Melissa Wiley
@melissawiley
Author of The Nerviest Girl in the World & other books for kids
Cohost of the Brave Writer Podcast with Julie Bogart
Melissa Wiley
You are agreeing to bleed for your art on days when your ideas torture you. Do not nod and agree to risk your equanimity and to live tumultuously unless you mean it. Maybe you didn’t quite understand what was being asked of you when, previously, you casually agreed that you were willing to take some risks for the sake of your writing. I hope that t
... See moreEric Maisel • A Writer's Space
through curiosity can reveal people to themselves. But formal education largely remains a vocational enterprise in which, Sir Ken argues, we are being steered away from the things we love “on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that.” Love has been rationalized out of the system of education, but it is central to the deeply personal an
... See moreSeth Goldenberg • Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures
The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play . It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on idea... See more
Celine Nguyen • research as leisure activity
In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is no possibility, in me at least, of saying, “I’ll do it if I feel like it.” One never feels like awaking day after day. In
... See moreJohn Steinbeck • Working Days
Begin to look forward to your coming brainstorm. Begin to smile at the thought of it. Began to organize a bit in anticipation of clearing the decks. Begin to wean yourself from this or that distracting activity. Get ready. Soon you will begin a fine month of productive obsessing. I hope you are eager!
Eric Maisel • Brainstorm
IF WE BETTER UNDERSTOOD MEMORY AND IMAGINATION we might discover that memory is in part the way that persistent productive obsessions recombine instantly and that imagination is our repertoire of persistent productive obsessions dynamically recombining.
Eric Maisel • Brainstorm
he realized that he’d put the cart before the horse: the legal contract work was piling up, making him miserable, and it made no sense to try to turn his brain over to a beautiful pie-in-the-sky project when this pressing work required his immediate attention. So he lowered the bar to eye level. What was going on? Why had the contract work become s
... See moreEric Maisel • Brainstorm
P.S. Some of My Favorite Notebooks on Substack
jillianhess.substack.com
See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write — on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage... See more
Joan Didion • On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion
He can look out the window or stand on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks. Write or nothing. . . . I find it works. Two very simple rules, a: you don’t have to write. b: you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.