THE ARTIST'S LOUNGE: September 2020

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

WORDS OF WISDOM

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

~John Steinbeck, Author (1902-1968)

Sunday, September 06, 2020

Have you ever wished you lived in a particular era or time period? Whenever I read a book or story I imagine myself being with the characters. I'm a big fan of the beat generation, a literary movement in the 1950s and 1960s. If I had been born a decade earlier I would have witnessed some of the genius and antics of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Johnson, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Anne Waldman, and others. One constant theme is that all of these people were voracious readers.

Reading and writing go hand in hand. Just from reading other's work, I come up with ideas for my own stories. When reading I also get a history lesson as well as a biography of the author. I seem to be drawn to complex characters. I usually end up reading their biography as well as his/her works.

Other eras I'm drawn to are ancient Greece, the western days in the nineteenth century, and the history of New York City. I have to keep reading if I'm to write something that can be thought of as authentic but is only in the canyons of my mind.