In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Note
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
Hemingway
“What you ought to do is write you big lazy bastard. My god it is hard for anybody to write. I never start a damn thing without knowing 200 times I can’t write—never will be able to write a line—can’t go on—can’t get started—stuff is rotten—can’t say what I mean—know there is a whole fine complete thing and all I get of it is the bacon rinds. You would write better than anybody but the minute it becomes impossible you stop. That is the time you have to go on through and then it gets easier. It always gets utterly and completely impossible. | Thank God it does—otherwise everybody would write and I would starve to death.” Ernest Hemingway in a Letter to Waldo Pierce, 1st Oct 1928, from The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 2
Stephen King
“What are you worried about? Are you worried about whether or not fans will like this thing that you really want to write? Are you going to not write it because you’re worried about your reputation as the master of horror, the boogeyman, the king of horror? And I thought to myself, You’re talking about a writer’s hell where you just start to phone it in.
“And so I said, You know, I don’t care if people don’t like this — I like it. And so I wrote the book, and in the course of it, I stumbled across this woman named Holly Gibney. And if I hadn’t written that first book, Mr. Mercedes, I never would have found her, and she has become very important to me. She’s almost my alter ego, my feminine half. Holly Gibney has this saying, she says, ‘I have to chase the case.’ And for me, I have to chase this story.” Stephen King, in The New York Times the “Book Review” Podcast titled “Decades Later, Stephen King Is Finishing What He and Peter Straub Started,” Oct. 2, 2026 (see Of Interest).
Note
I hadn’t planned to post again until tomorrow with the Bradbury Challenge Report, but I had all this great stuff to pass along and the next issue of Chopped Livah won’t go out until October 11 at 8 a.m., so I figured I might as well publish a jam-packed little something for TNDJ. So here it is.
Also, re King’s quote above, I relate exactly to that idea of writing something simply because you want to write it or feel you have to write it vs. writing it because you think it’s what readers will like or because it’s currently all the rage (think Zombies), etc. This is also one of the concepts I try to pass along to other writers in TNDJ: Write it because it’s what you would love to write.
So in today’s Of Interest you’ll get that interview with King plus Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week plus a musing from a modern-day philosopher on completely eliminating sleep from your diet.
And then you’ve got the great advice from Ernest Hemingway in the first Quote of the Day above.
So for today, my job is done.
Of Interest
The NY Times Book Review Podcast with Stephen King (Transcript plus podcast) Thanks to Gary V. for sending me the link to this.
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Big Ideas
Would you quit sleeping if a drug eliminated the need? (Mine is a loud, resounding YES!)