Here are some diary doodles I drew from my notes on Jungian analyst James Hollis’s 1993 book, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Mid-Life. (I included them in my letter about Charlie Bucket’s mid-life crisis, “Quitting The Chocolate Factory.”)
After I shared these it was pointed out to me that Ted Lasso spies the book on the table in his therapist’s apartment (S02E08):
In a terrific mini Q&A, Lauren Groff (author of the wonderful novel Matrix, whose followup I cannot wait for) says she thinks writer’s block is an “umbrella term for a series of very different pains.”
1. The “fear of imperfection, which can be combatted by a writer carefully training herself to let her work be messy and impermanent.” Groff gets over this by writing longhand and not typing on the computer until she has a good sense of the piece.
2. “Being impatient with your work and not allowing it the time it needs to develop.” (Her teacher, Loorie Moore, told her to “relax” and not rush things and know that nothing is ever wasted.)
3. “The canary toppling over in the coalmine, the way that your work is telling you that you’re going down the wrong path and you need to reconsider some larger issues.” For this she suggests what I call the put it in the put it in the drawer and walk out the door strategy. And while you’re letting it sit, read, read, read:
During that time away, be in your chair every day, but be there by reading everything you can get your hands on, and you’ll find a solution in the hundreds of thousands of words you’ve read.
(For me, problems of output are usually problems of input.)
All of this reminded me of Joy Williams, who had my favorite take on writer’s block: “Perhaps more people should have it.”
See also: “Skip the boring parts”
(Groff interview via Laura Olin.)
One of the fun inventions of screenwriter David Seltzer in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) is how Willy Wonka is always quoting and mis-quoting snippets of poetry and literature.
Here are just a few bits that Wonka quotes:
“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams…”
—Arthur O’Shaughnessy, “Ode”
“…all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”
—John Masefield, “Sea-Fever”*
“Candy
is dandy
but liquor
is quicker.”
—Ogden Nash, “Reflections on Ice-Breaking”
“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
—Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
“Where is Fancy bred… in the heart or in the head?”
—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
In Pure Imagination: The Making of Willy Wonka, Mel Stuart writes:
Stan Margulies was charged with obtaining the legal clearances so that we wouldn’t be sued for the purloined lines, and he had some fun with it. He sent a copy of the final script to [producer David] Wolper’s attorney, Eric Weissman, with a note. “Mr. Wonka,” Stan wrote, “it turns out, delights in quoting famous pieces of poetry. Happily, most of them are from our good friend, William (public domain) Shakespeare, but his taste is wide ranging.”
A more complete list of Wonka’s quotations can be found here.
After my adventure last week of going through a stack of melted 45 singles, I went out and bought a refurbished tape deck. I christened it by listening to 20-year-old tapes of the short-lived radio show I did with my college roommate. If you’d like to travel back to 2003 and hear what we played here’s a 9-hour Spotify playlist:
(We stole the title of the show from Gil Mantera.)
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