Sunday, June 10, 2018

Authors Need Words Of Wisdom




Authors, like everyone else, need words of inspiration, especially since they may normally be the ones to provide such words to others.

Where shall those motivational words come from?

·         Experience.
·         Loved ones.
·         Friends.
·         Therapist.
·         Teachers.
·         Fellow writer.

Or maybe a book of quotations.  Try You Had Better Make Some Noise: Words to Change the World (Phaidon), a wonderful collection of a few dozen quotes that get your attention.  Here are some that made me think:

“Sorry for the inconvenience.  We are trying to change the world.” 
-Anonymous

“To acquiesce in despair is the very way to make despairing forecasts come true.”
--Bertrand Russell

“Democracy needs daily maintenance.”
--Shirin Ebadi

“Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top.  Then you will see how low it was.”
--Dag Hammrskjold

“Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.”
--George Orwell

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.”
--John F. Kennedy

“Err in the direction of kindness.”
--George Saunders

“Critical thinking without hope is cynicism.  Hope without critical thinking is naivette.”
--Maria Popova

“An unjust law is no law at all.”
--St. Augustine

“The words we use are the worlds we live in.”
--Richard Ford

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty..”
--Edward R. Murrow

Writers need a constant feeding of inspiration and hope.  They expose themselves to their deepest emotions, to critically examine their life’s actions, to explore what’s possible after examining a bloody history, to peer through the darkest shortcomings of the human condition, and to return with not only a good attitude but a visionary soul that can lead others through their words, imaginations, and deepest desires.  

Writers are a passionate temperamental, often fragile group – filled with questions, ideas, curiosities, solutions, moral standards, and a touch of unacted-upon lust, violence, anger, fear, conviction, and a thirst for revenge.  The writer, in the end, seeks to use his or her mind and pen to cure the ills of the world and to empower others to reimagine the world in some better form.  Such people need all of the support and inspiration society and its arts can provide.

Some writers are comforted by the words of great writers, celebrities, or history’s well-accomplished.  Some just like wise advice no matter who said it.

Quotes save us time of having to really read a lot of books and give deep thought to history, psychology, sociology, politics, religion, wealth, family, health, and all of the significant institutions of study.  Quotes, in a matter of a few words or sentences, manage to perfectly capture the scholarship of many.

Quotes sound like pure truth to us.  Even though many quotes can be misinterpreted or simply can mean multiple things depending on the reader, quotes usually come across as a proven, complete and fulfilling ideal – as if we should start the world over and build on a world filled by all of these quotes.

We discount the reasons why we can’t seem to live the way the quote demands we do.  We forget or don’t understand or remain unaware of the facts and people and events that have and may very well preclude us from fulfilling the quote’s call to action.  After all, there’s a reason why humanity is screwed up – change can’t happen overnight that undoes and corrects a lifetime or a millennia of shortfalls.

Still, we need words to encourage us to try harder, work longer, draw strength, seek fulfillment, dream a little more creatively, take risks, love more, and to resist our negative urges.  We need a sermon – in the form of quotes – to elevate our game and scrub clean our faulty pasts.

Quotes give us a fresh start, as if it’s Day One of a new outlook on life.  These quotes can save us, at least momentarily, allowing us pause to arm ourselves with something good, positive, and supportive. We get to reset our GPS and direct ourselves to a new destination, even if we don’t know exactly where it will lead us.

We’re never too young – or too old – to read a quote and then alter our thinking and subsequently our actions.  Sometimes we need many quotes to get us going, and there’s no harm in revisiting the very same quotes as either a reminder of support or as a way to rethink how we’ve been approaching life.

The irony about quotes is they seem to speak an undeniable truth to us, and yet in many cases the quote represents an unattainable ideal, and as the reader realizes this he or she may decide to stop trying, to no longer believe in the driving force that’s needed to achieve. Instead of looking to see the world in a new way and guiding it towards the ideal, the reader sees the world as it is, harshly judges it and allows himself to go even lower and using the excuse for his shortcomings that the world is not – and never will be – the ideal that’s fantasized about in the quote.  Suddenly the wish to believe in more becomes the condemnation of all that keeps us from the ideal.

We become driven not by hope to change, but hatred of what keeps us down.  We just fall into depression or anger, neither of which will serve us to make meaningful, positive change.

But we have no choice.

The world needs improvement.  It always has and always will.  We must seek to fulfill a hard task – to live life as it is and enjoy it to the extent we don’t deny others a similar chance. – but to also acknowledge its shortcomings and to find a way to create and be a part of a solution.  We must not give up hope nor blindly wish for a better world without real tools to enact it.

Maybe the best quotes are the ones that spotlight a problem, propose a solution, and lend hope and support to those who try to live, enjoy, change and support the world that we all inhabit.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

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