As Aaron Sorkin deftly conveys the intimate exhilaration of wielding the primal power to bend one word around another until they catch fire and throw shadows on the moon chock-a-block with the terrifying feeling of being suddenly, randomly abandoned when our muses blow town for long spa weekends without leaving a forwarding address...you can absolutely tell that the writer didn't just jot this scene down on deadline.
No, this one was pulled straight out of someone's gut.
One minute the blank page is a stretch of warm beach on a spectacular day, scattered with libidinous liberal lasses and nuggets of gold the size of your fist.
The next minute it's ten thousand square miles of blighted, mirage-haunted wasteland where the only things that aren't uniformly gray are the whitened bones of
Objectively, it's no kind of way to live.
And yet we do.
Because real writers have no choice.
*(Speed kills. h/t mean s.o.b.)
35 comments:
Happy Blogiversary, ya bastid. Video at my place.
Yes, well, you don't seem like the kind of person who stops and celebrates various milestones, but hip, hip, hooray for you on this day.
And don't forget to do what your mom said Ryan said we should all do today.
Congratulations on your continuing efforts at catapulting your insubordinate verbiage and occasional pictorial atrocities in the Chicago style, my friend.
;>)
If I had to give young writers advice, I'd say don't listen to writers talking about writing.
— Lillian Hellman
;-}
Driftglass,
You're one of those guys.
joe frantic
What "joe" said
Just sorry that he beat me to it.
(loved Toby's comment on "annoying" lawyers, too)
Happy blog-o-versary, Drifty!
Regards,
Tengrain
Because you write, the world is a better place, driftglass.
Happy Blogiversary, Driftglass!
Is there any cake left?
A word is worth a 1000 pictures.
You're no Aaron Sorkin but I like you just the same.
Happy anniversary,
Super J.
happy anniversary drifty.
you are one of the good guys. you write with the impact of a smash and grab gang on an orange county jewelry case.
Happy happy man.
Been reading you since Steve insisted you really can use those wings.
In that, as so many other things, Gilly knew what he was talking bout.
"bones of a long-dead conjunctions" ?
Let's not confuse blogging with what real writers do. The latter often includes proof-reading.
Aaron Sorkin?
Come on!
I'm a Dg devotee.
S
Writers write.
You're one of them.
Us just hasn't found you yet.
Only cream and bastards rise. You've laid down four years of solid here using everything at your disposal. Being both, I've no doubt of your rising.
Your facets are dazzling, daunting and intimidating. You are that scary good.
There. That seems the appropriate kissing up for a blogaversary.
Happy misery to you. The only thing worth drowning.
Bounty to come.
couldn't find an email address for you, so I'm going to leave this message here- hope that's cool
Hello!
My name is Emily Schleier and I'm the Assistant Editor for a new media start-up publication titled The Printed Blog. You can download our latest issues at www.theprintedblog.com.
The Printed Blog is exactly that – a printed news publication with 100% of its content pulled from blogs and other user generated content. We are a new model of print publication based out of Chicago that has taken on the challenge of reviving the newspaper industry and turning in to a more community-based, interactive and user-generated medium.
There are many advantages to our approach at forming a new type of newspaper. First and foremost, all of our content is taken from the internet and then put through an editorial process so that we're sure our readers are only getting the best of the best when it comes to blogs, photos, music, events, etc.
With this being said, we think that your blog falls under the "best of the best" category and would feel extremely privileged if we were able to take articles from it to include in our publication. High profile blogs such as, Mashable, Daily Kos, The Bloggess, American Express and Bastard Life are all on The Printed Blog team!
All of the content that we use from the web is also completely accredited to the author and blog that it originated from, so this would be a great way to gain some exposure and bring traffic to your site.
The Printed Blog has been the point of discussion amongst many journalists and media representatives from all around the WORLD. We have been featured in many of the world's leading publications such as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Business Week, Wired magazine, as well as publications in France, Spain, Brazil, Egypt and many more!
We are currently working on our tenth issue that is set to be distributed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago on Thursday, April 9th.
We'd love to add you to our list of blogs to pull content from in hopes to print one of your posts in an upcoming issue. Do we have your permission? We would also like to have the option of printing the images that accompany your blog posts- do you have the rights to these images? I look forward to hearing back from you and please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions. You can follow our progress on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter!
All the best,
Emily Schleier
Assistant Editor
The Printed Blog
eschleier@theprintedblog.com
My internet crush on you continues. Don't ever leave me.
Happy 4 years! Toasting you from the land of the rising sun.
and by the way. I LOVE THAT SCENE
Happy Blogoversary, Driftglass. Keep on catapultin' the propaganda.
I never told you this before, but when I read your old post about the Rhino Runner and got to the line "Ripped to the tits on the Ouroborean narcotic effects of eating the lotuses that were growing out their own asses" I knew that poetry was alive and well.
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY
Four years. Jeez.
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
Congrats, and all that.
Keep 'em coming.
Just a quick Happy 4th (I think?) Blogiversary. That BG lady ratted it out. Nice vid, too!
Anyhoots, many many more Drifty, and thanks for all ya do to us. Er, for us. *G*
Four more years!! :lol:
Happy anniversary, Sir. ;-)
Happy blog-o-versiry Driftglass. I've been reading since the day as well, and continue to find your words as inspiring and deftly penned. May you soon be too big to fail.
As Myrtle said:
"Four more years!" :o)
(at LEAST!)
You're officially a generational phenom now drifty. I told my liberal lass of a daughter to plagiarize liberally from your writing for her government studies paper. With sufficient attribution, of course. Hopefully she'll be helping to carry the weight soon. Expect big changes!
There should be blogaversary pie. Just sayin'...
eghads! -- 4 years -- seems like just yesterday you were setting up shop, anyway, we're all the better for it -- thanks!
"Writing is easy. You just stare at the blank page until little droplets of blood stand out on your forehead."
-Ernest Hemmingway
Papa didn't call it the white bull for nothing.
keep up the good work
Congratulations on lasting four years! I honestly thought it was longer than that. Glad you are still online.
I always liked this scene. The first four seasons were great.
I imagine you've read it before, but from Faulkner (I love that last line especially):
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Or as Lanford Wilson put it, Burn This.
Yes. Exactly.
mac
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