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@108daysofsummer-blog
Face of the Day: Micheal J. Fox
He is someone I want to put in my pocket and carry around forever. I feel a sense of connection due to the fact that we are both on the shorter side of things and I love everything he has ever been in.
The first image is from Men On Rugs. It is both strange and lovely. Check it out.
Back to The Future
Micheal J. Fox + Nike = FRESH
Denise Bidot
Denise Bidot
Iskra Lawrence
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Triss
I need to blow off some steam.
Thats why I only surround myself with the best. :)
Famous authors, their writings and their rejection letters.
Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.
Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.
Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…
Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!
Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.
Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.
Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters
Now this…THIS inspires me.
Don’t give up people.
Academy of Villains: Young Skull Club | Choreography by Pharside
Directed & Choreographed by: Pharside, Krystal Meraz, Francis Tyrell, Austin Gamben, Erika Gomez
The best metaphor I know of for being a fiction writer is in Don DeLillo’s “Mao II,” where he describes a book-in-progress as a kind of hideously damaged infant that follows the writer around, forever crawling after the writer (dragging itself across the floor of restaurants where the writer’s trying to eat, appearing at the foot of the bed first thing in the morning, etc.), hideously defective, hydrocephalic and noseless and flipper-armed and incontinent and retarded and dribbling cerebo-spinal fluid out of its mouth as it mewls and blurbles and cries out to the writer, wanting love, wanting the very thing its hideousness guarantees it’ll get: the writer’s complete attention.
David Foster Wallace, “The Nature of the Fun” (via emesq)
Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood
booksinthekitchen:
The Czech novelist Milan Kundera once wrote that the proper job of fiction is to ask questions. If that’s the case, then Padgett Powell’s The Interrogative Mood must be the greatest novel of all time—for it is no less than an uninterrupted, 165-page string of questions, each asked by a nameless narrator of you, the unsuspecting reader.
Such an undertaking is, at the very least, an impressive display of literary stunt pilotry. But Powell’s crafty narrative voice adds several unexpected dimensions to the book, making it perform some astonishing feats of reinvention as it unfolds. The Interrogative Mood starts as an amusing gimmick, transforms along the way into the strangest job interview imaginable, detours more than once into what appears to be either a midlife crisis or some garden-variety existential panic, and winds up as easily my favourite book of the past year.
Read More
by Chuck Palahniuk
In six seconds, you’ll hate me. But in six months, you’ll be a better writer.
From this point forward—at least for the next half year—you may not use “thought” verbs. These include: Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires, and a…
Courage isn’t about going up and about life as if everything’s fine when you cry yourself to sleep every night. Courage is about acknowledging that times are hard, but choosing to believe that you’re strong enough to face it all. Being courageous is to choose to confront your fears, your anxieties, & the day with the faith that everything will be fine in the long run. It’s simply about doing the best that you can–because that is good enough–instead of despairing at idea of doing it wrong, or of failing. Courage is to never choose to despair, no matter how grim or overwhelming the day, week, month, or even year appears to be. Never doubt that you are strong enough, and you will nurture a courageous heart, which in turn will fuel you & your wildest dreams.
Promise, I'll Always Fear
So here I was sitting in front of a computer screen, but really facing a cliff, with my toes gripping the edge as a cold wind invites me to jump, but I can’t. My fear of heights stops me; the vertiginous plunge into nothingness could be the very last thing that I do–and it could hurt. A terrible pain would spread in every part of my body, and the bitter taste of regret would roll on my tongue as blood soak my hair. I’m not sure how far I need to go in life. I know how far I wish I could go, how limitless I wish I was, but I also know how much it hurts to reach your limit and have to overcompensate for it. I’m not sure if whatever I could accomplsh would be really worth that amount of pain, and that paralyzes me.
Is anything really worth it? Many great men said that when there is fear, something great is about to happen, but they never said that the great event would a good thing. Just great, like a life-changer, but it could be for the worst: a double or nothing. The edge was the poker table, the cards I held were my body, and the leap of faith was the required bet. Could I bet on myself? And if not me, then who ever could? It was my trust issues resurfacing; my history of panic attacks, and overwhelming anxieties that were stopping from betting. I didn’t trust myself to win. How horrible was that? As horrible as my fake trust issues; it was really all a matter of extremely low self-esteem. It wasn’t about not trusting myself to win, it was about not believing that I ever could.
I’m messed up. I’ve messed up. I know that I will mess things up again. That’s why believing is so important; it allows you to have faith despite the reality and facts. It allows you to hope, despite knowing. It allows you to break free from the cycle of things that are to be expected, and creates a space for great things; things everybody fears to do, but secretly hopes would happen, magically. Great things hurts, take time, devotion, and hope–that belief some call determination–that all the pain, the time, the sacrifices, are worth it in the end.
Real people, those that are alive and can hope, secretly know that the opportunity to have a life-changer is all that one could ever wish for. Wishes don’t come true without great things. You have to meet a life-changer and invite it in. Then the two of you must co-habit for a while, until you get to know and understand the life-changer, and how it could be exactly that: a life changer. If your fear makes you go home every night alone, because you don’t want to get too involved, because you know you’ll be hurt, because you get hurt so easily and you think nobody cares, well, you’ll shut the door in the face of those life-changers, and your life will be filled with absolutely nothing great.
So is it worth it? Is it worth the pain?
It’s the road to what you wish for. Effort won’t do it. Love won’t do it. Family won’t do it. Even money won’t do it. Only life-changers can, and nobody knows what they look like or who they are until it’s too late–until the wheel has turned and you’re either in the middle of something great or in the middle of something you know: coming back home every night, lonely yet not alone, and feeling empty, as if one of your dreams had just died. The void inside hurts too, you realize, and whatever you choose to cope with that dull and latent pain will slowly destroy you.
Should I choose thus a pain that will slowly destroy my dreams and me, or an scary unknown pain that will allow me to reach for a better life? Some great men said that we all have a different thresholds to pain. There is an array of factors that come into play to determine why that is, but I have a theory. Fear is often greater than the pain itself. Those who are very sensitive to pain are perhaps also acutely sensitive to fear. If so, by lowering that fear would modify someone’s response to fear, and that person’s limit. Then perhaps pain becomes something else. Maybe without fear, pain becomes a reminder of happiness; a sharp contrast with a mundane life–a friendly reminder that you’re connected to the world, that you can feel. Maybe then, pain becomes great, in a good way.
If the fear of pain is the only thing stopping me from jumping, from reaching for the stars, then the solution becomes, in a matter-of-fact (since hope is still lacking) clear: I have to welcome fear. Let it intoxicate my whole body, and let it drive my heartbeat crazy while taking two steps back. Then, I should close my eyes in relish in that frantic state, feel the rush of the adrenaline being pumped into every part of my body, and use that thrill to propel myself forward into a short sprint. Then I should leap out with my eyes open and my arms and legs reaching out, hoping–and believing–that wherever I land, someone out there may have seen a shooting star in daylight.
Do try this at home.
My writing project for this Summer
The good-hearted have both fear and courage in equal amounts; what makes them strong is the faith that their courage is worth their fear, and vice-versa.
