10 July 2009
10 July 2009
ON HARUKI MURAKAMI…
0830 by Jeff HessFrom Daily Routines:
When I”m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it”s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long – six months to a year – requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
10 July 2009
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0230 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
We write instead of speak when we are ashamed to look our audience in the eye. p. 216
From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.
9 July 2009
FROM MY DAD…
2030 by Jeff Hess
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your evening blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
A fool and his money,
can throw one hell of a party.
9 July 2009
9 July 2009
ON VLADIMIR NABOKOV…
0830 by Jeff HessFrom Daily Routines:
Summers I spend in the stumbling pursuit of lepidoptera on flowery slopes and mountain screes; and, of course, after my daily hike of fifteen miles or more, I sleep even worse than in winter. My last resort in this business of relaxation is the composing of chess problems. The recent publication of two of them (in the Sunday Times and The Evening News of London) gave me more pleasure, I think, than the printing of my first poems half a century ago in St. Petersburg.
9 July 2009
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0230 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
I wrote to keep from speaking. (T) p. 216
From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.
8 July 2009
FROM MY DAD…
2030 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your evening blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
Where I work you can name your own salary.
I’ve named mine Cecil.
8 July 2009
8 July 2009
ON STEPHEN KING…
0830 by Jeff HessFrom Daily Routines:
“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write,” he said. “I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There”s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning,” he explained. “I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you”re going to be dreaming soon.
“It”s not any different than a bedtime routine,” he continued. “Do you go to bed a different way every night? Is there a certain side you sleep on? I mean I brush my teeth, I wash my hands. Why would anybody wash their hands before they go to bed? I don”t know. And the pillows are supposed to be pointed a certain way. The open side of the pillowcase is supposed to be pointed in toward the other side of the bed. I don”t know why.”
8 July 2009
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0230 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
A desire for self-transformation… (T) p. 214
From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.
7 July 2009
FROM MY DAD…
2030 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your evening blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
We have enough youth.
How about a fountain of smart?
7 July 2009
7 July 2009
ON FRED ROGERS…
0830 by Jeff HessFrom Daily Routines:
Mister Rogers weighed 143 pounds because he has weighed 143 pounds as long as he has been Mister Rogers, because once upon a time, around thirty-one years ago, Mister Rogers stepped on a scale, and the scale told him that Mister Rogers weighs 143 pounds. No, not that he weighed 143 pounds, but that he weighs 143 pounds…. And so, every day, Mister Rogers refuses to do anything that would make his weight change–he neither drinks, nor smokes, nor eats flesh of any kind, nor goes to bed late at night, nor sleeps late in the morning, nor even watches television–and every morning, when he swims, he steps on a scale in his bathing suit and his bathing cap and his goggles, and the scale tells him he weighs 143 pounds. This has happened so many times that Mister Rogers has come to see that number as a gift, as a destiny fulfilled, because, as he says, “the number 143 means `I love you.’ It takes one letter to say ‘I’ and four letters to say `love’ and three letters to say `you.’ One hundred and forty-three. `I love you.’ Isn’t that wonderful?”
7 July 2009
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0230 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
“My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.” George Bernard Shaw. p. 214
From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.
6 July 2009
FROM MY DAD…
2030 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your evening blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
You are not drunk,
if you can lie on the floor
without holding on.
6 July 2009
6 July 2009
ON ANTHONY TROLLOPE…
0830 by Jeff HessFrom Daily Routines:
[H]e woke in darkness and wrote from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., with his watch in front of him. He required of himself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. If he finished one novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next. The writing session was followed, for a long stretch of time, by a day job with the postal service.
6 July 2009
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0230 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
Is it because science is the mouthpiece of determinism, and literature is the last holdout of free will? p. 212
From The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer”s Block and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.
5 July 2009
FROM MY DAD…
2030 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your evening blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
It’s not whether you win or lose,
but how you place the blame.
