Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 4

Goodwill, Peace on Earth

Praise god or the gods, the unknown, that which imagined us, which stays our hand, our murderous hand, and gives us still, in the shadow of death, our daily life, and the dream still of goodwill, of peace on earth. Denise Levertov

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A New Decade

Here we stand, waiting for the old year to dissolve beneath our feet and for the new one to arrive with all its breathless uncertainty. 2020! It’s hard to imagine a number like that. I remember sitting in an elementary school classroom where the teacher was, for some reason I can no longer recall, talking […]

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Every Now and Then

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen. […]

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Loss and Possibility

It’s a conversation I’ve heard many times. What a terrible thing it is to be losing the physical book, words printed on paper! What a terrible thing it is that people don’t write letters any more, words printed on paper! And always I listen and think, “Yes, yes, of course. It’s always hard to lose […]

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The Secret of Living Well

Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company. Rachel Naomi Remen

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On Staying Alive

I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, noticing the elements of my day that bring me joy, that wake me into aliveness. The waking isn’t automatic. I don’t open my eyes each morning to say, “Wow! Another day!” Rather, I wake into an ordinariness I treasure. (How aware I am of standing close […]

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Feast on Your Life

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, And say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger […]

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Pure Junk or the Great American Novel?

I find it interesting and a bit amusing, entirely understandable, too, that I seem to get the strongest responses from my readers out there when I use this blog to talk about my own failures, the places I trip up, the projects I struggle with, the manuscripts that, after all that struggle, still get turned […]

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Nobody asked you to write that novel

My favorite thing to remember about novel-writing is an observation I saw taped to a friend’s wall in her office in graduate school: “Nobody asked you to write that novel”. Therefore novel-writing is a choice–you can always stop, always keep going. You are free to do whatever you want. Most novelists come to writing novels […]

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The Privilege of Hope

Hope . . . is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in […]

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