sábado, 30 de agosto de 2014

O pequeno leitor e os seus fantasmas / The young reader and his fellow ghosts



quinta-feira, 28 de agosto de 2014

Já não tenho pachorra, nem eu nem a Meryl Streep

"Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante, mas simplesmente porque cheguei a um ponto da minha vida em que não me apetece perder mais tempo com aquilo que me desagrada ou fere. Já não tenho pachorra para cinismo, críticas em excesso e exigências de qualquer natureza. Perdi a vontade de agradar a quem não agrado, de amar quem não me ama, de sorrir para quem quer retirar-me o sorriso. Já não dedico um minuto que seja a quem me mente ou quer manipular. Decidi não conviver mais com pretensiosismo, hipocrisia, desonestidade e elogios baratos. Já não consigo tolerar eruditismo selectivo e altivez académica. Não compactuo mais com bairrismo ou coscuvilhice. Não suporto conflitos e comparações. Acredito num mundo de opostos e por isso evito pessoas de carácter rígido e inflexível. Na Amizade desagrada-me a falta de lealdade e a traição. Não lido nada bem com quem não sabe elogiar ou incentivar. Os exageros aborrecem-me e tenho dificuldade em aceitar quem não gosta de animais. E acima de tudo já não tenho paciência nenhuma para quem não merece a minha paciência."

Meryl Streep

É verdade, a idade deixa-nos mais seguros de quem somos e do que queremos e sem pachorra para muita coisa que sentimos que já não temos ( e se calhar nunca tivemos) a obrigação de aturar. Sapiências que se vão adquirindo...



quarta-feira, 27 de agosto de 2014

Um pequeno espaço para sonhar / "...a little space to dream"



I have no restless longing
For the lure of distant towns;
I'll take the sun and shadows
And the country's ups and downs;
All I want is just a cottage,
Beside a rippling stream,
With the country all around me,
And a little space to dream.
  "All I Want from Blue Hills Calling" by William Allen Allhands

sexta-feira, 22 de agosto de 2014

21 dicas de escrita inesperadas de grandes autores / 21 unexpected writing tips from great authors



1. The first draft of everything is shit. -Ernest Hemingway


2. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass. -David Ogilvy


3. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker


4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. -Paul Theroux


5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee


6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ― Jack London


7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell


8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham


9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King


10. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman


11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die. – Anne Enright


12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. – William Zinsser


13. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. – Kurt Vonnegut


14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway


15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway


16. Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk


17. Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain


18. Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you.― Neil Gaiman


19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar Wilde


20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ― Ray Bradbury


21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.– Lev Grossman



 Cody Delistraty



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