Writer’s New Year Resolutions

1. Create more, worry less. (h/t Diane Shoemperlen)

2. The market isn’t Stalin. Have fun writing.

3. The market is Stalin. Be subversive.

[A]n invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating…

From Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, quoted on page 73 of The Road: Stories, Journalism and Essays by Vasily Grossman, edited by Robert Chandler.

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Vasily Grossman at the Eastern Front, 1945

Grossman was a Soviet writer I admire. We have freedom that he did not and yet he wrote truthfully and greatly. Let’s use our freedom well.

Filed under: Literary, Personal Tagged: 2013 for writers