Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
- Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
- If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
- Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
- If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
‘Cannery Row’ is one of the best books, and ‘Of Mice & Men’ can make a grown man cry. Steinbeck was a legend. Also; the third point here is vital, stellar advice.
Four of France’s presidential aspirants graduated from the same elite training college: two of them in the same year. That a single graduating class of about 80 French students has such a political grip shows how the country manufactures its ruling class.
(via Language Log » Annals of airport Chinglish, part 3)
Someone, please, set up a simple website where Chinese companies can input whatever language they want, and then helpful English-speakers can provide a comprehensible translation, mechanical-Turk style but for free. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours for the translation to iterate with some clever wiki to something almost perfect, and in no case would you end up with something worse than this.
Point being, the people who made this sign put effort into creating the English translation. If there were a website which was easier to use than what they’re using right now, wouldn’t we all win?
Gun Control
American settlers also used guns and protected themselves and their family’s from Indian attacks, claim jumpers, and much more. If they had outlawed guns because Billy the Kid killed some people where would we be today? Still living on the west coast, ruled by England?
