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Henry Miller’s Writing COMMANDMENTS 

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Carl Jung on Living a Valued Life

I don’t just want to open the door and show the patient his illness, squatting there like a toad. I want to find a way to help the patient reinvent himself, to send him off on a journey, at the end of which is waiting the person he was always intended to be. ~ C.G. Jung

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across this memo written by David Ogilvie, the advertising legend. He tells his people how to write to get things done -

David Ogilvie on Writing

“The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.

6. Check your quotations.

7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning – and then edit it.

8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.

9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.

10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.”
David Ogilvie

I heard this quote of something Ernest Hemingway once said and it threw me a bit. Here it is..

“What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

I have unfortunately been listening to some of the political rhetoric lately and wondering if some of the people putting it out there actually feel good about what they are saying.

Sadly, I come to the conclusion that they do – and that scares me.

If a lot of these folks are moral, I don’t want anything to do with it.

I don’t put a lot of stock in the idea of morality in general. What occurs to me is that morality is simply living by other people’s rules, and often the wrong people.

And I come to the conclusion that Papa is hopelessly out of date.  If he were living today, I wonder if he would have started cleaning his rifle a lot earlier?

There is enough for everyone. People think that there isn’t enough, so they get as much as they can, so many people don’t get enough.

R Buckminster Fuller

photo credit: saschapohflepp

Walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking. ~ Antonio Machado by way of Big Think

I didn’t want to jump on the Steve Jobs bandwagon even though he may have been an amazing man. But I ran across this quote and thought it was important enough to share it with you.

“When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Steve Jobs

There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it’s been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.

Daniel Kahneman in Time Magazine

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
Remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, November 1, 1977, Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287