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  • 82. On the Importance of Imagination


    “A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”
        -Percy Bysshe Shelley

    This is one reason to read great literature, or so I tell my students.  Literature isn’t going to make us better people necessarily, but exercising our imaginations by entering empathetically into the lives of characters, feeling their pains and pleasures, can be a good “Christian” practice.  It prepares us to do the same thing in real life.  But reading a lot of imaginative literature doesn’t guarantee that we will do what Shelley recommends when it matters most (in real life) or that we will respond with the appropriate and loving actions even if we do manage to use our imaginations empathetically.

    Still, I suspect that–like the person who regularly practices anything–the person who regularly exercises the imagination in this way has a better chance of becoming more actively compassionate than the person who doesn’t bother with the practice.
    → 3:46 PM, Sep 7
  • 15. On Writing, Practice, and Discipline

    This book is worth reading for anyone who has to write a book length manuscript.  A lot of books get started and never finished.  Not that I have all that much experience with this, but having written one, I can tell you that it is as easy to procrastinate as it is to utterly exhaust yourself with marathon writing sessions.  It takes discipline to write every day.  It also takes discipline to STOP, even when things are going well.

    One of the best things I learned from this book was this: park on the downslope.  Stop before you've exhausted what you have to say, so that you have some momentum for tomorrow.

    No, you won't write your book or your dissertation in only 15 minutes a day.  But try writing for 15 minutes and only 15 minutes for a week, and see what happens. What I found is that I began to develop a writing habit, and in week two I gave myself permission some of those days to write for more then fifteen minutes.

    Now I'm thinking about writing a book (in 15 minutes a day) called "Write Your Blog in 15 Minutes a Day."
    → 5:48 AM, Jan 15
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