you don't need more time

"You don't need more time... you just need to decide"
Seth Godin

This quote rescued me the other day.

For the past 6 months, I've been working on a longer book (well longer for me--around 15,000 words). I was nearing the end of the (frightful) first draft and experiencing Writer Whiplash--where one minute your manuscript is great only to discover the next that it's been nothing but appalling drivel all along.

As I was going over the text and deciding what was good and what wasn't, what stays/what goes, the anxiety was building and I was dithering and beginning to unravel everything.

Like unknitting your knitting (not that I knit but you get the picture). 

I felt I wouldn't ever finish. That I needed more time. That if only I had more time...

When this quote landed in my inbox.

"You don't need more time... you just need to decide."

It stopped the unraveling and the self-doubt in their tracks. It unstuck me from my perfectionism bog. And freed me to... (as Nike says)... just do it.

So. What is it you need to decide?

large trim JSB!

it's here!

twice the size twice as good!

(with a reader's ribbon and made specially for reading in a group setting)

when i saw it i felt like--why wasn't it always like this--it is so GORGEOUS!

more here (for US)

more here (for UK)

Posted via email from jsb

as a farewell to snow (I love you but it's time, no?)

a sweet parting...
a glorious snowy stormy scene...

painting: "Snow Storm--Steam Boat Off a Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water" (1842) Turner

cables running riot ((publish on: 03/14/11))

"You can precipitate my problems with cables by simply calling me. There is a 50 percent chance that you will be greeted by the sound of my desk set banging against a radiator, because the spiral cord of my phone keeps tangling and assembling itself into a compact ball. Why? Am I unconsciously rotating or dancing while talking on the phone?"

Christoph Nieman, Abstract City (NYT)

more here

See the full gallery on posterous

books and books and lots of lovely books

See the full gallery on posterous

via
bookshelfporn.com
via Jago

site of just books and books and even more books

beautiful

 

discovering new worlds: naturalists + children's writers

Did you know Edward Lear not only drew imaginary beasts but also real live ones? (Not so far apart as you might imagine.) He wrote wonderfully silly nonsense verse but was also a wonderfully serious naturalist.

The NYT has an interesting article in their opinionator blog about the connection between writers and naturalists: they are both discovering or describing new worlds. Both are explorers. One of imaginary worlds; one of real.

I've long been a fan of Lear's nonsense verse. The article in the NYT said it wasn't very "edifying." I've never much cared for that word. It's a smug and judgmental word. And it's  never good when it's approaching you in a sentence.

I have a different take.

Edward Lear's work is pure genius and as a 7 year old (when I was first given THE COMPLETE NONSENSE) it opened a whole new world to me. And changed mine.

Just the title THE COMPLETE NONSENSE for a start. Plus he wrote AND illustrated it himself--with pen and ink drawings that were not neat but all scratchy and messy with ink blots and looked like something you yourself could try (and I did). And the funny verse--with the limericks you felt you could have a go at too (and I did). It was exuberant, joyful, free.

I'd never come across a book like it. I didn't know it was allowed. To have that much fun--to be that silly--inside a book. I still don't always. And have to remind myself every day that it is.

Both as naturalist and children's writer/illustrator, Lear was dealing in the wild--but it is in his children's books, with his wild and free imagination, that he reached me as a child.

So I am grateful for Edward Lear. And his imagination. It freed mine.

If that isn't "edifying", then I am quite certain I want nothing to do with whatever is.

Children are made readers...

... long live picture books!

How do you spell love?

"How do you spell love Piglet?" asked Pooh.

"I don't have to spell it," said Pooh. "I just feel it." 

a a milne