Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook by Maria Popova “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.” As a lover — and keeper — of diaries and notebooks, I find myself returning again and again to the question of what compels us — what propels us — to record our impressions of the present moment in all their fragile subjectivity. From Joan Didion’s 1968 anthology Slouching Towards Bethlehem (public library) — the same volume that gave us her timeless meditation on self-respect — comes a wonderful essay titled “On Keeping a Notebook,” in which Didion considers precisely that. Though the essay was originally written nearly half a century ago, the insights at its heart apply to much of our modern record-keeping, from blogging to Twitter to Instagram. Portrait of Joan Didion by Mary Lloyd Estrin, 1977 After citing a seemingly arbitrary vignette she had found scribbled in an old notebook, Didion asks: Why did I write it down? What, then, does matter?
Respect Yourself and Take Back Control of Your Calendar Your time is your life. So when you surrender control of your calendar to other people, you put them in control of your destiny. Our digital world has broken down the natural boundaries on how and when people can tell you what they think you should be doing. And with shared calendars, others can literally spend your time for you—if you let them. This means, it’s essential that you maintain a vigilant and active role in protecting and allocating your time in alignment with your priorities. This may seem improbable if you’ve lived at the mercy of other people’s whims for years. 1. The best way to have more time to work on projects that matter to you, like updating your portfolio or finishing a series, is to spend less time doing everything else. If you really don’t want to do something at all, it’s unlikely your desire to do it will increase by delaying the activity. This will require saying, ‘no,’ early and often. 2. 3. 4. You can “take one for the team” every once in a while. Over to You…
Creation: Ancient Indian Origin Myths, Brought to Life in a Breathtaking Illustrated Cosmogony by Maria Popova Consummate visual storytelling about life, death, the rhythms of time, and the beginning of art. “We don’t need to credit an all-seeing God with the creation of life and matter,” Douglas Rushkoff wrote in contemplating consciousness, “to suspect that something wonderfully strange is going on in the dimension we call reality.” And we don’t have to believe in such a god to appreciate the beautiful and imaginative ways in which the origin myths of the world’s various spiritual traditions capture this wonderful strangeness — from our earliest depictions of the universe to the marvelous mythic creatures that populate our legends. In advising parents on what to tell kids about Santa Claus, Margaret Mead made the crucial distinction between “fact” and “poetic truth,” and this is precisely what origin myths offer — an invitation to celebrate these ancient masterworks of storytelling, even if we recognize that they aren’t rooted in scientific fact. Air The Unborn Fish Time
Quirky Animations by Polyester Studio “What makes you happy?” is a series of cute animations created by Polyester, a studio based in Toronto, Canada. “Inspired by the many books, shows, and exhibitions on the subject of happiness we decided to animate what makes us happy to hopefully make you a little happy.” More animated GIFs via Behance Daily Rituals: A Guided Tour of Writers’ and Artists’ Creative Habits by Maria Popova Hemingway wrote standing, Nabokov on index cards, Twain while puffing cigars, and Sitwell in an open coffin. “We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone,” the William James’s famous words on habit echo. “Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.” Given this omnibus of the daily routines of famous writers was not only one of my favorite articles to research but also the most-read and -shared one in the entire history of Brain Pickings, imagine my delight at the release of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (public library) by Mason Currey, based on his blog of the same title. The notion that if only we could replicate the routines of great minds, we’d be able to reverse-engineer their genius is, of course, an absurd one — yet an alluring one nonetheless. Mark Twain — master of epistolary snark, unsuspected poet, cheeky adviser of little girls — followed a simple but rigorous routine: Photograph courtesy BBC
How to Master Your Creative Routine and the Pace of Productivity by Maria Popova “When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly.” We seem to have a strange but all too human cultural fixation on the daily routines and daily rituals of famous creators, from Vonnegut to Burroughs to Darwin — as if a glimpse of their day-to-day would somehow magically infuse ours with equal potency, or replicating it would allow us to replicate their genius in turn. And though much of this is mere cultural voyeurism, there is something to be said for the value of a well-engineered daily routine to anchor the creative process. Reflecting Thomas Edison’s oft-cited proclamation that “genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration,” after which 99U is named, the crucial importance of consistent application is a running theme. It’s time to stop blaming our surroundings and start taking responsibility. Step by step, you make your way forward. With a sentiment reminiscent of William James’s timeless words on habit, she concludes: Donating = Loving
The Daily Routines of Famous Writers By Maria Popova UPDATE: These daily routines have now been adapted into a labor-of-love visualization of writers’ sleep habits vs. literary productivity. Kurt Vonnegut’s recently published daily routine made we wonder how other beloved writers organized their days. So I pored through various old diaries and interviews — many from the fantastic Paris Review archives — and culled a handful of writing routines from some of my favorite authors. Ray Bradbury, a lifelong proponent of working with joy and an avid champion of public libraries, playfully defies the question of routines in this 2010 interview: My passions drive me to the typewriter every day of my life, and they have driven me there since I was twelve. Joan Didion creates for herself a kind of incubation period for ideas, articulated in this 1968 interview: I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. E. I never listen to music when I’m working. Photograph by Tom Palumbo, 1956
Granny Character - Body Designs i have thought about the characters some more and have come to a conclusion that for the story that i'm going for - a child (or young) character would be quite 'safe' or obvious choice. so i have been brain storming more ideas and have come up with some older characters (mainly female) which i think would be funnier and more intriguing for the story. After i have done some character designing for granny i particularly liked the two that have been selected on the page below. to these two heads i have been designing some bodies that would suit the head. Here are some examples of what I've done. the reason why i have chosen two designs and not one is because i like them both and they are both a complete opposite of one another. one is quite innocent and happy and quirky(left) and the other is very serious and agitated/angry. I have started thinking about colour and style. below you will see some of the colour and style tests that i have done using the character designs from the image above.
The Odd Habits and Curious Customs of Famous Writers by Maria Popova Color-coded muses, rotten apples, self-imposed house arrest, and other creative techniques at the intersection of the superstitious and the pragmatic. Famous authors are notorious for their daily routines — sometimes outrageous, usually obsessive, invariably peculiar. In Odd Type Writers: From Joyce and Dickens to Wharton and Welty, the Obsessive Habits and Quirky Techniques of Great Authors (public library) — the more dimensional and thoroughly researched counterpart to Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals — Brooklyn-based writer Celia Blue Johnson takes us on a guided tour of great writers’ unusual techniques, prompts, and customs of committing thought to paper, from their ambitious daily word quotas to their superstitions to their inventive procrastination and multitasking methods. One must always keep in mind that these writers and the people around them may have, at some point, embellished the facts. Jack Kerouac's hand-drawn cross-country road trip map from 'On the Road'
The History of Philosophy, in Superhero Comics by Maria Popova Roof-jumping with Kierkegaard, archaeological adventures with Foucault, wayfinding in the woods with William James, and more. There is something inescapably alluring about distilling the most complex ideas of philosophy into seemingly simple graphic form, from the Action Philosophers comic series to Open University’s animated thought experiments to those minimalist geometric graphics for major movements in philosophy. Now comes Supergatari History of World Philosophy — an entertaining and illuminating comic by Michael Gertelman, starring the superhero Supergatari, who breaks the space-time continuum to visit and converse with humanity’s most influential philosophers. Complement the delightful Supergatari History of World Philosophy with these animated thought experiments and what philosophy is according to some of today’s most prominent philosophers. Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. Share on Tumblr
Famous Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary by Maria Popova Reflections on the value of recording our inner lives from Woolf, Thoreau, Sontag, Emerson, Nin, Plath, and more. “You want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you,” Madeleine L’Engle counseled in her advice to aspiring writers. W.H. Auden once described his journal as “a discipline for [his] laziness and lack of observation.” Journaling, I believe, is a practice that teaches us better than any other the elusive art of solitude — how to be present with our own selves, bear witness to our experience, and fully inhabit our inner lives. It was also her way of learning to translate the inner into the outer, the subjective into the universal: This personal relationship to all things, which is condemned as subjective, limiting, I found to be the core of individuality, personality, and originality. The habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Donating = Loving
1 Local Seller 12 MARCH New Arrivals UK/Europe Style Premium Dress B... : Women’s Clothing Dear Sellers,We are a fellow seller on Qoo10 and would like to propose a new way of seller cooperation. Our intention is to set up a network which will help all of us attain better sales, better delivery and reach out to wider customer base in Singapore. In order to do so however, we require your participation and expect your valuable suggestion. As many of you will know, Singapore’s online shopping has burgeoned in the last few years, with many big and small time sellers jumping onto the bandwagon. Given the relatively small Singapore market and the fierce competition, it is inevitable that the days of high profit margins are over. Under such a backdrop, medium and small businesses like ourselves will find it difficult to survive if we continue to operate singly. 1. To set up an efficient and cost viable self-collection courier network, we are targeting interested sellers to become collection satellite points. If our analysis and proposals interest you, do contact us. 1. 谢谢并祝生意兴隆！
10 of the Greatest Essays on Writing Ever Written If there’s one topic that writers can be counted on to tackle at least once in their working lives, it’s writing itself. A good thing too, especially for all those aspiring writers out there looking for a little bit of guidance. For some winter inspiration and honing of your craft, here you’ll find ten great essays on writing, from the classic to the contemporary, from the specific to the all-encompassing. Note: there are many, many, many great essays on writing. Bias has been extended here to personal favorites and those available to read online. Also of note but not included: full books on the subject like Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Stephen King’s On Writing, and Ron Carlson’s Ron Carlson Writes a Story, or, in a somewhat different sense, David Shields’ Reality Hunger, for those looking for a longer commitment. “Not-Knowing,” Donald Barthelme, from Not Knowing: the Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme. “The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made.
How to Read Faster: Bill Cosby’s Three Proven Strategies by Maria Popova “Nobody gets something for nothing in the reading game.” “All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading,” H. Bill Cosby may be best-known as the beloved personality behind his eponymous TV show, but he earned his doctorate in education and has been involved in several projects teaching the essential techniques of effective reading, including a PBS series on reading skills. 1. Skimming can give you a very good idea of this story in about half the words, and in less than half the time it’d take to read every word.So far, you’ve seen that previewing and skimming can give you a general idea about content — fast. Learning to read clusters is not something your eyes do naturally. How to Use the Power of the Printed Word is a treasure trove of illuminating essays — highly recommended. Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount: