on writing - the rarer wisdoms

Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.
- Elizabeth Bowen

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it,
all, right away, every time.  Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the
book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.  The impulse to save
something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.  Something
more will arise for later, something better.  These things fill from behind, from
beneath, like well water.  Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have
learned is not only shameful, it is destructive.  Anything you do not give freely and
abundantly becomes lost to you.  You open your safe and find ashes.
- Annie Dillard

By Jen Corace

the well written - flannery o'connor

The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked
like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of
stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were
about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe
and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to
the sky.

- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood / The Violent Bear It Away / The Complete Stories