Isle of Skye

...these entries I made three years ago. I think it’s vital for me to post them up here, at this time, on this day. 19 Aug 2007 Ma vie est merde. The weather has been cloudy since I came back. My father is as selfish and cocky as ever. My health is as poor as ever. My SAD has already begun. I MUST get a light box. I don’t trust my father – j’suis devenue vulnerable à cause d’etre isolée ici – sans ma mère . J’pense pas que j’ai la fortitude. J’sais pas. Je veux être mariée, mais la question est: comment, quand et avec qui? C’est vrai que j’ai l’espoir de trouver qqn, mais c’est autant vrai ce que dit ma mère: il n’y aura bcp d’offres. Le marriage à Birmingham est peut-être une ocassion ou je peux profiter, mais le coeur deprimée ne veut pas y aller non plus et pas avec le père. Les aspirations de travailler avec Oxfam et Amnesty sont devenues nulles. Je suis deprimée – je veux rien faire. Pourqui c’est inventi – la depression – les gens perdent une moitée de la vie, de la jo...

"Counsel from a Veteran of the Writing Wars" Irving Wallace Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul I once overheard a professor say to a beginning writer: "Everything has been written about already, and written better than you can do it. If you intend to write about love, tragedy, adventure... forget it, because it has all been done by Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Flaubert, and the rest. Unless you have something absolutely new to say, don't try to be a writer. Take up accounting." That was silly - really stupid. Everything has not been said, and will never be said. Human emotions may have always been the same, but there was never anyone on Earth before you who was exactly like you and who saw love and hate exactly as you see them through your eyes. And you need not have lived something to see it, to write about it. You were provided with imagination. Use it. Da Vinci did not have to attend the Last Supper to paint it. Use your imagination daily. Writing is no...

On Self Reliance Ralph Waldo Emerson THE OTHER DAY, I read some original statements written by a famous painter. Whenever I read something truly original, I get a feeling. That feeling is far more valuable than the statements themselves. The feeling fills me with a recognition of a profound truth: That genius is simply to "believe your own thought." "To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all [people]." Speak what is true for you, and it will almost always resonate in others. The voice in your own mind is so familiar to you that you give it no respect. Instead, you give too much weight to the thought of others — your neighbors, your teachers, or some great thinker from the past. But what makes great thinkers great is that they didn't disregard their own thought. They expressed what they truly thought; they listened to their own voice. You must learn to detect the light that shines from within and pay it more respect than ...