maneuver. But no, I was saving myself, not rescuing her, and when she arched her back and turned her head and our lips clashed like swords, I had never felt so alive.
Such sweet chaos; such hungry mauling. We were devouring each other; we were blissfully tearing each other to pieces: Our tongues clashed like striking snakes; she bit my lip; I dug my nails in her shoulder; she scratched my thigh; I sought, and quickly found, her erect nipples, and pinched, squeezed and tugged on them as if they were removable, little gumdrops I could pluck off the roof of the gingerbread house, and in response, she reached around behind her and put a vise grip on my dick. Maddened with desire, I was about to shove my hand down the front of her bikini, when she turned violently, and after shooting me a crazed, murderous look, a look that froze my body and soul, she yanked my drunks down, then dropped to her knees, . . .
Gustave Flaubert
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Hermosa Beach
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Scott M. Gallagher was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After graduating High School, he drove a 1972 Super Beetle across the country and ended up...
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