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2/12/10
This week Time Magazine ran an excellent article about Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Explaining
why he does not allow himself to get too up or down, Gates came up with what he calls one of his favorite lines—one
which I know I will find difficult to forget, “Today a peacock, tomorrow a feather duster.”
A Few Previous Thoughts:
The brilliance of Paddy Chayefsky’s script
for “Network” is far more evident since the films first-run release thirty-odd years ago. After all, the passing
of time has proven that the concept of a news anchorman becoming a media sensation as an angry, mad prophet denouncing hypocrisy
is no longer a farfetched premise.
I live on a remote mountaintop so far back in the woods that a bear got lost in my backyard.
“Corner Pride is the type of novel that grabs you in the first few sentences. Moments into the book, you will
be emotionally attached to the characters and invested in the story. LeMone's craft is both fluid, rootsy and magical all
at once.” Jonathan Grossman
Opportunity
often disguises itself as adversity.
My faith grows
ever stronger whenever intuition of a positive nature and the future merge in real time.
Some personality
traits are better latent than ever.
I find it curious
how many people are more inclined to mention how Jesus died for our sins rather than how he lived to teach us about love and
compassion.
The denouement
in “A Told Story” comes when the grandmother in my story tells her granddaughter, “Sometimes what we believe
can be worth much more than what we know.”
If there is
anything on this planet that is better than having the love and faith of a good woman, I have not found it.
Along all of
life’s journeys of adventure we can count on facing conflicts and obstacles, or the journeys would not be called adventures.
Many years ago, I cured myself of the reoccurring nightmare of being 10 years
old again--chased through the streets of North Philly--by having a similar character in a story invent a nine-hundred-pound
lowland gorilla to help him through those gang related dreams.
I will
never forget what my father told me when he put me on punishment for stealing candy from a corner store. “You can’t
have six in one hand and a half dozen in the other if you only have one arm.”
As a writer, my
job is to establish an alliance with my readers based on trust. Meaning, if I select the proper choice of key words to paint
my characters and scenes, the reader’s imagination will fill in the blank spaces and see what I have described in great
detail.
“Be not afraid,” Jesus said, as he beckoned Peter to join him by walking across the water.
Lesson-wise, those may have been the three most profound words ever spoken.
It has
often been said that the fastest way to get from one point to another is a straight line. In fiction, however, the five phases
of a story from beginning to end (situation, complication, crisis, climax and resolution) can best be seen as a jagged series
of peaks and valleys.
Almost
50 years ago, controversial comedian Lenny Bruce predicted that common phrases such as “come up and see my etchings”
and “stop in for a cup of coffee” would become euphemisms for sex. Now in 2010, no thanks to Governor Mark Sanford
and Tiger Woods, will “hiking the Appalachian Trail” and “playing golf” automatically lead to suspicions
of infidelity?
If you
were to ask one million married couples to define what makes a good marriage work, you would get at least two million different
answers.
A promise worth making is one worth keeping.
The personal
values of the main character in A Dance in the Street, my first published novel, inspired me to work at becoming a better
person.
Watching
President Obama give his first State of the Union address last night, confirmed my belief, more than ever, that we have the
right president during these challenging times.
One of
my favorite movie lines comes in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Paul Newman says, “I have visions the rest
of the world wears bifocals.”
My daughter
Donielle Angelique, who, at one-and-a-half-years of age, handed me an unopened copy of Dorethea Brand’s “Becoming
a Writer” which she randomly chose from a bookshelf. And that, indeed, has made all the difference.
While watching a film the other night by one of my favorite directors, Lina Wertmuller, I was once again reminded of
how formidable satire can be when it comes to exposing hypocrisy, past or present.
Ever since I wrote a fictional novel about a sex therapist, I occasionally get questions from friends
about love relationships. More often than not, I find myself giving the same advice; “I suggest that you read Men Are
from Mars, Women Are from Venus.”
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