Here’s what’s influenced my world this week:
1. Write or die: “putting the prod in productivity.” There’s an app for everything, and in a recent issue of the L.A. Times, there’s a review of the “write or die” app that is being more frequently used these days – in an effort to keep the effort of writing. Writers have an…um, opportunity, to put the app in “kamikaze” mode and write at a certain speed or risk the words they have already committed to the screen…For the full review, check out: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/06/not-writing-theres-an-app-for-that-write-or-die-app.html
2. War of Art author Steven Pressfield has a new book out, Turning Pro. Building on his previous book about overcoming resistance and producing cohesive writing consistently, this new book discusses the sacrifices that writers need to make to become “professionals.” Below is an excerpt:
TURNING PRO IS FREE, BUT IT DEMANDS SACRIFICE.
The passage from amateur to professional is often achieved via an interior odyssey whose trials are survived only at great cost, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. We pass through a membrane when we turn pro. It’s messy and it’s scary. We tread in blood when we turn pro.
WHAT WE GET WHEN WE TURN PRO.
What we get when we turn pro is we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and live out.
3. Yesterday, I received a small gift. But its impact is far-reaching and will stay with me for a long time. A friend sent me a photo of something the late, great Andy Warhol scribbled on a piece of paper. I have been struggling to write lately, and struggling to keep up with my 365-art-challenge even as I see the end of the “tunnel” so to speak, and am about to complete my first year — and plunge in to year two, “the sequel.” I will share the Warhol quote and hope that it inspires you as much as it did me.
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – A.W.
Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Illinois, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan, is working on a couple of novels and has 9 days to go before she finishes the first year of her art-a-day challenge.