Welcome to the weekend,
“The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention.”
– Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, “On the Art of Writing”: Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914.
I appreciate what this quote says about the more references you have, and the more understanding of past literary greatness you possess, the more extensive your ability to innovate with those influences will be. I also like the agency of Quiller-Couch’s comment. This is a quality we don’t often hear about in writing – purposeful innovation. We do often hear about training your sense of taste and choosing worthy influences, with the assumption they will bleed into your own writing and voice. There is a subliminal effect, sure, but gathering more influences means you will have more potential paths open for you to actively choose among.
As always, here is the best from around the Internet:
As a lover of Old Books, I am obligated to remind you that the folks over at Project Gutenberg continue to do the amazing work of converting the world’s literature into e-book formats – entirely free to download. This is where I get many of my copies of works published before 1900, downloaded onto the computer or my tablet, and you can, too.
Take the Old Corpse Road. These are roads winding across various parts of Europe – with a large number in England – connecting the local church with the parish’s burial site. They were often plotted in straight lines, finding the most direct path between these locations. While many are thought to have been developed in the Middle Ages, some in Northern Europe date all the way back to the Bronze Age.
Books as Toys. Is irreverence the key ingredient in making something new out of something else?
“If you don’t understand what is happening on a good day, you surely won’t understand what is happening on a bad day.”
That’s from Formula One leader Toto Wolff on how attention to detail, both for himself throughout his organization, clarifies the path to winning.
I tend to agree with Hoel’s concept of “high tech pastoral” as a great solution for most office workers. After all, it is basically how I’ve arranged my living/ working life; living in the countryside and working via the Internet, which I consider the best of both worlds. We have the technology to make balancing full-time work and raising a family much less of a headache and make our days and lives smoother – we should being using it to that end.
Currently reading: I Came As a Shadow: An Autobiography by John Thompson
Have a lovely weekend.
Image: Arranging Daffodils, Thomsen, Carl. 1894. Danish.
