C.B. Potts's Blog, page 39

From the Letters of Note Blog

Jack London, whom I'm currently enamoured of:

Oakland, Calif.

Oct. 26, 1914

Dear Max Fedder:

In reply to yours of recent date undated, and returning herewith your Manuscript. First of all, let me tell you that as a psychologist and as one who has been through the mill, I enjoyed your story for its psy­chology and point of view. Honestly and frankly, I did not enjoy it for its literary charm or value. In the first place, it has little literary value and practically no literary charm. Merely becaus...

Boosting the Signal

A friend of mine is looking for work as a Quality Assurance Software Engineer in the greater Boston/western MA area.  If you have leads or suggestions or happen to be someone who needs a Quality Assurance Software Engineer, please let me know in the comments, which are screened. I'll pass the info along!  All help is appreciated!

From the NY Times article about the new Craig Clairborne ...

From the NY Times article about the new Craig Clairborne bio:

His formula for success? He spotted an uninhabited niche, positioned himself to fill it and, when he got that break, rode it for all it was worth. A highly effective person doesn’t need seven habits if he has those three.

My gosh, Liam, thank you.  You have no idea how happy you've made me. Every day I am reading something awesome.

Tuesday Morning

I saw Chuck Close this morning on Good Morning America. He said some things that affected me. "My father died when I was 11. It was the tragedy of my life." There was a gift hidden in the tragedy, he said. Paraphrasing; find the transcript later, this man speaks like a poet; but basically when this happens, when you lose a parent at a young age you learn that the absolute worst thing can happen and you will go on and you will be happy again.

I did not know that you could claim the tragedy of y...

And

4.7K words later; all day long, and the chapter draft is off to the client for review.  I am done now, my melty brain is melted out my ears. I need to perfect working in small, useful batches instead of these powerful, draining marathon runs. But I made it.  Phew!

Monday Morning

Today I will write a book chapter. I've been living with it for a couple of days, waiting to hear the tone of it and see the structure of it, and for all the lovely phrases to fall into place. Now it's mostly there, and I just need to write it down. It will be a good day; I'm ignoring everything else that needs to be accomplished today, except for a few hundred words about caring for caregivers. I will be glad when it's done; I'll enjoy writing it when I'm writing it; it's only the getting st...

A Conversation From The Road: A Meditation on Good Friday

Written by request for my most insistent reader.

To be a prophet is to have no home. It's in the job description. The entire world serves as your residence as you go from town to town to town, singing the only song you know.  The truth. It will set you free.

It's easy to say things hard to hear. The road is always open.  Lingering can have consequences.  Haven't you heard his story? It's being told today.

Don't get too close. Keep a low profile. You don't want the attentions of authority. If tha...

I have been struggling

For a number of weeks now with a chapter in a book I'm working on. I knew what pieces needed to be in there, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how they go together. This is a not insignificant problem. Normally I would skip ahead and write another chapter, but this book has a strongly linear narrative structure: when the string of the story is drawn this taut, jumping ahead can bounce you right out of the book.

Being stuck is a problem. Some good ways to unstick, for me, include s...

Notes To Self

You have to let shit go. Really. Now. It's okay. You can not control for everything.

Consider these beliefs, and the role they've had in your life: All work has value. There is wisdom in every story.

Continuum is a far preferable word to absolute. The world is a nuanced place. It's okay not to know what you think about something. It's okay not to know what you feel about something - or to know, with stark, pinpoint precision exactly what you feel about something and make the conscious deci...

More on Art

Because I'm on a tear, and why not: there is power in the honest moment, there is power in being reminded that not everyone has the same vision, there is power in being reminded that there are ways of seeing the world you never would have thought of.

There is power in owning your message, authentically, bare-breasted and raw despite those god damned spears and you impale yourself upon them and you bleed it out, onto the ground, onto the page, onto the psyche of generations and this is a sacred...