Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.
There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.
I felt a longing to compose a radical or root poem that would speak to what has its back turned to me.
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.
Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.
Sincerity is technique.
Remarks aren't literature.
Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.
In this art form, in any art form, generalities are useless.
You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a shortstop at work, how he concentrates on one thing at a time. You learn from classic music, from the blues and jazz, from bluegrass. From all this, you learn how to sustain a great line without bringing in unnecessary words.
The mystique and the false glamour of the writing profession grow partly out of a mistaken belief that people who can express profound ideas and emotions have ideas and emotions more profound than the rest of us. It isn't so. The ability to express is a special gift with a special craft to support it and is spread fairly equally among the profound, the shallow, and the mediocre.
Tending 100-year-old vines, I've been fortunate to craft highly rated, small production, estate grown wines since 1998. A labor of love, our wines are sustainably farmed, carry the story of my family in every glass and are simply the most satisfying of all my personal endeavors.
The purpose of every industrial revolution is to make craft and skills obsolete, and thereby make people interchangeable and cheap.
Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do.
The competition, the naysayers, the owners who talk too much. The people who don't think a 36-year-old can do what I do. I take a lot of pride in my craft, I work really hard at my craft everyday, and I'm a true professional.
The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! ... Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all get back to craft! ... The artist is a heightened manifestation of the craftsman. ... Let us form ... a new guild of craftsmen without the class divisions that set out to raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! ... Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.
Art without heart is craft.
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle.
Nowhere does one become more convinced of the strong hold which Freemasonry takes upon the minds and lives of those aging workers in the Craft who have attained its highest honors and of their firm belief in the power of its teachings to purify the soul of men and raise them to a new dignity and to greater heights of spirituality and practical morality.
Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness.
The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne. Th' assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge, The dredful joye, alwey that slit so yerne; Al this mene I be love... For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
What, then, shall a Catholic Christian do ... if some novel contagion attempt to infect no longer a small part of the Church alone but the whole Church alike? He shall then see to it that he cleave unto antiquity, which is now utterly incapable of being seduced by any craft or novelty.
Clarity precedes mastery. Craft clear and precise plans/goals/deliverables. And then block out all else.
I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.
Every flying machine has its own unique characteristics, some good, some not so good. Pilots naturally fly the craft in such a manner as to take advantage of its good characteristics and avoid the areas where it is not so good.
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