Caveat: The books below represent a temptation. An excuse not to write. You must resist long enough to read one essay, Walter Mosley’s For Authors, Fragile Ideas Need Loving Every Day. I consider Mosley words to be so vital that I have framed them to the right of my typewriter and I read that essay every single morning before I go to work.

After you’ve sat at the keyboard or with your pen and paper, or however you want to write, and written, then, and only then, you can consider books that might help you get better. You could do a lot worse than to start with Reads for Aspiring Writers During NaNoWriMo:

One of my mentors, magazine writer, editor and journalism professor Byron Scott told me once that one of the ways that you knew you were a writer was that you’d canceled your subscription to Writer’s Digest. Another model—whom I discovered while taking an undergraduate Women’s Study class for all the wrong reasons—is Marge Piercy whose definition of a real writer you’ll find enshrined at the top of every Have Coffee Will Write page.

So, stop, don’t read another book or magazine article or blog post on writing until you’ve set a daily target (either in time or words) and met that goal for today. The repeat. Daily, because as Walter Mosley reminds us:

The act of writing is a kind of guerrilla warfare; there is no vacation, no leave, no relief. In actuality there is very little chance of victory. I am, I fear, like that homeless man, likely to be defeated by my fondest dreams.

But then the next day comes, and the words are waiting. I pick up where I left off, in the cool and shifting mists of morning.

Right. Now write.

Michael Harriot, writing in The 2017 Wypipo Awards opens the envelopes. My favorite was:

In the category, Becky of the Year, the candidates are:

1. Taylor Swift: For making another album all about how Kanye did her wrong, getting caught in a lie, stealing the essence of Beyoncé, whitewashing it, making ”Unsweetened Lemonade” with it, releasing it on the anniversary of Donda West’s death and saying nothing about becoming the white supremacist poster child.
2. Tomi Lahren: This Beckzilla shaded Auntie Maxine, Beyoncé, Wale, Colin Kaepernick, Glenn Beck, an entire airline and black people in general.
3. Lena Dunham: For using her unique brand of hipster racism shit-baggery, which includes kicking a puppy to the curb and defending an alleged rapist. Basically, for being Lena Dunham.
4. Kellyanne Conway: For playing a major role in the election of Mango Mussolini by lying her ass off.

And the winner is: Sarah Sanders Huckabee.

Sarah Sanders Huckabee broke the glass ceiling, and I’m not just saying that because she’s the new-millennium Kool-Aid man. Never before in the history of lying motherfuckers has anyone shown this level of boldface bullshittery. As the Trump administration’s mouthpiece, she parses out fake news like Willy Wonka on Halloween. When it comes to lying, she’s the GOAT…

And by that, I mean she’s a lying goat.

The rest are just as spot on. Pour an adult beverage of your choice, sit back, read and enjoy…

My personal definition of spirituality is how we emotionally deal with our personal reality. There is Reality and there is reality. The former is what Phillip K. Dick meant when he wrote in the short story I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon:

She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” That’s all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven’t been able to define reality any more lucidly.

In the latter case, I think, Wright is talking about the story we constantly tell ourselves to make sense of what happens around us. That never goes away, unless, we make it go away.

If you accept the idea that many of our most troublesome feelings are in one sense or another are illusions, then meditation can be seen as, among other things, a process of dispelling illusions. p. 39

From Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright

Wright goes way out on the Bodhi limb, hell, he’s treading air, when he asks us to accept the idea that many of our most troublesome feelings are illusions. But’s he’s right. The key word here is, of course, feelings. How we feel about something is can change and we have the power, with practice, to make, and even direct, that change.

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

*With sincere admiration and apologies to Robin Williams…

Lt. Colonel Richard Sharpe, has a more personal perspective on the epic battle…

In the final chapter of his book, How To Be A Stoic, Massimo Picliucci offers 12 practical spiritual exercises. In the coming year I’m going to devote one month to each of these exercises. For January I begin with:

Examine Your Impressions. “So make a practice at once of saying to every strong impression, ‘An impression is all you are, not the source of the impression.’ Then test and assess it with your criteria, but one primarily: ask, ‘Is this something that is, or is not, in my control? And if it is not one of the things you can control, be ready with the reaction, ‘Then it’s none of my concern.’” —Epictetus. p.206

From How To Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy To Live A Modern Life by Massimo Picliucci

Picliucci uses impressions here to mean: our initial reactions to events, people and what we are being told. He counsels that we ought to step “back to make room for rational deliberation, avoiding rash emotional reactions, and asking whether whatever is being thrown at us is under our control (in which case we should act on it) or isn’t (in which case we should regard it as not of our concern).” He does not mean to suggest that Epictetus has given us permission to fiddle while Rome burns, but rather that we ought to consider whether or not we can take actions that will reduce our stress and unhappiness with any particular impression.

In the age of President Donald John Trump, this last is vital. Reacting viscerally to the latest news tweet from our president or from one of his minions isn’t healthy. But stepping back and then acting as we are able is.

Counting to 10 when we’re face-to-face has always been good advice, but in the age of social media and emails, I would suggest that 10 seconds is insufficient. I think that 24 hours is a better cooling off period when responding to a strong impression.

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I have commented that I thought Sue Grafton was living a writer’s dream and nightmare. A dream because she had 26 books locked in and all she had to do was write them and cash the checks. A nightmare because she had to write all 26 books about Kinsey Millhone. Most writers couldn’t bear the thought. Arthur Conan Doyle killed of Sherlock Holmes and J.K. Rowling sent Harry and crew off into boring adulthood.

Grafton, or maybe it was Kinsey, was different. According to one obituary, she “liked to refer to Millhone, who investigates murders and disappearances in coastal Santa Teresa, as the thinner, younger, braver version of herself, living a life she may have led had she not married and had children at a young age.”

Writing your own fictionalized biography, now that’s a golden ticket.

In 1994,, Grafton wrote an introduction to a collection of essays by Lawrence Block. Telling Lies For Fun & Profit, A Manual For Fiction Writers is one of the core go-to books on my writing shelf. It was also, at least in her early years, one of Grafton’s. (The emphasis below is from my own well-worn copy which I just plucked from my shelf.) She wrote:

So, here’s how this went. I was struggling with the storyline for K is for Killer, which had just about wrestled me to as standstill. I knew it was time to launch into the first chapter, by my psyche was reacting. I’d spent the day half-sick, staggering from my bed to the word processor and back. Nothing seemed to work. I knew the illness was stress-induced, but the symptoms were sufficient to muddy my thinking. I tried an opening or two, but I couldn’t hit a vein. Naturally, I did what any sensible writer in my position would do. I went out to the mailbox. There, among fascinating personal messages addressed to OR CURRENT RESIDENT, was a letter from Lawrence Block indicating that Morrow would be publishing a new edition of Telling Lies for Fun and Profit and asking if I would write an introduction. Thrilled at so legitimate a reason to avoid my work, I went back to my office and plucked my well-worn copy from the shelf. I began to leaf through the pages, purely with an eye to preparing this foreword. Soon, I was sprawled in a comfy chair reading every chapter in sequence. Midway, I sat up, amazed to find that in the chapter called “Opening Remarks,” Lawrence Block had written about the very frustration I was experiencing with K. Furthermore his advice was about openings was right on the money. I set the book aside and went back to my word processor, looking at my problem with renewed interest and a tiny flicker of hope. I began to pick my way through the rubble, and suddenly I found myself in business again.

Other writers have signaled their ambitions in titles—Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small novels come to mind—but none were as ambitious as Grafton’s. Robert Browning wrote: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?

I think that fits.

The Greeks had a word for everything. My new word from reading Massimo Picliucci’s How To Be A Stoic is eudaemonia: well-being or happiness. Happiness ought not to be confused with fun. Eudaemonia is about purpose and direction. Picliucci dives much deeper here, but for now let’s begin with this:

Eudaemonic: having the objective of figuring out the best way to live a human life. p. 19

From How To Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy To Live A Modern Life by Massimo Picliucci

We can, and often do, invest a lifetime in answering that question, but the Stoic’s offered some solid beginnings on the journey.

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Massimo Picliucci, How To Be A Stoic

I’m reminded of a scene from W—a movie I could not watch because I lacked distance—where Vice President Dick Cheney discusses whether or not a 1 percent chance that a salad might have been poisoned was a good reason to not eat the salad as a metaphor for sacrificing millions to the possibility that there might have been chemical weapons somewhere in Iraq. We know what happened, but Robert Wright uses evolutionary psychology to explain how it happened, how President George Walker Bush’s brain saw the rattlesnake beside the path.

Though your brief conviction that you’ve seen a rattlesnake may be wrong ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the conviction could be lifesaving the other one time in a hundred. And in natural selection’s calculus, being right 1 percent of the time in matters of life and death can be worth being wrong 99 percent of the time, even if every one of those ninety-nine instances you’re briefly terrified. p. 32-3

From Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright

And this is why we’re still mired in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Typically when I post notes from My Electronic Chapbook, I do so in order. I finished transcribing my notes to Harold Evans’ Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters this afternoon and I was so stuck by my final note, I felt compelled to not only share the note immediately, but also to expand note to provide context.

As Evans, former editor of The Sunday Times and The Times of London, notes, near the end of the presidency of Donald Duckspeak Trump, these paragraphs are spot on.

The misuse of credit stains print, broadcasting and the web. On 23 December 2015, in Afghanistan, a motorbike suicide killed ten U.S. soldiers, and CNN credited it to the Taliban. Boko Haram was credited with with the seizure of 276 girls in Chibok, Borno. The credits in broadcasting, print and website headlines make it clear one part of humanity just does not think about the meaning of words. For five hundred years, since the English first adopted the word from the French, credit has meant honor.

Terrorists have no hesitation in claiming credit. ISIS did the day after the Paris Killings. The aim is to ratchet up anxiety and panic. But why does the media act as ventriloquist? The Wall Street Journal, generally scrupulous with words, wrote in an editorial on 30 June 2016, that the Islamic State hasn’t taken credit at this writing for killing forty-one and injuring more than two hundred at Turkey’s Ataturk Airport. Nouns and verbs that chime with universal values are accessible, words such as responsibility, blame, guilt, admit, accept—and the strong verb perpetrate, “to execute or commit a crime or evil deed.” It is more than carry out, as if the bad guys were delivering pizza.

The media does not intend to equate murder and honor. But it does. It is erratically careless, too, with execution, embellishing a desert decapitation with the word for the infliction of capital punishment in observance of a judicial sentence. I think claim credit just pops into mind as a reflex coupling, the way fires rage, plots thicken, fire engines race.

Orwell would classify it as duckspeak, to quack without thinking, a word in the language of Newspeak. Orwell, in his 1948 description of the principles of Newspeak, wrote:

Ultimately, it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all.

Oldspeak—and literature and history—would gradually be supplanted by Newspeak, and obliterated by 2050. Facebook’s mass dissemination of fake news in the 2016 presidential election suggests that we are ahead of schedule. p. 183

From Do I make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters by Harold Evans

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Writing well matters.

Sadly, the final episode of this excellent series is not available. I suspect the reason that Six Nations Rugby blocked the video for copyright reasons.

First, clean coal is a fantasy. Second, burning coal hastens the rise of greenhouse gasses and the environmental degradation of the only place we have to live. Continuing to dump carbon into the atmosphere is tantamount to detonating a global suicide bomb.

President Donald John Trump thinks that both points are fake news and his minions enthusiastically agree. To keep his sycophants smiling—and continue his campaign to erase any achievement by President Barack Hussein Obama—our president has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to stop protecting the environment and repeal President Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

While we probably have a polar bear’s chance in the Arctic of stopping the repeal, we do have a voice.

Until Tuesday, 16 January, we can all submit comments against (or for if you’re suicidal and just want to see the world burn) the repeal. You can submit your comments: Online; via Email—Be sure to put Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355 in the subject line; fax at 202.566.9744, Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355 (I know, faxing is so last century); or snail mail to Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC), Mail Code 28221T, Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20460.

We begin, we end; we are born and we die. Some pass on their DNA. Some do not. What transpires between those two bookends of existence has no meaning beyond that which we choose to imbue our seconds, minutes, hours and days. Most of us suck at creating meaning. A few do not; but in the end we’re all worm food as forgotten as Ozymandias.

The goal is to learn something about how to answer that most fundamental question: How ought we to live our lives? p. 15

From How To Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy To Live A Modern Life by Massimo Picliucci

Ought is a loaded word. A judgmental word that psychologists caution against. If I don’t do what I ought to do then I’m a bad person. I know my duty and I ought to do it, else I am horrible. Ought is embedded in our genes. Humans who did what they ought to do, passed on their genes. Those who did not, did not. That makes sense in the abstract, but fails in the specific.

Douglas Adams may have been onto something. Could 42 be how we ought to live our lives and we’re all players in Deep Thought’s million-year program to determine the real question?

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

*Everyone whistle…!

I’m not certain when magic pills became a thing, but they are ubiquitous in 21st century culture. Why do any kind of hard work like exercising, monitoring what and how much you eat, avoiding harmful substances like tobacco, alcohol or heroin, when you can just take a vitamin or a hit of Naloxone and keep on keeping on?

Change is never easy. Lots of Americans are already preparing for one last hedonistic blast Sunday night before committing to the annual ritual of vowing to be better the next morning. Health clubs and gyms across the country are salivating over their Black Monday, the day millions will spend millions on memberships that they’ll allow to lapse sometime before Martin Luther King Day.

Taking the red pill means asking basic questions about the relationship of the perceiver to the perceived and examining the underpinnings of our normal view of reality. If you’re thinking seriously about taking the red pill, you’ll curious as to whether the Buddhist view of the world works not just in a a therapeutic sense but in a more philosophical sense. p. 23

From Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright

Process is everything and the journey is the goal. So take the red pill and get to work.

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.