Anyone Can Be Shamed, But Feeling Guilt

When You're Embarking On A Piece Of Writing, The Anxiety Is Just Too Much, Especially When You're Young And You're Trying To Figure Out If This Is Your Thing Or Not. You Feel Like, "if I Don't Write A Good Story, I Gotta Get Going To Law School!"

If You Start With The Idea That You Are Going To Be Writing About A Night In A Graveyard, And That There Are Only A Few Living People In That Frame, All Sorts Of Interesting And Difficult Technical Problems Arise. And Then Form - New Form, Or Experimental Form - Might Be Understood As Just Trying To Tell That Story Most Movingly And Efficiently.

Of Course There's Objective Truth, But When We're Looking At People's Accounts Of It, It Seems The Real Truth Lies In The Accretion Of All These Different Versions.

When I Write I Know That I'm Going To Have To Produce 40 Percent More Than I Need.

I Say Yes To The Hot Bath And The Sandwich - To Getting Ourselves Into The Best Possible Mental Shape To Identify And Then Fight The Necessary Fights From The Best Possible Mind-state: Calm, Loving, Affectionate, Precise. Not Pushovers But Also Not Zealots. With The Idea In Mind That "our Enemies" Are Not Our Enemies; They Might Seem Like That In Their Present Form But That Form Can Morph. We Really Are Large, And Really Do Contain Multitudes. But I Think It All Has To Start With A Kindly Presence Of Mind, And The Aspiration To Affection For Others.