Curtiss Ann Matlock's Blog, page 27

Gleanings, and what you put in, you get out.

I decided that I need to read something funny, and the latest book I bought is by an author who is not at all funny–she’s good, but not one bit of funny.

Yes, there is the element of cocaine in the book, from 1938.

So it came to me that I had not readMiss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson, in some time. I do love the British voice, and especially the British voice from the middle of the past century. I’ve already done a post on the novel and author Watson; you can read it here.

From...

Gleanings, with commentary

I set myself to read more this week, and have. When the student is ready, the teacher appears, so they say. Perhaps setting myself to read drew to me the perfect book– Jacqueline Winspear’s novel, Elegy for Eddie. It is her Maisie Dobbs series, and I’ve read them all. How I missed this one, I can’t say, but everything does come at the right time, and this was the right time for me. I had my nose in the book–printed paper, ah, the smell and feel!– for happy hours.

“The old had been destroyed an...

Scant Gleanings and Appreciation for Miss Read

I realized this morning that I had not noted anything of particular interest from my past week’s reading. I think it may be because my reading was scant. That awareness right there is cause for changes for this week. I started out this morning with some reading time and came up with this:

“The writer has the sense that she knows where she’s going when she starts out–that is, she has some intuitive sense of a destination and maybe even an intuitive sense of what the journey will look like. But...

Gleanings from the past week

As a new week starts, I go over a few things that struck me in my reading in the past week. These help to carry me forward ~

“Always be reading; always be writing down new ideas. Ten ideas a day.” ~ James Altucher, The Power of No.

This practice helps me to be in the moment, which is always the point of power and thus creativity. It is an exercise for the creative muscle. It is the act of writing them down, purposefully, that helps me to see these ideas that I wasn’t at all aware of existing in...

Gleanings from the Week Past

“Because a song, a book, a play, a picture or anything created was gay it did not necessarily follow that it was trivial. It might well be, mused Mrs. Baily, gazing into the moving sunshine with unseeing eyes, a finer thing, because it had been fashioned with greater care and artifice; emotion remembered and translated to give pleasure, rather than emotion remembered and evincing only an involuntary and quite hideous howl.” ~ Miss Read, Thrush Green

I’m reading all the Miss Read books. I need...

Gleanings from What I’ve Been Reading

“Learning by doing is especially important. There is more to be learned from writing a bad novel than from attending twenty good novel-writing workshops…And to do that writing, a writer needs inner permission to write.” ~ Eric Maisel, Living the Writer’s Life.

Giving myself permission to be the writer has been my life’s challenge. The world and family pull me in many directions. To be a writer requires dedication, commitment to the craft, even to the exclusion of loved ones at times.

“She walke...

Managing My Delightful Introverted Self

Check out ‘5 Things Everyone Should Know About Introverts’ at Psychology Today

Did you ever think that your self needs managing? I never thought of it quite like that, until Icame across an in-depth article: ARE YOU AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT? WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOUR CAREER, by Belle Beth Cooper.Ms. Cooper gives good tips on how to manage your inner introvert or extrovert.

I’ve long known I was an introvert. I love being alone, and I have never in my life been bored being alone. I am often bor...

A Few Encouraging Quotes from things I’ve read this week:

On Writing:

“What distinguishes writers from non writers and would-be writers is that writers write.” ~Eric Maisel, Living the Writer’s Life

Notice it is write, not publish. While I can fine writing terribly hard work, the hardest thing for me is being a writer.

On finding peace:

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” ~Eckhart Tolle

On life on earth:

“You are entitled to say NO to whatever gets in the way of your creati...

Classic View and Other Changes

You should have seen my face, when I logged on to write a new post. The screen was not one I recognized. I went through surprise, dismay, distrust, annoyance, high irritation, and finally great relief of the hallelujah type when I saw up in the corner the message: “Missing the old editor? No worries, just switch to classic mode.” Oh, dear hearts who understand!

I clicked on the classic view. Classic. I like that term. That suits me. Don’t you wish we could all have such a button to return to t...

Self-Encouragement

I thought you might want to read Steven Pressfield’s latest post, The Sphere of Self-Reinforcement, where he asks and answers the question, How we keep believing?

Believing is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other. Pressfield calls it self-reinforcement–which is the way we keep on keeping on. There is no other way. My term is self-encouragement. When you don’t have other people encouraging you, you just have to encourage yourself.

This morning when driving grandson to school, I w...