Friday, March 29, 2013

195 ~on literature

PROSE IS FIRST OF ALL AN ATTITUDE OF MIND



“What aspect of the world do you want to disclose? What change do you want to bring into the world by this disclosure?.”



In "What is Literature?" and Other Essays Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist philosopher, novelist and playwright, challenges us, the writers, to formulate some questions: ‘What is writing?’ ‘Why write?’ ‘For whom does one write?’ and ultimately ‘What is literature?’


The writer deals with significations.

“The writer can guide you and, if he describes a hovel, make it seem the symbol of social injustice and provoke your indignation. The painter is mute. He presents you with a hovel, that’s all. You are free to see in it what you like.”

“One might think that he [a poet] is composing a sentence, but this is only what it appears to be. He is creating an object. The words-things are grouped by magical associations of fitness and incongruity, like colors and sounds. They attract, repel, and ‘burn’ one another, and their association composes the veritable poetic unity which is the phrase-object.”


Even if the poet is forbidden to engage himself, what do the writer of prose and the poet have in common?

“It is true that the prosewriter and the poet both write. But there’s nothing in common between these two acts of writing except the movement of the hand which traces the letters.”

“Prose is, in essence, utilitarian. I would readily define the prose-writer as a man who makes use of words. The writer is a speaker; he designates, demonstrates, orders, refuses, interpolates, begs, insults, persuades, insinuates. If he does so without any effect, he has not therefore become a poet; he is a writer who is talking and saying nothing.”

“One is not a writer for having chosen to say certain things, but for having chosen to say them in a certain way.”


Why write? Each writer has his own reasons.

“For one, art is a flight; for another, a means of conquering. But one can flee into a hermitage, into madness, into death. One can conquer by arms. Why does it have to be writing, why does one have to manage his escapes and conquests by writing?”

“One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world. If I fix on canvas or in writing a certain aspect of the fields or the sea or a look on someone’s face which I have disclosed, I am conscious of having produced them by condensing relationships, by introducing order where there was none, by imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of things. That is, I feel myself  essential in relation to my creation.”


For whom does one write? The ideal of writing for the universal reader.

“As a matter of fact, the writer knows that he speaks for freedoms which are swallowed up, masked, and unavailable; and his own freedom is not so pure; he has to clean it. It is dangerously easy to speak too readily about eternal values; eternal values are very, very fleshless.”

“I shall say that a writer is engaged when he tries to achieve the most lucid and the most complete consciousness of being embarked, that is, when he causes the engagement of immediate spontaneity to advance, for himself and others, to the reflective. The writer is, par excellence, a mediator and his engagement is mediation.”

*****


Goodreads Book Giveaway

Deconstructing INFATUATION by Merce Cardus

Deconstructing INFATUATION

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends April 23, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order  Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.



                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

194 ~book news

THURSDAY LINKS: GENERATION E-BOOK







*****



Goodreads Book Giveaway

Deconstructing INFATUATION by Merce Cardus

Deconstructing INFATUATION

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends April 23, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

193 ~on happiness

GOING WITH THE FLOW


“Hey, can anyone out there disclose which is the secret formula of happiness?”
—Merce Cardus, I say Who, What, and Where!



In Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, reveals  the mysterious process by which men and women come up with new ideas and new things.


Creative persons have one thing in common:

“Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are unanimous: They all love what they do. It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.”


 Are you programmed for creativity?

“When people are given a list and asked to choose the best description of what they enjoy about doing what they enjoy most—reading, climbing, mountains, playing chess—the answer most frequently chosen is ‘designing or discovering something new.”

“By random mutations, some individuals must have developed a nervous system in which the discovery of novelty stimulates the pleasure centers in the brain. Just as some individuals derive a keener pleasure from sex and others from food, so some must have been born who derived a keener pleasure from learning something new.”


The force of entropy:

“But there is another force that motivates us, and it is more primitive and more powerful than the urge to create: the force of entropy.

This, too, is a survival mechanism built into our genes by evolution. It gives us pleasure when we are comfortable, when we relax, when we can get away with feeling good without expending energy.”


What is enjoyment?

“Certain people devote many hours a week to their avocations, without any rewards of money and fame.

Why do they keep doing it?

It is clear from talking to them that what keeps them motivated is the quality of the experience they feel at the time. This feeling often involves painful, risky, or difficult efforts that stretch the person’s capacity, as well as an element of novelty and discovery.

I call this optimal experience flow. ”


The relation between flow and happiness:

“It is tempting to conclude that the two must be the same thing; actually, the connection is more complex. When we are in flow, we do not usually feel happy, because we feel only what is relevant to the activity. Happiness is a distraction.

It is only after we get out of flow, at the end of a session or in moments of distraction within it, that we might indulge in feeling happy.”


Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato wrote that the most important task for a society was to teach the young to find pleasure in the right objects. What should those right things be?

“The problem is that it is easier to find pleasure in things that are easier, in activities like sex and violence that are really programmed into our genes.

Hunting, fishing, eating and mating have privileged places in our nervous system. It is also easy to enjoy making money, discovering new lands, or building elaborate palaces, because these projects fit with survival strategies established long ago in our physiological makeup.

It is much more difficult to learn to enjoy doing things that were discovered recently in our evolution—such as manipulating systems by doing math or composing music—and to learn about the world and ourselves in the process.”

*****



Goodreads Book Giveaway

Deconstructing INFATUATION by Merce Cardus

Deconstructing INFATUATION

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends April 23, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win

Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

192 ~on writing

FINDING YOUR WRITER’S VOICE



“I want to hear you, not your voice”
Iris Warren, Voice Teacher.


Finding Your Writer's Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction whispers you how the stories get written.


The sound of colloquial voice:

“When colloquial language unites with literary language, a third language often emerges—an alchemical blend of your natural speaking voice, and a more polished language capable of arousing the imagination of the reader. The more you write, the more this language occurs naturally, and the more your speaking and writing styles may begin to converge.”


Writing in the pressure cooker:

“Improvisation is an inescapable reality of fiction. That wonderful, scary freefall into improvisation through freewrites and spontaneous jottings is where voice begins. Once you’ve got something on the page, you move into a second-order improvisation: you start improvising with the found objects your voice has offered. Whatever they are, to move your voice into a story, you have to make a commitment to working with certain found elements.”


Craft and the voice of the story:

“As you learn to weave back and forth between loss of control and more conscious manipulation of voice, your raw voice will change, broaden its range. Skills of craft become so automatic you do them without thinking.

A surprise also occurs: The more skilled you become at writing a story, the more voice has a way of disappearing.”


Catalysts for the story:

“When thinking about what energizes your voice, it’s often useful to categorize novels and stories in the following ways: character-driven, plot-driven, and vision-driven. What catalyzes your voice is often what drives your story.”


Point of view:

“Point of view is a primary vehicle for voice. Like voice itself, point of view is usually instinctive.

For all its spontaneity, then, point of view has everything to do with intention. It’s a choice that lets you tell the story you want to tell.”


Secrets as a key to character:

“One of the best ways to discover what characters speak only to themselves is to ask them to tell you their secrets.

Listen to your character with interest and detachment. Watch her for a while, as she moves about her life.”


*****




Goodreads Book Giveaway

Deconstructing INFATUATION by Merce Cardus

Deconstructing INFATUATION

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends April 23, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win


Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved. 

Monday, March 25, 2013

191 ~on creativity

4 LESSONS IN CREATIVITY





“The story that we all live [is] the cycle of creation and destruction, of control and letting go, of picking up the pieces and making something new.”
— Julie Burstein.


In 2000, Julie Burstein, created Public Radio International’s show Studio 360 to explore pop culture and the arts. Hosted by novelist Kurt Andersen and produced at WNYC, the show is a guide to what’s interesting now—and asks deep questions about the drive behind creative work. Now, Burstein has written Spark: How Creativity Works filled with stories about artists, writers and musicians (like Chuck Close, Isabell Allende, Patti Lupone).

Watch this video:






*****



Goodreads Book Giveaway

Deconstructing INFATUATION by Merce Cardus

Deconstructing INFATUATION

by Merce Cardus

Giveaway ends April 23, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win


Click to order  I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Friday, March 22, 2013

190 ~on thinking

THINKING, FAST AND SLOW





“The people who make the most difference to the lives of other people are very optimistic. They have an illusion of control.”
— Daniel Kahneman



In Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic sciences, explains the two systems that drive the way we think.


The characters of the story: Daniel Kahneman frames the way we think into two different systems:


Fast system—System 1, operates automatically and cannot be turned off at will, errors of intuitive thought are often difficult to prevent.

e.g. 2+2=?

Biases cannot always be avoided, because System 2—Slow System may have no clue to the error. Even when cues to likely error are available, errors can be prevented only by the enhanced monitoring and effortful activity of System 2.

e.g.17x24=?

As a way to live your life, however, continuous vigilance is not necessarily good, and it is certainly impractical. Constantly questioning our own thinking would be impossible tedious, and system 2 is much too slow and inefficient to serve as a substitute for system 1 in making routine decisions. The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.”


A machine for jumping to conclusions:

“The great comedian Danny Kaye had a line that has stayed with me since my adolescence. Speaking of a woman he dislikes, he says, ‘Her favorite position is beside herself, and her favorite sport is jumping to conclusions.”

“Jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort. Jumping to conclusion is risky when the situation is unfamiliar, the stakes are high, and there is no time to collect more information. These are the circumstances in which intuitive errors are probable, which may be prevented by a deliberate intervention of System 2.”


How judgments happen?

“There is no limit to the number of questions you can answer, whether they are questions someone else asks or questions you ask yourself. Nor is there a limit to the number of attributes you can evaluate. You are capable of counting the number of capital letters on this page, comparing the height of the windows of your house to the one across the street, and assessing the political prospects of your senator on a scale from excellent to disastrous. The questions are addressed to System 2, which will direct attention and search memory to find the answers.”


The illusion of understanding:

“Narrative fallacies arise inevitably from our continuous attempt to make sense of the world. The explanatory stories that people find compelling are simple; are concrete rather than abstract; assign a larger role to talent, stupidity, and intentions than to luck; and focus on a few striking events that happened rather than on the countless events that failed to happen. Any recent salient event is a candidate to become the kernel of a causual narrative.”

“The sense-making machinery of System 1 makes us see the world as more tidy, simple, predictable, and coherent than it really is. The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future. These illusions are comforting. They reduce the anxiety that we would experience if we allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge the uncertainties of existence.”


Life as a story:

“A story is about significant events and memorable moments, not about time passing. Duration neglect is normal in a story, and the ending often defines its character. The same core features appear in the rules of narratives and in the memories of colonoscopies, vacations, and films. This is how the remembering self works: it composes stories and keeps them for future reference.”

“Most important, of course, we all care intensely for the narrative of our own life and very much want it to be a good story, with a decent hero.”


Watch this video:



*****



Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.



                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

189 ~book news

THURSDAY LINKS: ACCEPT THE CHALLENGES






    • Why Amazon prime could soon cost you next to nothing? Wired.




    *****



    Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
    an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

    Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION 
    a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                      

    Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

188 ~on creativity

A SPIRITUAL PATH TO HIGHER CREATIVITY





“Art is a spiritual transaction.”


The Artist's Way leads us to a spiritual path to higher creativity, using exercises, tasks, essays, and a weekly check-in.


Recovering a sense of identity:

“Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful sould and interesting people. Forget yourself—Henry Miller.”

“I shut my eyes in order to see—Paul Gauguin.”


Recovering a sense of integrity:

“Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure.—Piero Ferrucci”

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.—Theodore Roethke.”


Recovering a sense of possibility:

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what need to do, in order to have what you want—Margaret Young.”


Recovering a sense of abundance:

“As an artist, it is central to be unsatisfied! This isn’t greed, though it might be appetite—Lawrence Calcagno.”

“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.—Leo Tolstoy”


Recovering a sense of connection:

“Living is a form if not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.—Agnes de Mille.”

“With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity—Keshavannair.”


Recovering a sense of autonomy:

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.—Francis Bacon.”

“To keep the body in good health is a duty… Otherwise, we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.—Buddha.”


Recovering a sense of faith:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.—Albert Einstein.”

“What shakes the eye but the invisible?”—Theodore Roethke.




*****



Click to order I say Who, What, and Where! 
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself freely.

Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.

                                                                  

Copyright © 2013 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.