Thursday, December 10, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM

Sunset at the dam, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 10, 2009

This was a nice quiet day, much of it spent working at straightening out the mess over at Clippings and Collectanea. I made some headway but there sure is a lot to do to get those pages in order. What a mess!

Night camp

Site 42 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM

Verizon cell phone service - Access is via Extended Network, roaming
No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies with many drop-outs.
See a list of the nights I've camped at Brantley Lake State Park
Locate Brantley Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
Go to Brantley Lake State Park website
Locate services on my Resources map
Check the weather here

Writing From the Inside Out

A young writer, if he is unknown, can be at a party and watch what everyone is doing. If he has a marveluos ear for dialog, he can wake up the next morning and remember all that was said and how it was said. He is a bird on a branch. Sees like a bird and writes books that are extraordinarily well observed. But once he is successful, especially if that happens quickly, it's as if the bird were now an emu. It cannot fly. It grows haunches and foreshoulders and a mane: lo and behold, it is a lion. And everyone is looking at the lion, including the birds. But it is a lion with the heart of a bird and the mind of a bird. So there is a terrible period when the transmogrified emu is trying to live like a lion and has little talent for it. Then the beast begins to experiment. When it runs, it now sees other animals scamper. It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others, and even longer to begin to understand human beings again. In the old days, he could write about friends, enemies, and strangers by intuition, by induction; now he puts it together by deduction. Of course, he does have more material on which to work his deductions.

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