Darwin's Daily Writing Ritual

A great excerpt about Charles Darwin's daily writing ritual from the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey:

"The first, and best, of his work periods began at 8:00 a.m., after Darwin had taken a short walk and had a solitary breakfast. Following ninety minutes of focused work in his study—disrupted only by occasional trips to the snuff jar that he kept on a table in the hallway—Darwin met his wife, Emma, in the drawing room to receive the day’s post. He read his letters, then lay on the sofa to hear Emma read the family letters aloud. When the letters were done, Emma would continue reading aloud, switching to whatever novel she and her husband were currently working their way through.

At 10:30 Darwin returned to his study and did more work until noon or a quarter after. He considered this the end of his workday, and would often remark in a satisfied voice, “I’ve done a good day’s work.”

Darwin made a point of replying to every letter he received, even Cthose from obvious fools or cranks. If he failed to reply to a single letter, it weighed on his conscience and could even keep him up at night. The letter writing took him until about 3:00 in the afternoon, after which he went upstairs to his bedroom to rest, lying on the sofa with a cigarette while Emma continued to read from the novel-in-progress.....At 5:30, a half-hour of idleness in the drawing room preceded another period of rest and novel reading, and another cigarette, upstairs. Then he joined the family for dinner, although he did not join them in eating the meal; instead, he would have tea with an egg or a small piece of meat....

After two games of backgammon, he would read a scientific book and, just before bed, lie on the sofa and listen to Emma play the piano. He left the drawing room at about 10:00 and was in bed within a half-hour, although he generally had trouble getting to sleep and would often lie awake for hours, his mind working at some problem that he had failed to solve during the day."

Reading Leads To...

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

- Henry David Thoureau

Rules To Remember

I pulled Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, off the shelf the other day.  It has been a few years since I've read it.  I didn't reread it this time, but something had reminded me of one of my favorites parts of his book, namely, his 13 rules of leadership. I decided to find them and reread them.  The ones I have been reminded of at work these past few years are #3 and #8.  I laughed thinking about how old the book is now.  It isn't ancient, no, not by any means.  But now that I think about it, some of the junior officers in the military were 6 or 7 years old when General Powell was still in uniform.  I first read his book in my early twenties; my parents had a copy sitting on the shelf that stayed put for many, many years.  I devoured the book.  And I would say hands down that General Powell's biography is the best military biography in the past 20 years.  For the uninitiated, below are his 13 rules of leadership to live by:

Rule 1: It Ain’t as Bad as You Think! It Will Look Better in the Morning

Rule 2: Get Mad Then Get Over It.

Rule 3: Avoid Having Your Ego so Close to your Position that When Your Position Falls, Your Ego Goes With It.

Rule 4: It Can be Done.

Rule 5: Be Careful Whom You Choose.

Rule 6: Don’t Let Adverse Facts Stand in the Way of a Good Decision.

Rule 7: You Can’t Make Someone Else’s Decisions. You Shouldn’t Let Someone Else Make Yours

Rule 8: Check Small Things.

Rule 9: Share Credit.

Rule 10: Remain calm. Be kind.

Rule 11: Have a Vision. Be Demanding.

Rule 12: Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.

Rule 13: Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Link of the Week

Brain Pickings is a great blog. Run by Maria Popova, who writes for the Wired UK and The Atlantic, it is an eclectic mix of stories and links about creativity, writing, and well, just a lot of great stuff. Here is an excerpt from the "about" page: 

'' Brain Pickings — which remains ad-free and supported by readers — is your cross-disciplinary LEGO treasure chest, full of pieces spanning art, design, science, technology, philosophy, history, politics, psychology, sociology, ecology, anthropology, and more; pieces that enrich your mental pool of resources and empower combinatorial ideas that are stronger, smarter, richer, deeper and more impactful.''

Start with this great post, titled, "Famous Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers."  You'll find it HERE.

Why Do You Write?

Being a father is hard work. And it means less reading. At my current rate of reading, with interruptions, I won't finish a book for a few months. So what do I do? I still read, but I'm picking up and flipping through essays, short stories, speeches, and letters. I also recently bought a book on anecdotes. If I can finish it within thirty-minutes then strap me in, hand it over, I'll read it. If not... I'll have to pass and put it on the "to read" list. So in that vein, I've recently pulled some books of essays off my shelf that I read years ago, but due to my current reading time restrictions, decided they deserved another go. One of these was the excellent Turkish writer and Noble Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, and his book of essays, Other Colours. 

The last essay in the book, titled, "My Father's Suitcase," is actually his Nobel acceptance speech that he gave back in 2006. There is a beautiful paragraph in the speech -- although the entire thing is excellent -- that is worth repeating over and over again:


"Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.''

So...why do you write?

Hemingway's Best Guide on Writing

I was reading Paul Johnson's Intellectuals this evening -- a NY Times Bestseller from 1988, described as "A fascinating portrait about the minds that have shaped the modern world.... intriguing series of case studies [on], Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson..." -- and I came across this interesting bit of information. "....Hemingway had had the advantage of an excellent training on the Kansas City Star. Its successive editors had compiled a house-style book of 110 rules designed to force reporters to use plain, simple, direct and cliche-free English, and these rules were strictly enforced. Hemingway later called them 'the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing.'"  I found the rules after a short search...here's an excerpt:

• Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.

• Never use old slang. Slang to be enjoyable must be fresh.

• Eliminate every superfluous word as "Funeral services will be at 2 o'clock Tuesday," not "Thefuneral services will be held at the hour of 2 o'clock on Tuesday." He said is better than he said in the course of conversation.

• Be careful of the word also. It usually modifies the word it follows closest. "He, also, went" means "He, too, went." "He went also" means he went in addition to taking some other action.

• Be careful of the word "only". "He only had $10," means he alone was the possessor of such wealth; "He had only $10," means the ten was all the cash he possessed.

• Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.

• Say "She was born in Ireland and came to Jackson County in 1874," not "but came to Jackson County." She didn't come here to make amends for being born in Ireland. This is common abuse of the conjunction.

• Don't say "He had his leg cut off in an accident." He wouldn't have had it done for anything.

• "He suffered a broken leg in a fall," not "he broke his leg in a fall." He didn't break the leg, the fall did. Say a leg, not his leg, because presumably the man has two legs.

• In writing of animals, use the neuter gender except when you are writing of a pet that has a name.

• A long quotation without introducing the speaker makes a poor lead especially and is bad at any time. Break into the quotation as soon as you can, thus: "I should prefer," the speaker said, "to let the reader know who I am as soon as possible."

• Try to preserve the atmosphere of the speech in your quotation. For instance, in quoting a child, do not let him say "Inadvertently, I picked up the stone and threw it."

• Such words as "tots," 'urchins," "mites of humanity" are not to be used in writing of children. In such cases, where "kid" conveys the proper shading and fits the story, it is permissible.

• He died of heart disease, not heart failure--everybody dies of "heart failure."

• Resolutions are adopted, not passed. Bills are passed and laws are enacted. The house or senate passed a bill; congress or the legislature enacted a law.

• Both simplicity and good taste suggest house rather than residence, and lives rather thanresides.

• A Woman of the Name of Mary Jones--Disrespect is attached to the individual in such cases. Avoid it. Never use it even in referring to street walkers.

Here's the original style sheet, although hard to read, from the KC Star.

Writing with WIne

An interesting fact about ink that I just read over at NPR's website:

                

Glass of Red Wine, courtesy of Wikipedia

"For centuries, writers relied on alcohol to keep the words flowing in a far less boozy form than the Burroughs and Hemingways of literary history: the wine ink pen.

Wine, it turns out, was a key ingredient in many recipes for iron gall ink — for all you non-ink nerds, that was the writing ink used by most of the Western world from the Middle Ages all the way up to the 19th century....The chemistry involved can get pretty wonky, but basically, the wine was believed to make the coloring agents in ink more stable. Wine was also considered a purer solvent than water. And iron gall inks were prized because they were so indelible."