I’ve Lost My Share

Ideas aren’t magical;  the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.
—     Lynn Abbey
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On This Day In:
2021	You Decide
	A Dream And The Wind
2020	Making Me
2019	Inside Your Head
2018	Lingering Curiosity
2017	Just Kidding
2016	The Danger Of Walls
2015	Protection
2014	Let It Go
2013	Don’t Know And Not Telling
2012	A Challenge For Progress
2011	Dependent Difficulty

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First, To Understand

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind.  If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.  We do not write in order to be understood;  we write in order to understand.
—    Cecil Day-Lewis
[Found at one of the blogs I follow:  Just A Small Town Girl…
The specific post is at:  C.D. Lewis Quote – Just A Small Town Girl… (sauj4.com)
Please visit the original site if you have a few spare moments…    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2021	So How Should We Persuade The Dangerous?
	Can A Loser Ever Win?
2020	Maybe More Than A Very Few
2019	Missing Failure
2018	Praise God
2017	Necessary Gaps
2016	Nor My Dogs
2015	Say What?
	I’m A Dog, Too!
	Beginnings
2014	Astonishing Choices
2013	Three Hard Tasks
2012	The Only Remains
2011	Personal Capability
	What Price Failure?
	Both Of W’s Elections
	Tea (Baggers) Anyone?

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It Doesn’t Stop

The trouble is even if you write something good you still have to write something else.  You still have to write again.  And again after that.  The itch doesn’t stop.  The need does not subside.  It is not erased just because you gave a thing a chance.
—    Allison Marie Conway
[This has been “borrowed” from one of the blogs / sites I follow:  https://allisonmarieconway.com/  without advance permission.  I hope the author doesn’t mind.  This excerpt is a part of a longer post at the original site and is posted here because the words resonated with (for?) me.  They strike at the core of a writer’s “need” to write, but I imagine the need is the same for any artist in any genre.
The specific post is located at:  Eventually You Break – Allison Marie Conway
https://allisonmarieconway.com/2021/05/26/eventually-you-break/
Her writing is quite good, but does tend to “adult” themes.  Give her site a view if you have a spare moment.    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2019	#45: 14.81 Lies Per Day
2019	Less Miserable Now
	So Near And Yet So Far
2018	I Doubt #45 Is Listening?
2017	Life’s Oddity
2016	Just Asking…
2015	Two Thoughts On Thinking
2014	From The Top, Please…
2013	You Are The Stars
2012	Just One??
2011	Anything But

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Books And Blogs

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
―     Socrates
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On This Day In:
2019	#45 Is The Inverse
2018	A Message To The White House Press Corps
2017	Eeny Meeny Miny Moe
	Binge, Binge, Binge
2016	Feeling Warm Yet?
	Four Documentaries
2015	Just Like All The Others
2014	In My Own Vanity
2013	Filled With Words
2012	Lectio Auget Existentiae Meae
2011	Lied Lately?
2010	Born To Work At Faux News
	Lost Again (Uh, Make That Still)
	Qui Genus Humanum Ingenio Superavit
	They’re Back… (Part 1)

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Does Blogging Count?

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
—    Albert Camus
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On This Day In:
2019	None Absolutely Certain
	Destroying The Republic
2018	Maps For Those Difficult Times
2017	A True American Hero
	Or Desserts
2016	What #AmnestyDon Is Really Afraid Of
2015	What Are You Doing?
2014	The Ideal Man
2013	Daring Ripples
2012	Evermore
2011	Unpredictable Opportunity
2010	Giants Fall In Game 2 (1 to 6) – Leave PA With 1-1 Split !!

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I Hadn’t Thought Of That

I write to discover what I think.  After all, the bars aren’t open that early.
—   Daniel J. Boorstin
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On This Day In:
2019	Knocking On Impeachment’s Door
2018	Do You Remember?
2017	Choose Life
	My Response To President Trump’s Threat To NBC
2016	We, Us, All
2015	No Less
2014	Life Advice (50)
	Orange October (IV) – Giants Win Game 1 Of NLCS!
2013	Running To
2012	Suddenly
2011	Liberal Washington
2010	Giants Advance To NLCS!!

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Appropriated To Her Being

At first she thought the writing would be easy.  She was extremely confident in her ability to dream, to imagine, and she supposed that expressing her dreams in words, in writing, would be entirely natural, like drawing breath.  She had read widely from the time she was a child, and she knew how to recognize something that was well written.  She admired certain lines and passages so much that she had taken complete possession of them and committed them to memory.  She could recite “The Gettysburg Address” and “The Twenty-Third Psalm.”  She could recite “Jabberwocky” and Emily Dickinson’s “Further in summer that the birds” and Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning.”  She knew by heart the final paragraph of Joyce’s “The Dead,” and if challenged she could say in whole the parts of both Romeo and Juliet.  And she knew many Kiowa stories and many long prayers in Navajo.  These were not feats of memory in the ordinary sense;  it was simply that she attended to these things so closely that they became a part of her most personal experience.  She had assumed them, appropriated them to her being.
But to write!  She discovered that was something else again.
—    Navarre Scott Momaday
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On This Day In:
2019	All In Good Time
	Day 13: Pause & Resume
	Ghrelin And Leptin
2018	Gratitude And Warmth
	Remembering Loss, Sacrifice And Service
	Making Little Ones Out Of Bigger Ones
2017	Never Forget
2016	It’s All Greek To Me (Well, Latin Actually)
2015	Truism
2014	Thank You
2013	Really
2012	Ordinary Five Minutes Longer
2011	The Wealth Of Sons (And Daughters)

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Stand First

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
––     Henry David Thoreau
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On This Day In:
2019	Tough Values
2018	I’m Still Here
	Day 31: A Calendar Month
2017	Start Typing
2016	Just Saying (Nothing)
	Thought Of You
	Saldaga (“As I’ve Lived”)
2015	A Terrifying Cycle
2014	Rights
2013	Do Bold Things
2012	Seven Causes
2011	I Feel A Tingle Coming On

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Insensitive To Silence

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted.  Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely.  This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other.  The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated.  And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence.
—     Navarre Scott Momaday
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On This Day In:
2019	Judging Success
2018	Something Else
	Day 21: 10% Loss
2017	Courage
2016	Don’t H8! — I’m With Her!!
2015	$20 Anyone?
2014	And Yet I Still Study
2013	Use Your Own
2012	Strengthen Freedom
2011	Attrition = A Lack Of Imagination
2010	Mind The Fire, Love
	Just Beyond My Reach…
	Even A Life Of Quiet Desperation!
	Acts Of Courage

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And The Same Goes For Blogs / Posts

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
––    W. Somerset Maugham
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On This Day In:
2019	Not Enough
2018	One Thing We Do Know
2017	Preservation
2016	Going Back
2015	Just For Today
2014	Reaching For Destiny
2013	Still Just Passing Through
2012	Live Or Die
2011	On Secession
2010	A Rocky Weekend

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Insensitive To Silence

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language.  It encourages us to take words for granted.  Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely.  This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other.  The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated.  And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence.
—    N. Scott Momaday
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On This Day In:
2019	Don’t Be Small
2018	Persistence
2017	Are You A Loser?
2016	Constitution And Conscience
2015	Separate, Fearful And Imprisoned
2014	Something Worth Making
2013	Absolutely
2012	Can Do
2011	Wise Criticism

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Why Are So Many Of My Posts Simply Quotes?

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
—    Ralph Waldo Emerson
[Usually, because their authors are so much better writers than I am.  But I do keep trying…  No matter how problematic it is for you to read my original thoughts.  LoL   —  KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2019	Two Books
2018	Prime Example = #45
2017	Building On
2016	Dueling Heroes
2015	Remarkable Creations
2014	Measured Faith
2013	April Fool, n.
2012	Faith, Ego And Patriotism
	As It Happens
2011	What Counts

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Write For Yourself

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
––     Cyril Connolly
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On This Day In:
2019	I’m Actively Irresponsible
2018	I Will Love You… Forever
2017	Pebbles In Your Shoe?
2016	Resolute Will
2015	Absorbed And Civilized
2014	Relax And Lead
2013	Location, Location, Location
2012	Are You Really Good?
2011	Relatively Objective, Anyway

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I Think I’ve Just Been Argoted

Every human pastime — music, cooking, sports, art, theoretical physics — develops an argot to spare its enthusiasts from having to say or type a long-winded description every time they refer to a familiar concept in each other’s company.  The problem is that as we become proficient at our job or hobby we come to use these catchwords so often that they flow out of our fingers automatically, and we forget that our readers may not be members of the clubhouse in which we learned them.
—    Steven Pinker
[Apologies to all you linguists out there.  I believe I just turned a noun into a verb.    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2018	Good-Bye AG Jeff Sessions
2017	On Our Wall (Part 2)
2016	I Beg The Question
2015	By Their Fruit
2014	Proven Worth
2013	From Missouri
2012	Recipe To Write: Start With One Aching Urge
2011	Ip And Rib
	Real Things
2010	Final Competition

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In All Its Messy Complexity

Writers tend to fare badly under autocrats.  Dictators understand very well that the strength of thought and analysis that literature embodies is a threat to the mind control that is an essential feature of tyranny.  In countries like China, Russia, Turkey, Myanmar and Bangladesh, writers are routinely jailed or killed for creating work their governments find threatening.  For American writers, the reality of such scrutiny and peril can be hard to fathom.  We need to write now, write well — tell the truth in all its messy complexity.  It’s our best shot at helping to preserve a democracy in which facts still exist and all of us can speak freely.
—    Jennifer Egan
From her opinion piece / editorial:  “Facts Still Exist“
Appearing in:  Time Magazine
dtd:  24 Dec / 31 Dec, 2018  (Person of the Year, double issue)
It also appears online at:  http://time.com/5475490/writers-truth-democracy-jennifer-egan/
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On This Day In:
2018	Danger = Opportunity
2017	True And Great
	Sand At The Beach
2016	There Is A Difference Between Dangerous And Frightening
2015	Always A Goal
2014	Standing Strong
2013	Shaken And Stirred
	The Bird With The Broken Wing
2012	Friends In High Places
2011	Objective Independence

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