These words are mine made of me.
They owe no one. They have heartbeats.
Yours do too. Listen. They have cells.
Paragraphs are body parts.
Words Live
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Category Archives: on writing
Books Read – 2020
1) Can You Forgive Her? | Trollope, Anthony |
| 2) The Mayor of Casterbridge | Hardy, Thomas |
| 3) Under the Greenwood Tree | Hardy, Thomas |
| 4) The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West | McCullough, David |
| 5) A Backward Glance | Wharton, Edith |
| 6) Unleavened Bread | Grant, Robert |
| 7) A Guilty Thing Surprised (Inspector Wexford, #5) | Rendell, Ruth |
| 8) Mason’s Retreat | Tilghman,Christopher |
| 9) The Hills Beyond | Wolfe, Thomas |
| 10) The Pioneers: James Fenimore Cooper | Cooper,JamesFenimore |
| 11) Excellent Women | Pym, Barbara |
| 12) When We Were Orphans | Ishiguro, Kazuo |
| 13) The Genuine Article (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 2) | Guthrie Jr., A.B. |
| 14) Mandela’s Way: Lessons for an Uncertain Age | Stengel, Richard |
| 15) Dombey and Son | Dickens, Charles |
| 16) A New England boyhood | Hale, Edward Everett |
| 17) The Big Bad City (87th Precinct, #49) | McBain, Ed |
| 18) No Second Wind | Guthrie Jr., A.B. |
| 19) A High Wind in Jamaica | Hughes, Richard |
| 20) The Vicar of Wakefield | Goldsmith, Oliver |
| 21) Nocturne (87th Precinct, #48) | McBain, Ed |
| 22) Murders at Moon Dance | Guthrie Jr., A.B. |
| 23) Coming Up for Air | Orwell, George |
| 24) Keep the Aspidistra Flying | Orwell, George |
| 25) Burmese Days | Orwell, George |
| 26) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life | Isaacson, Walter |
| 27) Twice Shy | Francis, Dick |
| 28) The Eustace Diamonds | Trollope, Anthony |
| 29) The Woodlanders | Hardy, Thomas |
| 30) The Belton Estate | Trollope, Anthony |
| 31) Miller’s Valley | Quindlen, Anna |
| 32) Phineas Redux, Vol. 1 | Trollope, Anthony |
| 33) Phineas Redux, Volume 2 | Trollope, Anthony |
| 34) The American Senator | Trollope, Anthony |
| 35) The Turn of the Screw | James, Henry |
Writing no matter what
I wish, no matter what, I could write for hours, no matter what, every day, no matter what. I know this to be near impossible for me.
For more years than I will think about I’ve hoped for that moment when I could get myself to sit down and write for hours at a time, every single day. I’ve read about writers who can tuck themselves away in their writing space, and pen away or tap keys for hours on a daily basis. I keep wondering, what am I doing wrong? Or, am I a fraud as a writer? A fake of some kind? Something like that.
As true as it is that I’m not able to write for hours at a time with any kind of consistency, it’s equally true that I’d likely be a dead man if I did not write at all. It is near fact to say, I wouldn’t know how to function. It’s also stone-cold fact to say that in my darkest moments, writing and books have prevented my suicide.
I often write because I want to, I always write because I have too.
Write on
This the pathway to
Words touch tender touch
My page and my hand
Pen sends friendship
To your wordsmith self
Our camaraderie
Write on
People
Smile
On writing
If you want to write, you need to believe your words are valuable enough to put on paper. They are. I’m dead serious. Your words have a right to be written because they are your words. You are real. Your voice, spoken or written, has as much value as any other voice – on the planet.
And try not to fret or wrap yourself in guilt because you didn’t remember to write something down. My history is littered with now forgotten sentences, phrases and words I fell in love with and wanted to use one day, and never did. I don’t imagine mine is a unique experience, other than it is mine, and no one (that I know of) is living my life but me.
I know that none of what I said here will make writing perpetually comfortable. I don’t think it is supposed to be. Writing forces you to be fully alone with yourself, and fully connected with yourself. Not easy. Sometimes I write because I want to, always I write because I have to.
Peter S. Kahrmann - Est. 1953 